I suppose I owe you a blog entry. Since, you know, July is 3/4 over and I haven’t written one iota.

Well, that’s not quite true. I did caption the photos over at my photo journal… but I didn’t even add a little blurb over there when I uploaded new photos today. Shame on me.

The month started off well enough, with celebrating Year Four. Actually we celebrated a little early as J was gone over our real anniversary, but that was okay. We saw fireworks on the 4th (isn’t it awesome that they always give us fireworks for our anniversary? We’re just that special, I guess. ^_^) and then my folks got to Hawaii on the 7th and I flew to Kauai with them.

That’s the Na Pali coast. Parts of Kauai look a lot like Oahu, but most of it is very rural and open and beautiful. We stayed at a beautiful resort, and went swimming every day (well, my brother and I did), and did a good bit of sight-seeing.

One day we went to the north shore of Kauai, which is completely different than Oahu’s north shore; it’s rocky and steep and the road winds along the side of the mountains (and off of the mountains in places) and has nothing but tiny little towns you drive through in about a minute. It also has a lighthouse that’s surrounded by a wildlife refuge with a huge amount of birds, including wedge-tailed shearwaters that burrow into the ground to nest.

Another day we drove Waimea Canyon, which is down the middle of the island and looks a good bit like a smaller version of the Grand Canyon. The road winds back and forth as you go further up into the mountains and then you get to some sharp overlooks and then you see the red layers of the volcanic dirt, full of iron and left by ancient lava flows. If you keep going all the way to the top and back of the Canyon, you eventually get to where the red turns to green and you see the view I first posted of the Na Pali coast. It’s the only way to see that view without taking a boat or a helicopter, or doing a seriously hardcore hike.

We also toured both a coffee plantation and an organic chocolate farm. At the coffee plantation we got to sample about 15 different types of coffee, and at the chocolate farm we got to try whatever was fresh picked off the tree, including a young coconut, a tropical lemon, lychee, and cocoa pulp off of the chocolate seeds. Then we tried several types of chocolate made on the farm, including some traditional chocolate like the Aztecs ate and a chocolate drink made with coconut water and spices. It was so good!

Once back on Oahu, I took my folks to visit the north shore here, drove them around to the Blowhole, and to the Arizona Memorial. We also went on the Atlantis Submarine tour, which was a lot of fun, and I took them to a concert at the zoo to hear ‘ukelele music. They went home about a week ago now.

So there’s your update. I’m going to try and be better about updating the rest of the month, and I’m thinking about taking the BEDA challenge– Blog Every Day in August. We’ll see if I’m up for it. And in the meantime, check out photos from the Kauai trip. ^_^