Waimea Valley

Before heading into town today, I had my stylist make sure my hair looked pretty slick before heading into town.

When we first arrived on Oahu, I asked a college girl what we should see/do on the island. The only thing she came up with was to take pictures in front of the angel wings, which gave me little hope for the future of our people.

And yet, my eyes lit up when I saw the wings and Leila really wanted a photo in front of them. All of the sudden, the future is looking pretty good.

We wandered around town a bit and ended up at Haleiwa Joe's, an iconic restaurant overlooking the pier. While the view here was awesome, everyone was fully engaged in Mandy's magic tricks.

From there, we headed to Waimea Valley, a 3/4 mile walk through many species of plants that leads to a waterfall and freshwater pond. We also met a few peacocks along the way and were warned that they could be aggressive, so we sent our bravest warrior to make introductions.

The scenery here is beautiful and my photos don't capture the atmosphere, so here is a token shot of some greenery and my word that it was all really nice.

The above photo captures the personalities of the kids pretty well - Rowyne posing nicely, Leila trying to mimic her and Ethan just bolting around like the Flash.

We made it the waterfall and the kids wanted to jump off some of the rocks under the falls. In an effort to win Cool Dad of the Year 2017, I said "yes" immediately.

It's slippery and constantly getting drilled by the water offers quite the challenge, but it's a great test at perseverance.

Reeeeeelax. This is as high as they'd jump from. Even that was difficult enough and really, I was so proud that Leila stuck with it to make it happen.

Rowyne really loved it and probably jumped about 10-12 times. So much fun!

Once we'd had our fill, we started back to the beginning to end the day at Sunset Beach. We grabbed a coconut from the equivalent of a white unmarked van selling candy. Seemed legit.

We finally located the spot known as Mother's, it's a part of Sunset that is much more docile and family friendly.

Yes, every beach photo is a postcard. 

We had a little snack and packed up our minimalist gear before grabbing some dinner.

There are a bunch of food trucks stationed in one spot so we thought we'd check them out.

One of them even has a big screen playing surf films, so waiting for you food is never a problem. In fact, I was bummed that it arrived so quickly since I was curious about the pubescent love story and how it would turn out. Does the guy get the girl? I'll never know.

Of course, I quickly forgot the movie since these guys performed a play for us. The story was tough to follow and they only had one set with no costume changes, but I gave them an 8/10 for being family.