From January 5th through the 20th, Josh and I will be on the Raddest Photo Trip Ever. Yes, that's really the name of the trip. You will hopefully be able to follow our journey here as we head out to Thailand and Cambodia. We are stoked!

P.S. I have no intentions of drinking elephant dung coffee. Thanks for the many suggestions.

Our morning started out a bit slow. We knew this was our last normal full day on the island. We had decided to spend a few hours that morning back at our favorite beach Hideaways before heading down south for our afternoon cruise.

We did our morning run to Java Kai and were headed off. We got to Hideaways by 9 and all the spaces were taken. We had a few options.

1) park valet at the St Regis and walk just a bit
2) Park on the end where we had seen some folks park in the past but was obviously not a spot
3) Wait a few minutes as people tend to leave this lot very quickly
4) Decide to park in between the last car and a fence by taking it at a 45 degree angle thus hitting both stationary objects.

Can you guess which option we went for? And when I say we, I'm excluding my name from that. To make it even more painful a nice couple came out and freed up a spot in the 5 minutes Josh was gone to get a pen and paper.

So that was a lovely start to the morning. We proceeded down to the beach as there wasn't much more we could do now. We were shocked to find only 4 people down there. Quickly we were the only 2 left. I'd say that between 9-11 on weekdays must be the perfect time. People started showing up as we left. There is nothing more peaceful than enjoying your favorite beach in solitude. Josh and I had fun trying to figure out how to use his panoramic photo app. We must have looked comical because it required me to stand directly behind him and run around him in circles as he spun with the camera. We finished it literally a minute before someone arrived.

Around 11 we finished our scrabble game and headed back to the cottage to get cleaned up. It was a bit of a drive to the port and we were going to grab lunch.

For lunch we stopped at Puka Dogs in Poip'u. I love hot dogs. These hot dogs are pretty popular for two reasons I think. First, the bread goes all the way around. It's basically a loaf with a hole bored out. Then the toppings. Yum. You first choose a garlic sauce: mild, medium, or spicy. Then you choose s relish: mango, banana, pineapple, coconut, etc. And finally a mustard: typical, Dijon or Hawaiian. I highly recommend the jalapeño garlic sauce/mango relish/Hawaiian mustard combo. I love hot dogs so I thought this was pretty yummy. Obviously $6.50 for a dog is expensive but it was big. My only complaint was it was a lot of bread and I wish I had asked for a side of the sauce to dip it in. The lemonade (only drink) was good too.

The location was pretty close to the port so it was an easy drive if to Port Allen. After missing the turn once we got straightened out and found the office for Captain Andy's. I was concerned I hadn't dressed appropriately but looking at everyone else I had chosen right. FYI - I wore a long spaghetti strap sundress and brought a lightweight long sleeve shirt I could throw on over if it got cool later. Several folks wore bathing suits underneath. Whatever you wear make sure you don't mind it getting wet. And it's windy so I wouldn't suggest short lightweight dresses.

We got checked in and then were taken to our boats. There were two groups of us and we were color coded in our passes. We were on the Southern Star which is a gorgeous 65 foot catamaran. Make sure you book that boat. Apparently the other boat is inferior and doesn't have the same great food.

We were really impressed we the whole trip. It was a 4 1/2 hour boat ride putting us back to port right after sunset. The trip up the Napali coast was much rough but we got a lot closer to the shore. Note that for pictures. They let us up into the bridge for pictures and even though the package had said one drink free it was an open bar. No, we didn't really take advantage of that. About 3/4 of the way in Josh started getting queasy so we took it easy. It was a great experience to view the coast from down low after seeing it up high.

I'd highly recommend this charter especially after watching some of the other boats get slammed around out there.

We got back to the shore on our way around 7:30. Another longish drive home and we were in bed for one last time in Kauai. Quite sad.

***As usual more photos to come. ***

Sunday was supposed to be our spa day. We did some last minute rearrangement and decided that it made more sense to go to the spa on our last day when we would no longer have our house and a shower. (thinking ahead) The plan was now to do the first two miles of the Kalalau Trail on Sunday during the day. We knew we would need the whole day. So we pushed our breakfast reservations up to 9am.

Everything started out fairly well. Ok. I was on the phone with my mom at 8:10 (in my pj's) when I realized the time. It was almost an hour drive to breakfast we were guessing because by now we assume everything is an hour drive that isn't on the north shore. Josh and I got ready super fast and were in the car in about 3 minutes. Of course the one morning we weren't up at 5:30 was the morning we needed to be out the door at a set time.

We got to Gaylord's a few minutes late but they didn't care at all. The restaurant is on an old plantation and we both commented that our son would love the train that goes through their huge property. We walked in and were taken out to the courtyard. Tge setting is pretty perfect. I could just imagine how magical at night it would be with some twinkle lights. Perfect for a wedding. They had live music that started at 11 but we were gone by then. I heard dinner is good but on Sunday they have a pretty amazing brunch. Josh says it was his favorite meal of the trip. A pretty gourmet buffet. The waffles with your choice of fresh macadamia nut, coconut or berry syrup with all sorts if toppings was my favorites. I wanted to buy the syrups and bring them home. The fresh passion fruit/guava/orange juice was especially yummy too. I could go on and on about the food. Josh couldn't get enough of the bacon. I think almost everything was farm to table.

After lunch we headed back up north planning on getting changed and hiking. Well, the skies opened up. All week we had gotten used to these quick showers. This was rain. We decided to stop into a few stores in Hanalei to give it time to pass.

We hit up the Hanalei Surf Company. Josh had been scoping out the cars of local surfers and they apparently sported that shop's stickers. So there we went. I thought the shop was pretty touristy. They had some good stuff but too much other stuff. We later found the Hanalei Surf Company Backdoor shop (aka the Backdoor) and this was definitely the place to go. They carried more of the brands we wanted and seemed to be more of a true local surf shop in my opinion. They had an unreal selection of little boy trunks. All the suits we had seen for Josh this year but in mini sizes. Of course we had to buy another. I really don't like surf brand girls stuff so none for the little girl. I think I already got her 4 this year so she's ok.

After that we hit up the kids store, Kokonut Kids. They had a lot of the same stuff from a little store in Hanapepe plus some other brands I knew, I found a really cute swim bottom on clearance for our daughter. Josh found this ridiculously cute purse like contraption that looks like a Hawaiian hut. You open it and it has a Hawaiian dolls inside- a girl, boy and dog. We felt guilty for all the things we had bought our son so we went up to get her those things.

As we approached the register a set of parents was attempting to shop/leave with their 2 year old son. He was about to have a meltdown and the store owner was trying to convince the parents to buy him this windup toy to distract him. They obviously wanted to leave and finally got out of the store. As soon as the door had shut the shop owner blurts out "brat!" followed by some cackling. It was odd. I'm sure she had choice words after we departed because we were looking at mini string bikinis (babi kinis) for our little chunks but we didn't like the patterns she had.

We finally got our purchases and left and it was still raining. We decided it was too late in the day and risky to go on the hike with the rain. I'm not sure if that was entirely true or the thought of another "extremely steep mile" made me want to cry. Instead we threw our bathing suits on and decided to check out the beach at the far north of the island where the hike starts, Ke'e Beach.

As we got close to the beach we noticed lots of cars. I'm talking a lot. All week we were used to being on beaches with only a handful of people. Ke'e had huge parking lots. And they were full. The beach had a lot of people on it but I'm sure a lot of the cars were from hikers. We were quite surprised at how many people were at this beach considering it was the furthest beach. It was pretty but nothing overly special to us. We spent some time on the beach. Luckily it was nice and sunny when we arrived but soon the rain from earlier caught up with us. Once we felt like we had enough we packed up.

On the way back we stopped at Red Hot Mamas for some burritos. They only had beef or veggies left but that was fine. The sauce was a little spicy so I got mine saucy, Josh didn't. While we waited we checked out the art gallery next door. It is an art co-op run by 7 local artist. Each artist works the shop one day. We enjoyed talking to the founder who happened to be working that day. She told us about all the artists and we ended up vying a small oil painting as we hadn't gotten a piece of art from our trip yet. The prices at the gallery were really reasonable. It was a great find. They have only been open a few months so hopefully they will get some coverage.

Once our burritos were ready we headed back to the house and enjoyed them on the porch. So peaceful out there.

At 6 we headed up to the St Regis in Princeville for a drink on their terrace at sunset. We knew it would be pricey but we also knew the view was supposed to be amazing. The weather had been crappy all day so we were worried. We were grateful for the free valet parking and wandered around until we found the terrace of the lobby bar (not to be confused with the terrace restaurant). There happened to be an open table right at the railing which we grabbed. The waitress warned is it might rain but we weren't going to sit inside. I ordered the most expensive Mai Tai ever (yes, Jered) and Josh was in heaven because they had an entire page dedicated to bloody Mary's.

The next hour and a half we spent just enjoying the view, watching surfers, sipping our drinks and listening to the crazy conversation behind us. Our Mai tais were called Koloa Mai tais because the use the local Koloa rum. The lady behind us must have asked the waitress a dozen times what was in her Mai tai. It was painful. We were then blessed to hear their conversation with a young couple who was on a 28 day vacation to Hawaii and how 7 day vacations are useless. Who are these people? We also overheard them say their room here was $1000 a night. Times 28 days....

So back to the sunset. The dark clouds actually made it pretty cool. Each night we were amazed at how people wait for the tip of the sun to go under and then run away. To us some of the best parts are well after the sun is gone. We stayed for a while and had most of the terrace to ourselves.

The hotel is gorgeous at night. For cheapos like us who don't want to pay for the Kauai Grille I'd suggest getting something early and then grabbing a drink on the terrace. Oh and dress up a bit.