Marco ... Polo... I mean, Romney

District Band

Westonka's All-District Band concert in full minus the one hour of all non-Moore performances. Oh yeah. 1 1/2 hours of performances by the 5th, 6th, 7th, and four different High School bands. I know, you wish you could be in my shoes...

Kaua'i 2012 - The Movie

This vacation was much more mellow than past ones. As such, we took a lot less video since our activities were mostly swimming, beaching and eating. So calling this a movie is a bit of a stretch. It's more slideshow than video.

Enjoy. If you click the square next to the "You Tube" logo on the bottom right corner, it will enlarge to Full Screen mode.

god, archive footage is a biatch

Kaua'i horses

On Emily's suggestion, we signed up for horseback riding. We booked a two-hour trail ride that would have been just us plus a guide at a stables close to our hotel. We picked that facility because it would allow us to "trot" the horses rather than just walk. However, with all the rain they got here last week, the stables called us the morning of our afternoon ride and had to cancel. The trails and the facilities were too muddy and the horses didn't have the proper horseshoes.

Fortunately, we were able to book a stable the next day. It was further away, but in the same direction as other plans we had. This ride was shorter (an hour and a half) and no trotting. Additionally, there was another family of three with us. Nevertheless, it was a fun ride, and Alison was probably pleased there was no trotting involved.

The trails here were muddy, but not terrible.



It wasn't all dense, wet trails. We had a nice view of the Napali Coast mountains.



Following the horse riding, we had a terrific afternoon/evening in Hanelei Bay. Our friends were renting a house right on the beach. It is actually two houses down from one of the houses featured in George Clooney's movie The Decendants. We had lunch, and then hit the waves. Bill and his friend, Dave, surfed numerous sections of the beach - from high waves that were probably too high for our skill level, and low waves for practicing. Bill tried an SUP (Stand-up Paddleboard), and did very little actual standing. The girls and boys body boarding in the waves near the beach. Even Alison got into the action. It was her first and only time in the Ocean here.

Afterwards we had a nice take-out dinner and watched the sun set on Hanalei Bay. The kids played Go-Fish on cards that were imaged with Hawaiian fish as opposed to traditional numerals and face cards. A good one to have is the humuhumunukunukuāpuaʻa.

Tuesday fun and ride

Today we hit the beach early. The girls rented body boards for the week and toook them to the waves. Katie took and early tumble and put the board away before the video came out. Emily hit it hard.



From the beach we took to the road, hitting the South and West coasts for lunch, ice cream and sightseeing. The West coast ride took us through the Waimae Canyon. The canyon has a few lookout points including the following:

South side...west side

Waikiki and beyond

Our arrival in Honolulu was relatively uneventful. We departed Minneapolis late Friday night, arrived and slept in L.A. Fortunately, the gate agent in Minny checked our bags straight thru, so no Baggage Claim at LAX. The flight L.A. to HNL was slightly six hours.

As we had expected it was raining when we arrived, but it didn't last long. We hit the beach both Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning. The winds were strong which made for some great body surfing.

The video is the beach outside of the Outrigger Hotel, our one-night stop.



Sunday night we arrived in Kaua'i to steady rain. Apparently, they have gad steady rains for about two weeks! The outlook was daunting.



However, today - Monday - we snuck in a nice sunny (albeit windy) day. Pool and beach at the hotel all day long.



Bill took a surf lesson, and got up a few times. No video of course!

GoPro at Shawnee

Just a raw cut of the kids skiing in Maine using our new GoPro camera which is mounted on my helmet.