Kauai Part I

This is the first of a few entries of our trip to Hawaii. It's going to be more travel log than I would prefer but hopefully I'll still be able to show that the trip was an absolute blast. We left an absolute blizzard in Utah on Wednesday night to fly to Orange County to drop Jack off at my parents. Beth later admitted that she feared she wouldn't be able to leave him behind and thought we might have to take him with. That was before the relatively short flight with him. He wasn't bad or anything, he was just himself. If you know him then you know that trying to keep him confined to small space is a pain in the butt. Plus with all the snow we had to sit on the runway for an extra hour. The next day it was much easier to leave him behind. On Thursday we landed on Kauai a little after noon. That left us plenty of time to check out the wonderful Hyatt and begin to do our favorite thing . . . lay around and read.
I'm proud to say that Beth only read one more book than I did. Granted one of her books was bigger than the Bible. Seriously it was huge, at least 10 pounds. I don't know what all she read but I'm sure she'll tell you if you ask. I read a couple Travis McGee novels by John MacDonald and another book called The Mark. Since school began I had only read one other book of my own choosing so that was nice. We also had time to check out the area around the hotel. The Hyatt is the group of buildings over my shoulder.
Beth at least has an excuse for her belly.
The first night there was a mixer for all the Novell people. The food was really good. Lots of seafood. There was the first of many open bars. There's something about an open bar that makes me want to drink. Beth finally saw what I meant. It's probably because I'm cheap and I feel ripped off not taking advantage of something that's free.
On Friday morning there was a breakfast meeting for all the qualifiers and their guests. The second half of the meeting was mandatory for the employees. Apparently they have to do something businesslike in order to treat the club as a business expense. Luckily it was short and sweet. That afternoon everyone was shuttled to the Waimea Plantation on the West side. There they had all kinds of activities for us, including another open bar. Beth and I had a lot of fun paddle surfing.

Two seconds earlier would have been a great photo of both of us.

Saturday morning we went our separate ways. I went on an all day adventure tour. Originally Beth was planning to join but as the day got closer she elected to have a day at the spa rather than kayak/hike/zipline around the jungle. It was a smart move because she had a really good time and would not have enjoyed the tour in her state. She did report that the massage was amazing and the 12 shower heads in the steam room were a treat. I loved the tour. We started out kayaking a few miles up the river before going on foot up the hill. At this point we had a tractor pull everyone on a trailer across the old sugar cane fields. You could see where they films scenes from Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark and Jurassic Park. We then went back into another part of the forest to do some zip lines.

My favorite part of the tour came at the end when we hiked to Kipu Falls. This is me grabbing the rope swing. A friend took a video for me on the swing. It was the bomb!