For day 3 on Monday I had planned for us to go to a luau that evening but the day was open. I decided that it would be a good day for the drive up to the Waimea Canyon. It’s described as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific and boy did it live up to it’s name. It was beautiful. Sure would be awesome to see from a helicopter (adds to bucket list).

For this trip we had our rental car and some look outs. A woman at one of the shops told us that some days you can’t see the canyon because of cloud cover. I saw that it was sunny but a cloud was moving in, so I was trying to book it to the top so we could see before the clouds covered it. We did make it with some clouds but luckily we could still see everything. It was beautiful.

There are 5 lookout points. We made it to 4 and never did figure out where we missed the fifth. Once you get to the last 2 the lookouts are the other direction out to the ocean and Na Pali coast. It was cool knowing that in a couple days we’d be down there in that big ole ocean on a a boat.

Once we took in all the beauty we headed back down. On the way we stopped at the Red Dirt Waterfall. It was a pretty cool landscape of red rock.

We went to the Kekaha Beach once we came back down from the mountain. It was pretty windy but we had a good time. Jaelee swam and Leora looked for shells. I tried to take pictures of waves and sand.

We headed back to our hotel for a bit and got ready for our luau. We all wore the dresses we bought. The luau we went to was at the Smith Family Garden. It is a botanical garden and the grounds were beautiful. We took the tram around the garden and then walked around. Lots of birds, flowers and trees.

When it was time we watched the unearthing of the pig. And then went into the dining hall for dinner. We tried poi – none of us were fans. I gotta say the food was not my favorite. After dinner we went to the theater area to get ready for the show.

The show was ok. It was entertaining but didn’t blow us away. We also had a super loud, drunk and really annoying woman and couple of guys next to us. I couldn’t hardly concentrate on the show. One guy had so much cologne on I was getting a headache. Jaelee didn’t super love the loud people either, she was very annoyed.

Overall, the grounds were beautiful but I don’t think the food and the show were worth how much it was. I’d probably skip in the future.

Rooster all the way up here!

Nasa weather satellite

We couldn’t quit see the ocean out our hotel window but we could see it really well from the mirror.

Peacocks at the luau.

This tree with flowers was covered in butterflies. It was really hard to get pictures but I got a couple.

This duck hid under the stage during the whole performance.