Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Epic adventures

Truth be told, this weekend was probably one of the top 5 weekends of my entire life. But, you don't read this blog for a long sappy list of things that give me warm fuzzies. So here's the other side of my storybook weekend.

We have 3 friends visiting from Montana. As we planned activities to do with them camping came up as a fun activity. I did my duty as host and Googled and facebooked my way to a cabin rental in Wainapanapa State Park.

We packed up Sunday morning and headed off into the rainforest that was currently full of rainstorms. About halfway along every phone in my minivan began to buzz, vibrate, chirp or jingle with a text announcement that someone in the other car needed to pee. We hurried along to one of the only rest stops along our journey with only a brief way lay for the fallen tree who's upturned roots had to be driven over precariously.

Moderate to severe car sickness aside, it was a pleasant, albeit wet, drive to the east side of the island.

We arrived to find our cabins placed some distance away from each other. Okay, but not ideal. We walked in, very unsure what to expect, and immediately someone drew in their breath, exhaled and announced, "these are amazing! They smell like camping." The beautiful baby had beautifully stinkified herself on the car ride so she was stripped down and quickly made her way to every nook and cranny of the cabin clad only in a diaper and rain boots. All 3 boys had made a tree fort within 5 minutes of arrival that they proudly announced was mostly rain free. Larry made me a leaf umbrella since the fort was a kids only zone. He's thoughtful like that.

And so our camping trip began. We went to the beach and swam in the ocean in the rain. We hiked to nowhere along the oceans edge and did some cave exploring.

Dinner was an inside job due to rain but my magical all in one rice cooker, sautér, steamer and crockpot quickly helped us put together some steak, quinoa and veggie deliciousness. Games, after games after games were played until we all fell into our twin bunk beds exhaustedly.

Our beautiful baby woke up and wanted to go home in the middle of the night so my dear husband and I took turns basking in her awfulness and pretending we could sleep through it. She gave up the fight around 3am but managed to use her gigantic 20 lb self to take up my entire bed making sleep an unfulfilled dream.

We were up bright and early the next morning to pack up our cabins, play phase ten, do more exploring now that the rain had stopped and other fun things. Before leaving Wainapanapa we headed back to the caves for more cave pool fun (by we I mean, not me, or the tired baby, or my sister who hurt her knee. But everyone else.) My boys came back from the adventure and were most excited to tell me that my best friend said a bad word really loud in front of them when daddy swam through a rock wall and she didn't know if he was okay. They knew he was okay.

We finished our adventures with a trip to the Hana Lava Tube tour (which is well worth doing!). 35 minutes of underground cave exploring with stalagmites and chocolate stalactites plus a ti leaf maze above ground, what's not to love?

We took the back way home through Kaupo and included a stop at Ulupalakua Ranch so we could be sure to say we really and thoroughly enjoyed East Maui. It has a lot more to offer but for our family  it gave us exactly what we needed. I can't wait to go again.

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