Kauai

My parents are obsessed with Kauai. They've probably been 7 times in the last 15 years. This summer my mom decided to rent a beach house and bring along the ENTIRE family. Like there was seriously 18 of us in one house, sharing two bathrooms and only four beds, hahaha. My uncle and sister's boyfriend slept outside in their hammocks strung between palm trees and my brothers slept on the couches and Nathan and I had an air mattress so it all worked out pretty good. Plus who the heck cares when you're in Kauai anyway, right?

The first thing we did upon arrival was stop at L&L for a little late night Hawaiian BBQ. This is my brother's favorite spot. It is kind of sketchy but we like it. There's actually an L&L in Provo, which is weird because seriously the only L&L's I know of are in Hawaii... and then Provo? Interesting. Fun fact, I ate Christmas Eve dinner here when I was 16 years old on our last trip.

Our beach house was on Anini Beach which is just BEAUTIFUL, and it was only like 100 steps away from the ocean.

Here it is, Anini Beach :) it is protected by a coral reef and so the waves break about 200 yards from the beach, so the water is always really calm.

And this, my friends, is the view from our bathroom. Isn't that incredible! It looks like a scene from Jurassic Park, or like the Garden of Eden. Probably more Jurassic Park though because they actually did film those movies on this island!

So many beautiful sights to see! Kauai is so diverse, one side of the island is completely tropical, and is one of the top ten wettest places on the planet. Then on the opposite side of the island it's like a desert, more hot, dry and brown. You can drive around the entire thing in 2.5 hours. I think I would get island fever really bad if I ever lived here. It may be paradise but I think I'd feel kind of trapped just driving around the same island around and around all day.

We boogie boarded all day, e'rrrry day. We went around to as many different beaches as possible. There's this one place called Polihale that has these incredible waves! In the winter time when the waves are bigger they seriously get to be like 20 feet high. In the summertime they're not quite as high but man they are powerful! I pretty much got eaten alive by this one wave and it dragged me across the ocean floor, filling my swimsuit with all this sand, and then it sucked my goggles off! Then as I washed onto shore, face down, legs all scraped up, another wave came and got me! I felt like I was in a washing machine, getting spun around out of control by the power of this wave.

Here's me after getting eaten by the ocean. My hair and swimsuit were soooo full of sand it was ridiculous. Don't mind my legs, apparently I only believe in applying sunscreen on like two spots on my legs, haha.

One day we went on this very muddy ATV adventure with my sister and her boyfriend! The tour was on this ranch where they filmed Indiana Jones and Jurassic Park, so we got to see some of those sites!

Here's one of those monster waves I was telling you about! Hahah this video cracks me up.

This was the view from our favorite smoothie stand! Can you imagine this being your view at work everyday?

No trip to Kauai would be complete without eating at Bubba's Burgers. I think we ate there like 5 times. It's too delicious to miss.

Me and Mo.

Boone on the plane ride home. All those hats have got to go somewhere, and they weren't all fitting in the suitcases, sooo....

Plumerias! Oh how I wish we could grow these trees in Utah, aren't they so beautiful? One thing about Kauai is there are flowers everywhere. It seems like everything has a flower on it.

My favorite part I think was the beach by our house! I loved just sitting in my Tommy Bahama chair, toes in the sand, reading a book and watching all the little crabs scurry around.

It was a shame we had to come home! I did miss our air conditioned apartment though, so in that regard, it is good to be back. Nobody in Kauai believes in air conditioning apparently.

And that concludes our Kauai adventures! Thank you and goodnight.