Resurrect and Reconnect

Wade’s favorite way to describe our 8 day getaway to Kauai. Our upcoming departure to the Middle East, or even more, Wade’s departure to the Middle East 2 months prior to the rest of the us, inspired the last minute getaway. Fortunately, it didn’t take much convincing when I told Wade that if he was going to leave me to single parent for a couple of months I was going to need some uninterrupted Wade time and a solid few days of sleeping in.

We fit in loads of relaxing and a fair amount of adventuring. I slept in every morning just as my heart desired. Wade was weird and woke up every morning at 7 AM California time (4 AM Hawaii time), he’d walk out to the couch to watch TV while I rolled over and went back to dream land. By the time I awoke he’d usually have made it down to the local coffee shop and back and had a breakfast pastry waiting for me. What a guy right? After a lazy breakfast we’d head to an adventure or a beach and laze the day away.

First things first, pick up a rental car. For real, we drove a Mustang around the island for a week, or as Wade lovingly referred to it, “the Stang”. I was fairly embarrassed until I realized every other tourist was driving the same obnoxious vehicle. 2nd things 2nd, pick up snorkel gear and head to Tunnels Beach. Follow up with a swim in Queens Bath.

Day 2 and 3 or 4, I don’t know, I lose track. That’s what you’re supposed to do on vacation anyway, lose track. We went to the beach, went cliff jumping, delved into pertinent reading, tried our hand at stand up paddle boarding, ate volcano cake…

Yeah…I had a little run in with the reef. The beach goers had a good show that day! I was an amateur for sure, a protected harbor might be a better choice for a first timer.

We also ate shave ice. A lot.

I remained amazed all week that no matter what direction you turned, or where you chose to look was worthy of a picture. The Kalalau trail and Waimea Canyon were particularly ridiculous.

We drove up Waimea Canyon on the last day, it turned out to be the perfect activity seeing as how the day before we’d gotten ourselves a little sunburn, so the beach was out. Our view was some what inhibited by the clouds, but what we did see was spectacular.

The Wailua River in a kayak struck our fancy one morning. It was a fun paddle up the river, we parked our boats and took to trail for 30 minutes or so to a dip under the waterfall.

I look naked here, I swear I’m not.

And maybe my favorite line of the trip, “Babe, I feel like the Vietcong is going to just jump out at any second!”

I told Wade sometime during that week that a trip away from the kids is never really convenient. There’s never really a good time to go, there’s never really a lot of money in the bank to do it, but you just need to bite the bullet and do it every couple of years. Chances are it’s a bullet you won’t regret biting. While we’ve had a few long weekends here and there over the past 9 years, we haven’t done a solid week getaway with just the two of us since our honeymoon. And it was the best. We “resurrected and reconnected” and remembered why we fell in love in the first place. We’re funny, conversation comes easily and it doesn’t always revolve around the kids, we’re both up for adventure as easily as we’re up for a nap, we both like a treat and we both like each other, on top of loving each other.

We took the red eye home and walked into the house at 6:00 AM. Bode was already up waiting for us. 20 minutes later I was already tired again. (Sigh) What a great week.

Aloha until next time.