Julia's Visit - Day 2

Still on Central Daylight Time, it was inevitable that Julia would wake up early... so we took advantage of that and went to Kailua Beach to watch the sunrise!

Because of the morning clouds, it was a particularly pretty sunrise and we again enjoyed strolling through the waves and chatting. After a while though, it was back to the house to get ready for our first snorkeling trip to Shark's Cove!

Stopping in at Jamba Juice prepared us for the morning and we arrived early enough to find a great parking spot. The waves were still and the tide was out, making it easy for us to make our way down the rocks to get ready for diving.

Julia and DeAnna and I took little time squeezing into our wetsuits before we slid into the clear waters of the cove.




Once out away from the rocks, Julia immediately began to dive down! Borrowing DeAnna's underwater camera, she eagerly took lots of pictures. As we swam around admiring the fish and rocks below, a sea turtle swam by, so we followed it to take some pictures and this movie. You can see the sea turtle in the lower center of the screen!



There was so much to see - rarely have we seen the water so clear! We swam around for quite a while diving and snapping pictures! At one point, we found ourselves well outside the cove in the open ocean, so we turned back towards more protected waters. Julia was clearly adventurous and love to follow schools of fish while diving down pretty deep! I found an interesting rock formation about 15 feet down and had DeAnna take this movie of my SeaQuest adventure...


After a few hours, we got out and dried off. It was an exciting time and we were already looking forward to the next opportunity to go snorkeling, but we had other things to do!

Since we were already on the North Shore, we headed out to Camp Erdman where some of the TV show "Lost" is filmed so Julia could see the camp buildings! Julia was excited to see the very place where she'd watched the TV show characters play!

Grabbing lunch at our favourite McDonald's in Haleiwa, we headed back home for the hike up the Ka'iwa ridge in Lanikai. By now, the sun was out and hot, so we only hiked about 1/2 way up before deciding to head back home to get cleaned up for the arrival of Julia's friends, Brooke & Stefenie.

We drove through the airport in the late afternoon to pick up the girls and then headed over to the Wal-Mart again so they could pick out their reef shoes. Having secured the shoes, we stopped by the Pali Overlook on the way home and got in a couple of cold, windy pictures before making a quick stop by Kailua Beach before heading home for the evening.

Everyone was tired - especially Julia! Our plans were to start the next day early and continue with explorations along the southern coast!