a little help?

A good friend of ours is getting married on Thursday and we are drawing a serious blank on a wedding gift --don't worry, I'm POSITIVE he doesn't read our blog :)--! They are registered at BBB, but I wasn't excited about anything that wasn't already purchased for them. So, if you would be ever so kind as to share your favorite wedding gift, that you received, or that you love to give (and please keep it clean! :) ) it would really help us out!

The Garden Isle

Nate and I got the chance to go with our good friends, the Wegeners, to Kaua'i!! It was a pretty short trip, but so so fun! We pulled out on Wednesday (August 25) morning at 8:30am to head down to the airport. After about 6-7 hours if travel time, and a four hour time gain, we got to Hawaii early Wednesday evening. That night we grabbed dinner and did a little grocery shopping, not recommended, everything was SO expensive! Then back to the hotel and to bed.

Thursday we went to a place our friends had recommended, Kipu Falls. We had to walk through a field like this:

...to get to a really pretty waterfall. There wasn't really a safe way to take the camera down by the water to get a photo of the waterfall though.

There was a sweet rope swing; here is Andy... mid-swing!
And we all took a couple turns cliff jumping off the side of the waterfall into the pool (for lack of a better word).After Kipu Falls we took a drive to the south-west side of the island to a beach my parents recommended, Barking Sands. There was probably 8-10 miles of beauiful beach with about 6 other groups on the whole thing, it was beautiful!

We all did some body surfing, I was terrible at it... It felt so good to get some much needed sun!

Thursday evening we drove back around the island to the north side where we camped just off the beach, it was an awesome spot! It did rain quite a bit while we were there and there were about 3 roosters that made sure we were all up by about 6:30 am, but we loved it anyway!

Friday morning we hiked part of the Na pali shoreline trail, we had wanted to backpack the whole thing (11 miles each way), but that weekend there just happened to be a goat hunt... so we just hiked what was still open and then up to a beautiful waterfall instead (total was about 8 miles). Didn't even see one goat either...

It was such a pretty view from the trail, after the hike we did a little snorkling on the reef you can see in this picture.

Hanakapia beach is claimed to be very dangerous due to strong currents. We counted 82 supposed deaths accounted for on the sign...

Still pretty though

The falls...

the locals...fishing

Steep trail back

I have no idea why this humongous sign was necessary... maybe it is because of the rain...

Na pali coast. Within seconds the view would change due to the clouds

Waimea Falls. Reminded us of Havasupai.

Thanks Hawaii for including Kauai in your islands -nate