Laura Gentry

Here come the hotstepper, originally uploaded by gentrypics.

This is a photo of what has been my daily alarm clock. Every morning at 8:30, one of the island’s million roosters crows and wakes me up in time for breakfast.

This particular rooster was at the top of Waimea Canyon, our big sightseeing adventure of the day. There was a high wind advisory in effect and we we nearly blown into the canyon. I didn’t get any interesting photos of the canyon that you couldn’t see by looking at any tourism site. But I had my wits about me enough to snap a shot of what has been an elusive subject. I think roosters are camera shy.

The other elusive bit of vacation goodness has been my pineapple drink. I was excited by Bill’s Googling find, but we had a long dinner with all of our traveling companions and I missed out on the opportunity to make it to Kapa’a. Mark my words, Hawaii — you will serve me a pineapple drink next year!

In the meantime, I have almost three hours in the Honolulu airport tomorrow morning, so I may try and find an airport bar that will serve me one.

So sad: No pineapple drinks, originally uploaded by gentrypics.

This is my sad pose representative of my feelings after learning the hotel no longer serves beverages in pineapples. That was my one goal this week — to drink out of a pineapple — and, so far, no luck. Today, it was even on the menu, but when I ordered from our cabana waitress, she gave me a look of confusion and came back a few minutes later with the bad news.

So I have one more day to find a pineapple drink. If I can’t find one, I’ll just die!! It’s pretty great when your greatest current concern is that you can’t drink alcohol out of a piece of fruit.

We spent all day in this wooden plank with a green cover and it was actually a pretty good deal. For 35 bucks a day, you get your own private space and a waitress at your beck and call (You cue her with an orange flag. It’s pretty funny). You can’t bring the lounge chairs onto the sand, so this is the only other option for comfortable seating on the beach. And the shade it offered came in very handy when my shoulders started boiling off.

Na Pali Coast, originally uploaded by gentrypics.

We visited the Napali Coast yesterday on the northern shore of the island. It was very beautiful, but the waves were very frightening. I was standing about 30 feet from the water when this wave landed right in front of me. So I decided to step back further. There was no way I was going to let the ocean sweep me away.

There was also a pretty stunning cave that seemed to go on forever, but I wasn’t about to find out how far back it actually went. I don’t think I got a discernable photo of the cave because… well YOU try taking a picture of a dark cave.

On the rocks, originally uploaded by gentrypics.

Since I missed yesterday’s Photo of the Day, I’ll post two today. I took a break for the federal holiday.

This is taken from the rocks on the shore near our hotel room. Shortly after this photo was taken, Alaina had an “incident” and scraped up her “party shorts” that she had just purchased earlier in the day as a replacement to her other “party shorts” that she busted while we wandered KMart.

She, and the new party shorts, are okay thankfully.