The word "haole" is a Hawaiian term used to describe a person who is not Hawaiian. Technically, it can refer to any non-islander, but more recently it has come to denote mainlanders, and particularly white mainlanders who are out of touch with Hawaiian culture. This is often meant to be derogatory, and the stereotype is the tourist in flip-flops and a Hawaiian shirt.

Anyway, that's exactly how I showed up to the airport.

Lookin' like a haole.

Jordan and I had found ourselves coming to the end of our lease. And since we were both working remotely, it seemed silly to try to find another one right away. We didn't have an office to be at or any obligation to stay in Colorado, even. So we came up with a plan. We'd go to Hawai'i.

The year before was the first time I'd ever gone. We went to Maui for a week to celebrate our friends' wedding, and it was amazing. The water was blue, blue, blue, and the sandy beaches stretched all the way up the Ka'anapali coast. There were volcanic hills off in the distance, and the whole island was thick with tropical vegetation. It was paradise.

We spent most of the week on the beach drinking Mai Thais, but toward the end, Jordan and I put down our souvenir pineapples long enough to sober up and drive the famous Road to Hana. And that day changed a nice time into an obsession.

We woke at four-thirty in the morning and jumped in our rental car. And we owned the road. We followed the snake of pavement through the dark and over all these old one-lane bridges while the world slept, and just as we reached the eastern-most point of the island, the sun began to rise over the Pacific. To our right, the trees and thickets sprouted from the volcanic soil, and to our left, a sheer two-hundred-foot drop led to the wide sapphire ocean. And the rays of gold sparkled off the waves.

And when we reached Hana, we found this sleepy little village with a gas station and a high school, and a bunch of regular houses with driveways and basketball hoops and bikes in the yards. Where children grew up in Eden.

As we walked, we listened to the wind brush the palms and flowers around us, and I shook my head. This was not the resort. This was not Forgetting Sarah Marshall. This was some other Hawai'i I didn't know about. This was some other world. Where people lived and worked. They operated gas stations or they went to high school. For us, this was some magical far-off destination, and for them it was home. I couldn't shake that thought.

For them it's home. How different. How strange. We drove back down the road from Hana that afternoon, and we joined our friends again in the sand and the sun, and then we went back to our own planet. Denver.

By the side of the Road to Hana, February, 2020.

But a year and a half later, as we sat in our soon-to-be-vacated apartment in Golden, we thought of that day in Hana, and we discussed how different it would be to go to Hawai'i long enough for it to feel like our home. Like our normal. And since that day in Hana, the pandemic had happened, and we were both working remotely. So we thought we'd go.

The island we knew we had to see was Kaua'i. That was the one everyone told us about. So we looked to see what an AirBnB would cost if we wanted to stay for a month.

"Owwwwwwwww," I said, and I curled up on the floor. The number of months we could reasonably afford on Kaua'i was zero. We decided to splurge on one.

But we needed a cheaper place for the other month. Hilo, on the Island of Hawai'i (the Big Island) turned out to be that cheaper place. An AirBnB for a month cost about the same as a month of rent for our place in Golden.

So we were booked. We flew to L.A. on 31 August, and on 1 September, I put on my Hawaiian shirt (haole costume), and we flew to the Big Island.

For those who aren't familiar with the Big Island, here's a little run-down. It's called the Big Island because calling it by its actual name, Hawai'i, can get confusing. It's the biggest and youngest of the five main Hawai'ian islands. It is the location of Volcanoes national park, which is home to Kilauea and part of Mauna Loa, probably the most famous of the Hawai'ian volcanoes. With a population of about 200,000, it has way fewer people than Oahu, home to Honolulu, which has more like a million people.

There are two main towns. On the west coast is Kailua-Kona, which is where anybody coming to the Big Island for vacation would stay. It has all the resorts and tourist stuff, shops along the water, that sort of thing. On the east coast is Hilo, where actual Hawaiians just live their lives. There's a university there (the University of Hawai'i at Hilo), a farmer's market, several car dealerships, and a bitchin' view of Mauna Kea, which is a fourteen-thousand-foot dormant volcano that sometimes gets snow at the top, from the bay. It has no major resorts or real tourist attractions. Of course, I had done no research, and I knew none of these things.

Which is why Jordan and I stuck out so much when we walked out of Hilo International Airport with our five suitcases and my Hawaiian shirt. This was not the vibe. Our Uber driver, Greg, let us know.

"You moving here? Why do you have so many suitcases?"

"As a matter of fact, we are moving here. Thanks for asking," I told him. "At least for a month."

Greg was not excited that we were there. He was Hawaiian, born and raised there in Hilo, and he was annoyed that we had the audacity to try and fit five suitcases into his Chevy Malibu. The ten-minute drive from the airport to Waiakea Villas was not comfortable, but Greg gradually wore down, and he gave us a few recommendations around town and around the island. I considered it a win.

But then there was the matter of the apartment complex where he'd dropped us. It looked kind of run-down and janky. There were a bunch of contractors running around refinishing apartments, which I supposed was a good indication, but when we reached our room, we saw a sign on the inside of the door that said "For your safety, please lock and chain this door." And when we stepped out onto the patio (or "lanai", as they called it in the AirBnB description), we found pry marks on the outside of the sliding glass door, like someone had tried to jimmy the door open. No, this was not Sarah Marshall.

We Door Dashed some flavorless tacos and spent that evening locked in the room trying to convince each other we hadn't made a huge mistake coming here. Maybe we were resort people after all. First Greg, and now the apartment complex. Maybe Hawai'i didn't want us here.

I spent that night tossing and turning. I expected someone to try to pry the door open any time. We were going to be here a whole month.

But it's funny the energy the morning brings. We managed to make it through the night without being murdered, and we woke up at five a.m. to start working. Five to one, those were our business hours. And instead of thinking about pry marks, I started thinking about the Keyword out of Vocab project. And one p.m. brought with it the end of our work day, and the sun shone on all the tropical plants outside the sliding glass doors, and ducks waddled around the little pond off the lanai, and we wondered if we oughtn't venture forth from our cave and see the world outside.

Quack.

Our apartment complex backed up to the Wailoa River State Recreation Area, which was this gorgeous park with these arched bridges over the crystal clear water of the Wailoa River.  Following the path north across the street took us to Bayfront Park, and we sat for a while on the black sand, and we stared out at Hilo Harbor and the break wall.  Then we followed the sidewalk east and then north up to Coconut Island, where Hawai'ian kids leapt off this tall stone platform into the water.  And we made our way south through the Liliuokalani gardens, where we saw trees and flowers and stone bird baths, and we saw families with children playing in the grass.  And we passed the boat ramps on our way back, and when we closed and chained the door of our apartment, all our stuff was still there, and we felt ten percent more comfortable.  Comfortable enough for a Target run, we decided.  Our anxiety was nothing a few La Croixs couldn't fix.

And in the days that followed, we got our feet under us a little more. We spent labor day paddling a kayak around the breathtaking Hilo Harbor. For Jordan's birthday, we took a boat tour along the shore. And I made a pact with myself that I would swim in the Pacific every day I was in Hawai'i. We started to find better food. We opened up. Hilo was a different place. We couldn't live there the same way we were used to living.

We got a white pineapple at the farmer's market and ate it all in one sitting, and there was so much acid we couldn't taste properly for days. We tried lychee berries and fingerling bananas (they tasted like bananas. Feel free to skip these if you're visiting Hawai'i.). We found a fish market that had the freshest ahi (we haoles call it tuna, but we didn't hear it called that once in Hawai'i) I've ever tasted. I ate so much amazing poke I thought I'd sprout fins. And I downed a Loco Moco the size of my head.

Poke from Suisan Fish Market.

That first week or so was special, because we didn't have a car. Hilo, like the parts of Hawai'i I've been in general, is not very walkable. Really you need a car to get around. But since we didn't have one, we naturally became familiar with the spots within walking distance of the apartment. Suisan Fish Market at the mouth of the Wailoa River became my favorite spot to grab fish or poke. Jordan became partial to the acai place behind the Villas. I ran in the park every day, and I made it a habit to jump off the stone platform at Coconut Island.

And then we got the truck, and we took it up to Volcanoes National Park, which is only thirty minutes from Hilo. We walked a four-mile loop around and through a crater covered with hardened lava, and when we got back to the truck, I asked Jordan to marry me. She said she would. We spent the rest of our day driving the road that runs from the top of Kilauea all the way down to the sea. We stopped every few minutes to take in the view of these fields of lava rock ending in cliffs that drop down into the Pacific. We even saw a turtle when we reached the water.

Engaged on the rim of Kilauea.

And as our time carried on, we collected our adventures. We saw a thousand brilliant stars from the top of Mauna Kea at three in the morning. We walked barefoot on the black sand beach at Kohala Forest Reserve, and then we watched a rainbow split the sky as we drove down to Waimea on the way back. We took a weekend trip to Kona, where we swam next to fourteen-foot manta rays and drank coffee from the side of the pool at Heavenly Hawaiian Kona Coffee Farm. We sat under an umbrella and looked down the hill over the endless Pacific, and we talked about life.

But maybe just as special was the "normal" world we settled into. My daily swims at Richardson Bay Park. Our favorite Thai place. My runs past the statue of Kamehameha the Great and across the arched bridges that cross the Wailoa River. Our walks through downtown Hilo. The ducks in the koi pond behind the lanai. By day we worked, and then we went out and got into an adventure. By night, we ate dinner and watched Only Murders in the Building or Bachelor in Paradise.

I bought an ukulele (that's how the guy pronounced it. Oo-kulele) at the music store around the corner, and I learned my first tune. "Somethings Rattling" by Ben Gibbard. Then I got bored with that so I started learning "While My Ukulele Gently Weeps" by Jake Shimabukuro, and that kept me busy.

And then it had been a month. Our last adventure was an ATV tour through some old farm land that ended us up by a lookout over a water fall. Our whole group stared in silence for a minute as we watched it tumble. And then Jordan and I went home to pack.

Scenes from our Big Island ATV tour.

On our last night, I took the truck to Target while Jordan stayed behind and packed. I was in the aisle grabbing Ziploc bags when I heard a loud phone conversation behind me.

"What?" This old man yelled into his phone.

"I said I saw on the news that that volcano...it's erupting!" yelled a woman's voice through the speaker.

"What?"

"I said that the volcano is erupting!"

"What?"

But I didn't stick around to hear the rest. I told Jordan when I got home.

"Are you serious?" she said. "We have to go."

"Right now?"

"Yes! How many times are we going to get to see a volcano erupt?"

"I don't know. Seven?"

"Let's go!"

"Okay. Let's go."

We checked the news, and, sure enough, Kilauea was erupting.

So we drove the Nissan Frontier through the dark and rainy night up to the national park to see. We followed the line of cars the police were waving through to the parking lot next to the caldera, and we stood on the rim of the volcano and watched the glow off in the distance.

I'll be honest. I really thought we were going to see some lava. That didn't happen. The flow was way down in the caldera, which has multiple tiers, so you can't see down to the bottom. What we could see was a bunch of steam billowing (only steam or smoke can "billow" right? Kind of a lazy word, but that's what it was doing.) from the edge of the rim, and we could see the red glow engulf the cloudy sky. We got some cool pictures. It would have been cooler if we had seen some lava, but if we had, that would have meant the eruption had been a much bigger problem than it was. Oh well.

Jordan in front of an erupting Mount Kilauea.

And that was it. We went home, and we packed our things. We said goodbye to our little apartment, and our patio, and our ducks, and we drove over to the Hilo International Airport to fly to Lihue (lee-HOO-ee) on Kaua'i.

We took our seats on the tiny plane, and we flew off over the ocean, and over Maui (I thought I could just make out the road to Hana, but I couldn't be sure), and over Oahu, and we landed at Lihue International Airport, which, like all three other airports I'd been in Hawai'i, was open-air. But this time, I wasn't wearing a Hawaiian shirt.

We didn't quite feel as much like tourists this time around. We'd been a month in Hilo, and we'd developed a routine. No longer did I see Hawai'i as I had for that week in Maui. Now it was a place where I had lived. It had become "normal", and I thought I had a bit of a better pulse on the place. But Kaua'i was a different beast.

Like the Big Island, the towns in Kaua'i are on the coast.  But it's a much older island.  Its volcanoes are no longer active, and much of it has eroded into the sea, so it's much smaller.  It's much less populous as well, only 70,000 people, which is less than half as many as live on the Big Island.  And its beaches are sand, not rock, and they're golden, not black.

The vibe in Kapa'a was as different from our spot in Hilo as it could be.  For one, we could look out our window and see the ocean.  For another, it's full of tourists.  Everyone you meet is on vacation from either California or Seattle.  And most of the people working at the shops and restaurants are Hawai'ian, but many are mainlanders who came out to Kaua'i and never left.

Because it's paradise. The whole place has this spiritual energy that the people there cherish. It's so small that many of the locals you meet know each other, even if you meet them on different parts of the island. But they all revere the land, and they talk about it like it's alive. The Hawai'ians believe that the spirits of their ancestors live in the hills, and that their blood is part of the soil. And they have scratched and dug over the past two centuries to prevent development on this precious earth. So large resorts and amenities are sparse. It's mostly small businesses, little shops and restaurants, etc. And huge stretches of privately-owned land that could literally sell for billions of dollars but that are protected against development only by the word of the owners.

Most of the people live in an area that encompasses the north, east, and south shores. The western shore is dominated by the Waimea Canyon National Park and its famous Na'Pali Coast line. On the north shore is Hanalei and Princeville. Kapa'a and Lihue live on the east shore, and to the south is Poipu, and these were the towns where we spent most of our time. Kapa'a ended up being a pretty good central location. Forty-five minutes south took us to Poipu, and forty-five minutes north could get us to Hanalei.

Hanalei. If there's a more beautiful beach on this earth than the two-mile stretch at Hanalei Bay, I've never seen it. The thick green volcanic mountains surround the crescent-shaped shoreline, and it's magic. You can look behind you and see waterfalls spraying down the sides of the ancient formations, and then you turn your head and see the waves coming in from the bay. Waves a mile long, protected by the arms of the island that shelter the beach, so regular and steady. When we first came to Hanalei Bay in early October, the water was glass. I saw some surfers down the beach and wondered aloud to Jordan exactly what it was they were trying to surf. But by the end of October, before we left, the waves had become monsters. Standing in the water, I took a thrashing like I'd never gotten from the beaches in the Southern United States. So much power and energy. It was humbling.

Our first of many trips to Hanalei Bay.

The town itself is a few little shops and restaurants and a church and then the vacation houses of deca-millionaires who probably spend one or two weeks a year there. And the rest of the time they sit empty. Zuckerberg's got a little spot on the north shore. And Pierce Brosnan. Julia Roberts. When you look up at these homes of the uber-wealthy, you can understand a little of the local sentiment toward the haoles. People born on Kaua'i, whose family may have lived there for generations, are getting priced out while James Bond's mansion towers over Haena Beach. And he's not even home.

But all the shores in Hawai'i are public land, so even the houses on Hanalei Bay itself are back from the water. They can't own the sand. So it's free for use by the surfers and the upper crust alike. The drifters and the school children and the haoles are all free to dip their toes in the water. Hanalei Bay is for everyone.

And just like on the Big Island, we found our feet, and we began to venture forth. We took a kayak tour down the Wailua River to the Secret Falls, where dozens of visitors just like us dove and swam and sat on the rocks. We took surf lessons down at Poipu Beach with Jamie from Endless Summer Surf School Kauai. We hiked Nounou, the Sleeping Giant, and we gazed off over Kapa'a to the east and the lush mountains to the west. We swam in the ocean. We ate fish tacos and kalua pork.

Hiking Nounou, The Sleeping Giant!

And we took a catamaran to the Na Pali coast, which would be the first of five trips out there. Three by sea, one by land, and one by helicopter.

The northwestern shore of Kaua'i is all steep mountains and cliffs. The Na Pali coast, it's called, and it runs for miles. Two thousand feet tall in spots and full of caves and canyons and secluded beaches that disappear in the winter swell. It's sacred to the Hawai'ians. Our guides told us stories of ancient villages built right on the sides of these cliffs, where lived expert rope makers and mountaineers. Sometimes they would have to scale rock walls hundreds of feet high to trade with each other. To have contact of any kind outside their little villages.

Through eleven miles of the Na Pali cliffs runs the Kalalau trail, from Ke'e beach to Kalalau beach. One of the most beautiful and dangerous hikes in the world, the final four miles or so headed westward wind through sheer rock faces that drop hundreds of feet straight down off the edge of the island. One famous section is called Crawler's Ledge, where the trail itself only sticks out a few feet from the rock wall, and a fall would be fatal. It gets its name from the many people who have literally crawled it on all fours to make it through.

But your reward for finishing the hike is the Kalalau Valley, the most beautiful place on earth. We saw it from a distance. There's a beach and a waterfall, and the canyon is full of bright trees which bear fruit you can eat right off the branches. It's said to be spiritual. Jordan and I didn't get a chance to walk the Kalalau Trail. But one day, we hope to come back.

The Cathedrals, the worn, rocky cliffs rising from Kalalau Beach, as seen from the ocean. This was our fifth and final trip to the Na Pali Coast. My hair is wet because I've just gotten done swimming in the ocean in -- maybe? -- the most beautiful spot on earth. Scope the waterfall in the distance past my left ear. When we passed by earlier, some jabroni had tried climbing it, fallen, and suffered a bad head wound. And no one had a radio. Fortunately, they were able to wave us down from shore, and our captain was able to call for help. They coached us that from Kalalau Beach, under the best conditions, you're two hours away from medical care, since the hospital is a forty-five minute helicopter flight. This morning was a bit of a meditation on the awesome beauty of Mother Nature and the awesome frailty of the human body.

The theme of stuff growing comes up again and again across Kaua'i. We had guides tell us that anywhere between sixty and eighty percent of the plant life on the island is non-native. The climate is so supportive of life that anything can live there. Including wild chickens that run around on the sides of the roads and underneath the picnic tables. Between the rocks at the Secret Falls. Including the albizia trees, imported from Africa, where the soil is dry, and the roots have to dig deep to find water. On Kaua'i, the albizia roots find water just below the surface, so they spread shallow and wide, and the trees blow over in the wind and take other plants with them. So someone has had the idea to log the albizias and burn them for renewable energy.

Halfway through our time in Kaua'i, Jordan's parents came and stayed with us. They rented a Mustang convertible, and we drove around the island with the top down. We took them to all our favorite spots. Hanalei. The Na Pali coast. Poipu. And we discovered some new favorites with them. We spent a day in Waimea Canyon State Park, where we could look down on the Kalalau Valley from the land this time. We inner tubed the irrigation ditches of an old sugar plantation. We tried JoJo's Shave Ice, which, if you get one takeaway from this piece, it should be to eat the shave ice if you're in Hawai'i ("shave" ice, not "shaved" ice). We waited until our last two weeks, and we could have had it the whole time. It seemed like a stupid concept. Who cares about a snow cone? It's not a snow cone. Just do it.

And just like it had on the Big Island, our time in Kaua'i was winding down. We spent a day surfing in Hanalei with Jackson and Bria, and then we were on our last week. A few days later, we hopped in a helicopter (I kept saying, "Get to the choppaaaaaah!" the whole drive there. It was hilarious), and we went up over the island that had come to feel like home. We started over Lihue, and we looked down over an ancient fish pond at the mouth of the river where they shot the plane scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark. Then we flew up toward Waimea Canyon and passed over the famous waterfall from Jurassic Park, and we flew out over the state park and past the Na Pali coast and hovered over the Pacific. Then we flew into the Valley of the Kings and Kalalau Valley before we continued east over Ke'e and Haena (and we looked down on Pierce Brosnan's house. He wasn't home.), and then we passed over Hanalei Bay, the giant crescent beach with the hills and forest around it. And then we turned toward the middle of the island and flew all the way to the crater wall of Mount Waialeale (vai-AH-lay-AH-lay), which, we were told, holds the record for most rainfall in a year of any spot on earth. It was breathtaking. We watched the ropey waterfalls drift down the smooth rock face for a few minutes, and then we turned back toward Lihue. As a last little treat, we passed over Kapa'a and Nounou on our way south. It was the perfect way to get a good look at the whole island before we had to say goodbye.

Hanalei Bay from the chopaaaaaah.

Jordan's parents flew back to the mainland on Thursday. And our flight left Sunday, and then our Hawai'ian adventure would come to a close. But first was the luau.

A little background about the luau. I thought of it as just about the most haole thing you could do. At the airport in L.A. on our way out, we had been waiting in the COVID clearance line when the lady behind us told us in a worried tone that they were canceling luaus.

"Well then, why even go?" I had asked.

But the one we went to changed that perspective. To begin, it took place in this beautiful botanical garden next to the Wailua River. We spent the hour before dinner wandering around and looking at all the plants and flowers and talking about life and our future together. Then we ate the most delicious kalua pork (I finally learned to dip it in the poi--marvelous!) while two old Hawai'ian men serenaded the crowd with their songs about Hawai'i. Then it was time for the show, and it was much cooler than I expected. All the dancers and performers were Hawai'ian, and the music was played live by a band. And of course they had the guy who spun fire. This was the first time I had worn my Hawaiian shirt since the Uber ride with Greg on our first day, and it seemed fitting. The idea. Definitely not the shirt.

Pre-luau selfie in the botanical gardens. I'm wearing a handmade necklace of tiny shells they put around my neck when we walked in.

And our final activity the day before we left was our third boat trip to the Na Pali coast. But this one was a much smaller boat. It was faster and more maneuverable, and we were able to get much closer to the coast itself.  Our captain even steered us into some of the caves on the shore, and it was a way better experience than the catamaran.  On the way back, he cut the engine right off the Cathedrals, which are these huge rock formations right next to Kalalau Valley, and he let us jump in. So we spent our last morning in Hawai'i swimming in the crystal ocean in front of the coolest part of the Na Pali coast. Not a bad way to end things, if you ask me.

The next day we sat on the lanai and looked out over the ocean. Our stuff was packed, and the condo was back to the generic empty rental it had been when we had first walked in a month before. Before we threw our things all over it and made it ours for that short while.

The wind bent the palm trees, and the sun sparkled off the sea spray. And we reminisced about our time there. About how lucky we were to have the season of life that allowed us to do something like that. And how excited we were for the things coming next. November with Jordan's family in Kansas. December with my family in North Carolina. And then our move to Utah in January. And then we loaded up the Mustang, and we pulled out of the Plantation Hale Suites, and we turned left onto the road that leads south toward Lihue.

We had done what we came to do. We had found our own "normal" in Hawai'i. It strikes me as funny that the movies that most made me think of the islands before our time out there were Moana and Forgetting Sarah Marshall. I watched them on repeat leading up to our trip. Now they don't really fit my experience. Hawai'i isn't a resort anymore. Nor is it this ancient Polynesian culture. It's alive. It breathes.

And I don't know when we're going to go back. I'd really like to do the Kalalau Trail. And I'd trade much of what I have for another one of those poke plates from Suisan Fish Market. And of course I'd never forget another day of surfing in Hanalei Bay. But nothing ties us to Hawai'i. Nothing will bring us back. We'd have to make it happen. But when are we ever going to have the freedom to spend two months out there? A lot of things had to come together to give us that opportunity. And part of me thinks that if we come back for a week every few years, we'll always just be chasing those two months. And even if we did decide to make the sacrifice and spend a longer time out there, we've already done it. Maybe we should go somewhere we haven't. Time is all we have in this life.

But that's why those sixty-one days mean so much. We'll always have those frozen moments when we were young and life was simple. We'll always have that day at the Heavenly Hawaiian Kona Coffee Farm where we looked out over the infinite ocean and dreamed about the future. And maybe all we really take with us are the pictures and the memories. And the taste of the salt air. But it was all our haole hearts could have hoped for.

Big Island Pictures:

Our first glimpses of the Big Island as we descended into Hilo.

Black sand on the shores of Hilo Bay.

Labor Day kayak trip around the bay.

Flipping out over Jordan's birthday boat tour.

Walking across a field of lava. Mere minutes before we got engaged.

Where the lava meets the sea. It was windy

The stars over Mauna Kea. This was not taken with an iPhone but rather by a guy who knew what he was doing. We had to meet there at three in the morning to get this shot. I've never seen so many stars.

Kohala Forest Reserve, near the northern tip of the Big Island.

View of Mauna Kea from the park behind our apartment complex. On a really clear day (bottom), you can see the three observatories at the top of the mountain.

The view from the top of Heavenly Hawaiian Kona Coffee farm from our vacation-within-a-vacation to Kailua-Kona.

Selfie from our ATV excursion.

One last swim at Richardson Bay Park. It's out past the tsunami break wall (read about the Hilo tsunamis here), which is a big deal to the locals, because it means the water is fresher, or something.

My eruption portrait (R.I.P. Eddie Van Halen) from our last night on the Big Island. On to Kauai!

Kauai Pictures:

View from the air as we descend into Lihue.

Not-So-Secret Falls near Kapa'a.

Portrait of a wild chicken, Kapa'a.

That double rainbow, tho.

First time seeing the Cathedrals and Kalalau Beach.

Hanalei after the rain.

Hanalei sunsets with Jackson and Bria.

Looking down from the top of Kalalau Valley, along with Jordan's parents. The Cathedrals would be off-camera to the left.

Kalalau Valley pano.

We got to the choppaaah!

All the green, lush land is privately owned by the Robinson family. In the 1860s, the Robinsons bought large portions of Kaua'i (including the whole island of Ni'ihau) from the Hawai'ian king, Kamehameha V, for next to nothing, with the supposed handshake deal that the Robinsons would never develop the land. True to their word, this land, which would easily fetch billions of dollars (maybe even tens of billions?), has stayed undeveloped. The people of Kaua'i revere the land, and many resent its commercialization. For this reason, the Robinson name has earned respect around the island.

Fun fact: The waterfall from Jurassic Park (not pictured) is just below and to the right of the helicopter.

View from inside one of the rocky coves along the Na Pali coast. This was our last morning in Kaua'i.

One last Hanalei sunset to send us home. We got some cool engagement photos and then took this selfie. What an adventure.