road trip

What do you do on an island when you want to "get away"? You go on a road trip. There is no need for maps on this kind of a road trip. No need to pack your bags...because there is one road that goes around the island and it only takes about 2 1/2 hours to travel the whole thing. So today we decided we needed some good family time and we headed up to the North Shore. As you can see in the video Ethan and Jude had no idea what a road trip was but they humored their mom anyway by saying "Woo-hoo!". About 15 minutes from home Ethan then told us "wow, we are so far from home"....poor kid, he doesn't even know what a real road trip is.

We loaded up with drinks at the local 7 Eleven (a Harris tradition for road trips...except it's usually a QT stop) and we were on our way. Our first of many stops along the way...because someone had to keep stopping to use the restroom (I won't name any names except that it involves a baby kicking someones bladder)....was Chinaman's hat. Across the street are some ancient ruins...okay maybe not ancient, but they're from an old sugar mill in the late 1800's and pretty cool to see.

We then made our way to Shark's Cove (you should have seen how big Ethan's eyes got when I told him that's where we were going) to do a little bit of swimming and exploring. They have great tide pools which make it so kid friendly...if it weren't for all the rocks everywhere. This is why water shoes were invented. Jason took the boys out to go explore the "cave" on the other side while I hung back and watched the fish swim around my feet.

I also had fun taking shadow silhouette shots of my prego belly.Then we spent the rest of the time collecting cool rocks and shells before we packed up for lunch.Our next stop was historic Halewia Town (a.k.a tourist trap) and had burgers at the Kua Aina...the best avocado/cheese burgers around.

You can't go to the North Shore without stopping to get a Shave Ice, so we of course had to stop and get one of those too. Ethan thought it was great after I explained to him it was kind of like eating snow. (side-story: the other day I made a comment about how I love Hawaii and Ethan said "yeah, except there isn't snow in Hawaii")

And to top off our road trip adventure we stopped at a road side stand to get some fresh pineapple, which we snacked on all the way home...since it was only about 45 minutes away. Yes, this is the road side stand we bought it from but....

it's fairly normal to stop at a run-down truck (or shack) on the side of the road, here in lovely paradise, to get a bite to eat....such as this "shrimp out of a truck". So see it's not so weird.I forgot how fun road trips were.