North Shore - Day 7 in Hawaii

We left the house around 9:00 and headed for the North Shore. This was one of the things I was looking forward to the most. I really wanted to see the big waves, 30-40 feet, that the North Shore is known for during the winter. We took this beautiful drive on the H-3 through long tunnels through the mountains.


We made a quick stop at the Dole Pineapple Plantation where they had everything, and I mean everything, pineapple! Amber took these cool pictures of the pineapple plants. We didn't go on the tour, just into the visitor's center.




Our first stop on the North Shore was Turtle Beach. Tyler says that turtles are usually lined up along this beach and he's seen 10 to 15 turtles at a time here.


This was not our day for turtles apparently as all we could come up with was this one lone turtle and he wasn't easy to get to.



Since we weren't having much luck with the turtles, we decided to head on up to Waimea Beach which is known for the really big waves and surf contests during the winter. Here's what it looked like!



Flat as a lake! Unbelieveable! What was going on? First no turtles, then no waves?? The beach was nice and the weather was good but I have to admit, it was very disappointing not to see the big waves. Tyler and Scott snorkeled for a little while but there wasn't much out there.
Finally we noticed some people jumping off this huge rock. So I guess that was one positive thing about no waves. If there had been waves then Tyler, Scott, Amber and Howard wouldn't have been able to do this!




After a couple hours on the beach and a few jumps off the rock, we decided to start looking for lunch. We had read (and heard) about these famous shrimp trucks on the North Shore as being THE place to stop for lunch. We finally found one and after a 45 minute wait we had our shrimp. Amber, Tyler and Scott don't eat shrimp so they went down the road for burgers, ate lunch, looked around a little, came back to where we were and we still hadn't received our shrimp. I'm not saying I'm sorry we stopped and ate shrimp but I wouldn't necessarilly do it again. It was ok but it's just shrimp. It was good and messy though!


After lunch we headed down the north side of the island and stopped at Chinaman's Hat again. It was just so beautiful there.


These cute little birds were all over the parking lot. The red was so vivid.


Eventhough we didn't get to see turtles or big waves we still had a great day full of new experiences. Scott and Amber both got to cross off another experience, the cliff jumping.
We headed for home, cooked a great spaghetti dinner and decided we should go to bed early as we had to be up early the next day and leave the house by 7:30!