Honeymoon Day 3: We Frolicked in the Autumn Mist in a Land Called Hanalei

This morning we woke up at the ass crack of dawn (aka 6am)... before the sunrise even!  We got serenaded by our lovely rooster alarm clock and decided to get an early start to the day.  We ventured out to one of the golf courses and had a lovely breakfast overlooking the golf course.  

We headed out to Princeville and Hanalei for shopping, sight seeing, and just generally killing time before our helicopter tour.  We stopped and saw some amazing beaches, drove through the Hanalei valley, stopped and put our feet in the ocean and took about a zillion pictures.  It started raining on us (with the lid of the jeep of, naturally), so we stopped and put the top back on and did some sussy shopping in Hanalei.  We got TractorBoy, Baby M, and the yet-to-be-born-or-named BoobieT baby matching tshirts/onesies.  The lady at the shop silk screened them all while we were there and we got to play with her adorable golden retriever, Jake.  We did lots of other sussy shopping and bought a plethora of magnets.  We ate lunch at Bubba's Burgers and it was DELICIOUS.  This island is filled with burger joints, and we're in heaven!  We had some more Shave Ice too... Yesterday's Shave Ice was better than todays, but bad Shave Ice, I think, is still wonderful.  

After lunch and shopping we still had a little time to kill, so we drove down to another beach that I can't remember how to spell right now.  We headed to the Princeville "airport" which was one runway and our helicopter sitting on the grass.  We were early so we had a lovely chat with the employees and got some great tips on beaches to go see and places to eat... How very Rachael Ray of us, right?  

When the other 2 couples got there (who were both from Maui believe it or not... one of them was on their honeymoon too, which is a theme of most of the travelers we run into), we got our safety talk and boarded the helicopter.   BigAC and I were in the front seat... I sat next to the pilot and had a birds eye view of everything!  We were the first Internet booking they'd had for the new Princeville location, so they greeted us with leis and gave us a complimentary copy of the DVD that was recorded of the whole flight... A big Mahalo to the Sunshine Tours folks!  They were rather awesome and we give them four very enthusiastic thumbs up.  Booking online served us well!  Anyway, words absolutely cannot express the amazingness of what we saw... we flew into a giant crater, flew through the Waimea Canyon that we went to yesterday, and flew around the Napali coast, which is unaccessible by vehicles.  There were amazing rainbows because it was rainy (kinda scary in a helicopter... which do not have windshield wipers in case you were wondering...) and it was just generally an awe-inspiring thing to do.  Everyone should see this at least once in their lifetime.

After the tour, we made the hour plus long drive back to our cottage.  We grabbed some to-go dinner from the restaurant on the cottage grounds and had dinner out on our patio.  I got a salad that had guava vinaigrette and BigAC got a grilled chicken sandwich with grilled pineapple on it.  How very Hawaiian of us, yes?

Now I'm about to fall asleep right here on the public lanai of the cottage grounds (only place with Internet connection available), so I'm not going to give you guys any fancy explanations or formatting on the fantastic photo's I'm going to post... So here ya go!  The last bunch are pics I took from the helicopter!  Wowee!

NNSTDLTBBB!  That is all, 

SBC