Jungle Hiking

On Saturday Heather invited us to go on a hike with her, her boys, and her dad over on the other side of the island, in the Koolau mountains. Brian had a work project that required his attention that day, so the kids and I headed over with long pants, bug spray, and snacks in hand. Here we are at the beginning of the hiking trip, which started out on the old Pali Road.


This was a great area to start a hiking trip because it's just an old paved road in the beginning, which allowed the kids to walk on their own for awhile, burning a bunch of energy out of their systems before we hit the jungle trail. Charley decided to give Zander a helping hand . . .

After hiking up the road a ways, we hit a narrow trail through the jungle, so at this point I strapped Zander into the backpack while Charley hit the trail on her own with Heather's boys. Charley did amazingly well, thanks much in part to the help of Heather and her dad who volunteered for a whole lot of hand holding and supervising of Charley. After hiking up the trail for a little while, we decided to take a quick water and snack break. Heather's dad, a/ka/ Papa Steve, brought some yummy chocolate, which everybody thoroughly enjoyed (look closely for the chocolate mustache/beards going on).


Despite all our months of being here, I think this is the first picture that Heather and I have taken together because we are always taking pictures of our kids.

Zander decided to take a little snooze on my back . . .

We finally made it to our destination, a beautiful waterfall buried deep in the jungle. This was the kids' first peek at a waterfall, and Charley enjoyed it very much while Zander slept right through it.

Here, Papa Steve is helping Charley climb a steep rock slope using a handy rope that was already there.

Heather was less than thrilled that I kept taking pictures of her. I told her I wouldn't post these on the blog, but I couldn't help it (sorry Heather!) because I never get to post pictures of her since we never have any.

The moms and the kids . . .

Charley's dream come true . . . an opportunity to swing from a REAL vine in the jungle, just like Dora and Diego, with some help from Papa Steve of course.


After we made it back to the car, we decided to have a little lunch before we headed home.


Everyone had a great time, and it was good to see some of Charley's mountain blood running through her . . . gotta make sure to keep her in touch with some of those redneck roots. :)