For those of you who did not know, Heath and I were able to take a trip to Hawaii. Yep, I said Hawaii. The Hokes, who never vacation and only take volleyball trips, were able to go to Hawaii. I guess, however, this was technically a volleyball trip. Heath was the lucky one to go to Hawaii to do the USAV High Performance tryouts there.
When he and I sat down to look at his 2009 tryout schedule, I was very sad that the Hawaii tryout fell on a weekend that I would have to coach. I really had settled on the fact that I would not be able to go along with Heath. At a practice I was telling this to the coach of our Stellar 14 Regional team and she said--you should go, I will coach your team. I was amazed by her generosity and accepted her offer. It wasn't easy for me to make the decision to leave my team, but I made arrangements for the team and they were more than fine without me. My sister and her family made the trip from Iowa to stay with Layne. It was so wonderful of them to come out and help us out--unfortunately their trip was not the best and that is an entire blog in itself.
I took lots of photos and plan to give you a day by day account of our trip. I also highly recommend that everyone take a trip to Hawaii--it is as beautiful as you would expect.
Our trip took us to the island of Oahu which is where the city of Honolulu and Waikiki Beach is located. Heath knows many great coaches there and their hospitality was truly amazing. I will introduce you to them and all the wonderful things they did for us during our trip throughout the next few blogs.
To begin, you have to get to Hawaii and our trip out took us through San Fransisco--it was 3 hours to San Fran and 5.5 hours to Hawaii. I guess the headwinds were very strong. The plane from San Fran to Hawaii was huge--9 seats across, two five and two, we luckily got the two on the side. I can't imagine being in the middle of the 5 seat section. I fully understand where the islands of Hawaii are located, but to look out the window and only see water for 5 hours is just a little bit freaky. To finally see the island was exciting.
When they say "Welcome to Hawaii" they truly mean it--everyone is so nice and I really did feel welcome.
We decided to go with the red Jeep Wrangler--I guess it was a cheesy touristy thing for us to do, but it was fun anyway.
Our first meal in Hawaii was seriously at Big Boy!! We were met there by Debbie, Natalie and David. The restaurant had an entire section of Hawaiian meal choices and we went with the Pork and Cabbage (Kalua Pork) plate. It was the second best meal we had.
I mentioned Hawaiian hospitality, and it all began with our accommodations. Debbie Yee is the club director and coach for Jammers. Her family owns a beach house on the North Shore in the town of Haleiwa (you pronounce a w in the middle of a word as a v). She rents it out regularly and she held it for us on our trip. It really was a beach house and the view below is taken from the patio. We could hear the waves all day and night--so peaceful.
We were also left with a great fruit basket from Natalie Oana on behalf of the Jammers Volleyball Club. I have never had pineapple that was so fresh and amazing--it could have also been the fact that we were in an amazing setting.
The next photo was taken from the second floor deck. Keep in mind that I had been traveling for many hours. :)
After our gracious hosts left us and we threw our bags down, we headed out to explore the island. We only had to drive for about 5 minutes to find something interesting. Below are a few photos from the Wahiawa Botanic Garden. The vegetation and animals are so different and beautiful.
So, Heath always has to do things that are inappropriate--here he is trying to climb a Ficus Banyan Tree. These trees are massive and their roots grow downward from the branches.
After the gardens we stopped to check out the ocean. I am convinced that there isn't a bad place to stop and just look at how beautiful this place is. Heath did take a nice little slip on the rocks after this photos--I didn't laugh.
That concludes day one. Aloha.
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