Waimea Bay

While Brian and his team trained and spent the day trying to stay rested and out of trouble, Maddie & I set off on another adventure, again, not too far from home. Today Maddie decided we were going to Waimea Bay and jump off the famous rock. I was game. So we left fairly early (930am) so we had a chance of getting a parking spot (which fill up and don't free up unless you hover around the parking lot for half an hour and are lucky enough to catch someone leaving). We scored and found a nice one (in partial shade even). Then we hiked to the rock to see what that was all about before we got the snorkeling gear and drinks and stuff out of the car. The rock wasn't crowded yet, so we decided to give it a go right there and then. On the pic below, we jumped from the opposite side shown. I walked up to the highest spot where I saw people jumping from and without stopping to think about it too long, jumped in. It was a blast! The water was ~12 feet deep at this time (changes with the tides) and it was plenty to land in. Maddie perched on a bit lower launch point, and it took about 15 minutes to finally coax her in...but she finally did it (during a driving rain shower that came swiftly though).

I jumped twice more and Maddie once more before we figured we found a cool place and would set up camp for the day. We grabbed our junk from the car and went to the left of the rock where it looked primo for snorkeling...which it turned out to be. We spent most of the day enjoying the sights and sounds of this gorgeous bay. We swam with a couple of sea turtles, saw what we think was a baby barracuda (freaked Maddie out), and saw a buch of other amazing sea life. The snorkeling here was great, beat only by Shark's Cove so far. One of the turtles came to within a few feet of shore and was very friendly.

You can see his fin as he swam out of frame in this pic. I just couldn't get a good shot of him. But we have him in our memories! It was a great day and I am glad to have my adventure girl with me. After we had our fill of the beach we hauled our stuff back to the car through the HOT, deep sand (it was our workout for the day...two round trips), and had a power nap under some trees in the grassy part of the park. Ahhhh. That's vacation. What day is this? What time is it? ...Who cares!!!

After we left Waimea Bay we drove up to the ruins of an ancient Hawaiian Temple above the bay where we took these shots. Quite a view! We had a bird's eye view of the entire bay and everywhere we had just played.

Maddie by the Temple ruins & an altar that was adjacent to the Temple ruins.