Tunnels

We declared Friday to be a beach day. After packing up a cooler of sandwiches and snacks we drove to Hanalei to rent snorkel gear. We planned to spend most of the day at Tunnels is known to be one of the best areas to snorkel on the island and luckily it was only a short drive away. The beach is called Tunnels for the underwater tunnels created by the reefs near the beach. Some also say it’s named after the large waves that occur, mostly in the winter. This is the beach where surfer Bethany Hamilton lost her arm in shark attack. Luckily for us there were no sharks or major waves nearby. We snorkeled, laid out, ate, played Frisbee, and just completely enjoyed the day.

 

 

 

After Tunnels we spent some time at the house before some of us headed south to Kealia beach just north of the town of Kapa’a. The boys wanted to go boogie boarding before going to dinner. I watched itty bitty sand crabs in the freezing cold while Marty constructed and destroyed a sand village. (we were all pretty excited to find a sand castle kit in the houses garage)

 

We went into Kapa’a and discovered a little street market. We walked past the different booths and stores, bought some Hawaiian spices to take home and Mckay bought me the prettiest lei ever. It smelled like heaven. We had a late dinner at the Noodle House where me and Mckay decided to try Saimin again. Saimin is like ramen noodles but they add all these toppings to it. It wasn’t as good as we remembered it the first time but it was fun to try again.

                                             

Kauai 2012

At the beginning of August Mckay and I had the opportunity to go to Kauai on vacation with my family. We went to Kauai three years ago and absolutely loved it. I always planned on going back but I was expecting that to be years down the road. We were thrilled when we found out we were going back! And when Lysa offered to watch Henry the whole time we felt incredibly spoiled. So for 8 days we got to enjoy being on vacation together without the stresses of being a parent. We definitely missed our babe but we certainly took full advantage of our time off. We slept in, came and went without worrying about a schedule, took naps, I nearly finished two books. It was seriously the best vacation ever. completely perfect.

Since this blog is a journal to help organize our family memories and since I’m already having major vacation withdrawals the next few posts are going to be pretty detailed with lots and lots of pictures.

We flew in to Lihue Thursday night (Aug. 2). After getting groceries at Costco we drove up to the north side of the island to Princeville where we were staying. Since there was 11 of us we opted for renting a house rather than staying in a hotel. We are so glad we did this! It also helped to have a kitchen so we could eat some meals, especially breakfast at home. The house was so nice, comfortable and included a private pool and hot tub. It was great to come home and relax there at the end of every day. Our favorite thing to do when we got home at night was to watch the Olympics in the hot tub while snacking on chips and salsa.

On Friday we headed to Queens Bath located on the north shore, just minutes from where we were staying. Mckay and I didn’t make it there on our first trip to Kauai so we were excited to check it out. After a short hike through the jungle the trees open up to a beautiful view of the rocky coast. The lava rock cliffs drop straight into the ocean. Queens Bath is a swimming pool size tide pool that you can swim in when the tide is low enough. There are several other smaller pools nearby. We explored the coastline, spotted sea turtles and swam with the fishes. Perfect way to start off our trip. (some of these pictures were taken by Chris)

 

  

 

 

 

After Queens Bath we drove south into Kapa’a and got fresh fish tacos for lunch and got our first shave ice of the trip. 1/2 Bahama Mama, 1/2 Blue Hawaiian with Macadamia Nut ice cream underneath. it was that good I remembered.

 

There are several farmers markets that travel around the island and stop at a different town each day. Today the market was in Lihue so of course we had to stop and stock up on local fruits and veggies, including our favorites, apple bananas and sugar loaf white pineapple. so very very good.

 

 

 

We took our goodies home, relaxed, swam and watched the Olympics. We grilled hamburgers and fresh pineapple for dinner. Before we ate we drove to the next town north of us to watch the sunset from Hanalei Bay.

I loved staying on the north side of the Island, it’s so green and pretty. I also loved being so close to Hanalei, such a cute town.

 

 

 

           

        

aaand that ended our first day.

 

 

 

How I made a 2-bike roof rack for under $50 (by McKay)

Today, I made a bike rack!

For a long time, I’ve wanted to have a roof rack to cart my bike around. I didn’t want a trunk-mount rack because you always have to put it on and take it off when you want to use it, it’s held on by little webbing straps that are safe at first but eventually get weak and brittle, and you have to take all of your bikes off if you want to get into the back of your car. I didn’t really want a hitch-mount rack because they are expensive, they get in the way of you opening and closing the back of your car, and you have to put it on and take it off every time you want to use it. I loved the idea of the roof rack because it’s never in the way of anything and you can leave it on all the time. The problem with roof racks is that they are expensive. To carry two bikes, you’re looking at spending $200+ for the cheapest ones. Even if you buy them used, you end up paying like $150, which is more than I wanted to spend. I’ve had a lot of different ideas of making my own roof rack, but they all involved causing irreparable harm to our crossbars, and I like our crossbars so I didn’t want to ruin them. I finally had this idea about a week ago when we went to California to visit the Greenwoods. We borrowed a cartop luggage carrier from our friends (Janson and Tara Evans) and it was secured by a couple of U-bolts. I realized that U-bolts would work perfectly for my bars and so I went to Home Depot when we got home and bought some U-bolts and then ordered some fork mounts on amazon:

The 4 U-bolts were like $3 each and the 2 fork mounts were $18 each, so I paid a total of about $48 for everything. My plan was to make a simple fork mount rack by fastening each fork mount to two U-bolts. The first problem that I ran into was that the holes in the fork mounts were smaller than the U-bolts. I decided to just bore out the holes in the fork mounts so that they would fit onto the U-bolts.

Now I just had to mount it onto our roof rack. I was planning on putting the mounts on the front of the U-bolts, so I got the back nuts down to the bottom of the thread first. Then, I put the mounts on and tightened the nuts until the mount was snug and didn’t move around.

After I took this picture I ended up flipping one of the mounts around so that it was behind the front bolts because the wheelbase of my road bike is about 2” shorter than the wheelbase of my mountain bike. I may get the bolts cut down at some point, but it’s not a priority right now. I put my road and mountain bikes on just to see if they were stable. The road bike didn’t rock at all, but the mountain bike did a little, because the mountain bike weighs about 15 pounds more than the road bike. It shouldn’t be a problem because there is no way the mount is coming off, but I probably will get a couple of extra metal plates and throw them on just to reinforce it and make it bomb-proof. Now that the forks were set, I needed to figure out what to do with the back tires. I remembered that Emily and I both have chalk bags for climbing that came with these simple webbing straps with clips on them to strap them around your waist. We always just clip our bags onto our harnesses (or belt loops when we’re bouldering) so we don’t ever use the straps. I took the straps and cinched them down around the wheel and crossbar, and then tied them to the side-rail to prevent the back tires from sliding inward.

Webbing and clips are pretty cheap if you don’t already have them lying around, and you don’t even need to do what I did. You could use anything really to secure the back tire: small bungee cords, an old rope, zip-ties, twine, etc. That’s it, though. The main thing is just to make sure that the U-bolts you use will work for the crossbars you already have and make sure that the mounts are tight on the crossbars. Other than that it’s pretty hard to mess this up. It only took me about an hour for the whole project from start to finish, and the price is super-affordable. If you’re only doing one rack, you can pay less than $25.