We went to Waimea Valley, which is a botanical garden with a waterfall you can visit. Right off, Chris caught a lizard for the kids to pet.
This is James first lizard for him to see up close. He was pretty curious about this little creature.
We had bird identification guides, which Marion and Elora were really excited about. It was so fun to watch them walk around with their guides looking at the birds. Marion LOVES birds.
And who doesn’t love babies wrapped in huge Taro leaves? That is seriously the biggest leaf I have ever seen, and Chris thinks we should have stripped James down to have him naked on the leaf, but we restrained ourselves.
Elora brought her journal with her so she could stop and draw plants and flowers during our visit.
Elora loved all the beautiful flowers and birds. This was definitely her kind of place.
The wall of greenery was really beautiful. There was a jungle feel to the valley with all the huge, really green trees and plants.
There were some structures that represented how ancient Hawaiian villages looked. The kids thought the “grass houses” were a great place to play.
Elora found a great banyan tree. The kids liked to pretend it was the Notre Dame bell tower and they were hanging on the vine-like trunks pretending to ring the bells. We had a hard time getting the kids out of the tree so we could keep walking to the water fall.
Marion loves bumble bees, and this plant was called beehive ginger. Marion thought that was really neat and wanted to stay here with the plant instead of continuing our walk.
Here is the waterfall! You can actually swim in the pool and the kids were a little bummed we didn’t bring swimsuits to go in, but this was already a pretty long day for the kids and we didn’t think they would be able to walk back after swimming!
James liked the waterfall! Or maybe he liked getting out of the stroller… This was a really beautiful place to walk around. I had to take pictures of some flowers for Elora to draw later, because she did not want to leave before she had finished drawing every single flower she saw!
On the way back we stopped in the town of Hale’iwa on the north shore and ate some roasted chicken from this awesome chicken cart. We also went to a bakery and got the best bread pudding and some other goodies. They used a lot of whole grains in their baked goods and it was so tasty.
