"Welcome to Jurassic Park"

Since Heidi had to work last night, it was only Jaron, Christina and I who headed out to hike Manoa Falls.  In addition to the scenes filmed in Kauai, Steven Spielberg used parts of Manoa Falls in the movie Jurassic Park.  Once you begin the hike you are quickly transported to the rainforest scenes in the movie.  

The mountains visible at the beginning of the hike

Stream

One of several stairways

Jaron and Christina

Standing in front of a big tree that had fallen

Another stream

Looking up to where a stream begins

Root steps

Jaron and I in the arch

Manoa Falls

This was one of the best hikes I have done since being in Hawaii, even though it was the muddiest.  I can't wait to take Heidi on this trail to see this incredible forest before reaching the falls.  We passed many people who decided to hike in sandals and quickly removed them because of the thick mud.  Their feet were caked.

Once we woke Heidi up and cleaned off our legs we decided to head to Atkinson's Grill for lunch before heading to Lankai Beach on the east coast.  All the former medical residents said that this was the best beach in Hawaii and from the pictures below you can see why.

Islands off Lanikai beach

The sand was very soft and the water was clear. We brought our masks and snorkels along and were able to see a few different fish along the coral.  

Heidi scraped her foot on a piece of coral, hopefully she doesn't get a Vibrio infection!

After leaving the beach we stopped for smoothies which helped ease the long journey home.  Unfortunately a mentally ill individual jumped off an overpass onto to H1.  Traffic was forced off H1 onto side streets.  It took more than 50 minutes to travel a distance that normally takes 10 minutes.  We raced Heidi home to shower and sped back to her work.  We barely made it.

Tonight my replacement cell phone arrived!  Jaron was nice enough to have his old cell phone shipped from Jacksonville (Thanks Tim for shipping it) and we went to the AT&T store to get a new chip.  I was very happy to have a cell phone again!