For the 4th of July weekend my family and I went to Hawaii, we stayed about an hour away from Honolulu in Malaekahana Bay. It was so beautiful there it's amazing, the water is crystal clear, and the sunsets are something else completely. We went snorkeling in Sharks Cove and there were so many interesting looking fish and I even swam alongside a turtle!

We also went to the Polynesian Cultural Center which was pretty cool, although it was a LONG day. It was interesting to see their cultural and the similarities and differences all the islands have in the ways that they lived back in the day. (I never know New Zealand was part of the Polynesian Islands)

Probably my favorite part of the trip was hiking the Stairway to Heaven. If you don't know what that is, its an illegal hike up a really steep mountains thats guarded by a security guard. There are metal steps (about 4,000 of them) with railing going all the way up and were built because they had radio towers up at the top of the mountains and the stairs were the only way up and down. We went at 4 in the morning with our friend Justin who grew up in Hawaii (he was our "tour" guide for the trip) and we snuck past the guard (we did a terrible job of sneaking, he saw us and started to come after us but we ran up the first few hundred stairs and he didn't bother to chase up that far). These stairs were STEEP and by steep I mean we were literally climbing them like a latter at some points. It took Mackinley and I about an hour (maybe longer) to get to the first landing (the boys were faster than us, Chase and Justin were literally running up the stairs). The view was breathtaking, you could see for miles and miles and had a really pretty view of the ocean. It was pretty foggy that morning and Mackinley and I were so tired from all those stairs so we let the boys go to the top without us (it was really foggy and windy and miserable from the first landing up so we didn't think it was worth going farther up if you couldn't even see through the fog at the top). On our way down the mountain it stared pouring ran on us so we just sat on the steps and got drenched, that was pretty miserable. But all in all it was well worth the terrifying stairs, heights, and the very sore legs the next morning.

Family Vaca to Hawaii