Scissor Quirk.

Kayak, we did.

Aha! I was good and brought my old point-and-shoot digital camera with us on our kayak trip this weekend (on the salty ocean kayak, no less - it's old, so I wasn't really worried about it - but I missed my good camera!).

Here's a little rundown of our overnight kayak-to-the-campsite adventure:

The couple we went with - Mike and Kelly - picked us up bright and early, and we drove out to Deep Cove and had a yummy breakfast before packing out gear into our 3 kayaks (we had one double and two singles for four of us). We were really surprised by how much gear you can tuck away into those things!

Mister husband packing, while wearing both of our hats.

After we packed we put our gear on, learned how to control the rudder, and Kelly and I hopped into the double kayak, leaving the boys on their own. I had to steer the thing, which was pretty funny - lol. I kept getting my pedals reverse!

We meandered across the cove for about two hours, paddling, until we got to Twin Island (we forgot to check the map before we left, so it was a bit of a guessing game, but we found it!). We were going to keep paddling for a bit, but our rudder broke (gah!), and with all the gear in there it was hard for us girls to steer with our paddles. We pulled up to the dock and unloaded everything, and the boys had to carry the boats all the way up the steep low-tide dock!

The island is super-small, with a campsite on it that was empty when we arrived, so we scored this awesome ocean-view site and set up camp. Well - sort of - we used the wooden platform as a hang-out spot, and we brought 4 hammocks (they're smaller and lighter than tents!) that we hung in the trees just up the hill.

Our shady but lovely campsite/hang-out spot.

We spent the rest of the afternoon noshing on lunch, going for a dip in the cold cold ocean (we had the nicest weather!), playing Uno, taking the boats out again for a spin before sundown (complete with boys carrying them back down to the dock), and then getting back in time to cook supper and hang the hammocks up. We all sat around until it got darker and chillier, watching the stars. We couldn't have a fire there, but we had candles to keep it cute. :)

They were new to hammocks, so it was fun trying them out and getting layered up and figuring out who got to sleep in the two fancy hammocks - he he. We all slept pretty well, but woke up to our hotdogs having been eaten by one happy raccoon! lol.

We had to have the boats back by 11 am on sunday, so we woke up early, made coffee and breakfast, packed up, and then off we went!

The boys had to do this so many times!

Some shots from the road:

It was just gorgeous!

The only hitch was that my arms are still aching from paddling - lol. I had a big old nap when we got home, after all that work - oh, and the boys forgot to pack my bag of toiletries, which means I had no ammenities (think toothbrush, deoderant, make up, etc.) so I had to sleep in my contacts - ugh!

It was such a fun time!
Have you kayaked before? Kayak-camped? I highly suggest it!

Let me know if you have any questions. :)

I should mention that it was my first real time actually kayaking on the ocean with a purpose - we kayaked in Maui, but in those plastic shallow kayaks you sit on top of, and we didn't go very far but to turtle-search.

Camping, again.

It's a long weekend, here in Canada, so we're packing our tent & camping gear onto the motorcycle and riding a few hours out of town in the sunshine to go camping with some family. Yay!

photo source.

This feels like the 14550045883 time we've gone, this summer - lol. It's kind of becoming this running joke in conversation, now - everyone just assumes we're going camping every weekend, too. :) I guess that's good...

I'm super-glad we're getting out a lot, this summer - even though it's always a burning-the-midnight-oil scramble to get away! lol. Literally, I have to hop in the shower and shove some clothes into a compression bag before we leave in an hour - ack! Next weekend, I told mister husband that I'm not doing anything but thrift shopping, staying in my pyjamas, and watching a movie marathon of some sort while crocheting. lol. I need a home day or two!

I have grand plans next week for sharing an altered project, another Hawaii post, other vacation pics, and other good stuff next week, so peek back! :)

See you's on the flip side!
Have a lovely weekend, friends!

A Weekend Trip.

This past weekend we had a super-relaxing and beer-filled time at a campout on some friends' of friends' property over in the boonies of Nanaimo.

I brought my camera, but this was the only measly picture I took - lol.
It's our view from the hammock spot back to the house.

Anyhoo - some guys from work are in a band, and they were playing at a party at this friends' house over the weekend - we drove up on Friday after work on the motorcycle and found our way there in the near-dark and then blew our eardrums (lol) watching them practice. We set our hammocks up in a quiet corner of their yard and camped out for the next two days, and partied it up on Saturday night after a super-chill day spent hanging in the yard. Aaah. We heard 4 or 5 awesome bands play, and some of them played an acoustic set, and there was a barbeque - so it was an all around pretty awesome ear candy weekend.

We slept so soundly in those hammocks, and it was just cold enough at night that there was not a mosquito in sight, but we were toasty warm - I swear, I was so cozy I didn't even move. :)

Anyhoo - feeling totally relaxed, now.
A little overwhelmed by my busy week after such a chill weekend, though. lol.

I'm also thinking now that we've hammocked a few times, it's time to do a how-to-hammock-camp tips post. Would that be helpful? People are always happily surprised by us sleeping in just hammocks. he he...

Guess what

...we're doing this weekend?

Caaaamping!!
(Do I really need to say it? lol)

photo source.

Yes, again. I'm actually really psyched that we've gotten out into the woods so many times this year, and we still have a few months of summer to go! :)

Have a lovely long weekend, wherever your travels take you!

Hawaii Camping - Part One.

Related: Hawaii - Why?  Part One. Part Two. Part Three. Tips.
Yay! Without any further delay - lol - here's the first part of our trip to Hawaii:

So here we are in Maui! First stop: Hana

The view back to Black Sand Beach from one of our day hikes.

Our one-way flight landed in Maui late on Monday, so we'd booked a hotel in Kahului near the airport so we could sleep after our travels before setting up camp that next day - we'd picked up our rental car after getting off the plane, so on Tuesday morning we grabbed groceries for camp and some propane (which ended up being the wrong size and didn't fit our burners - but no biggie).

We had booked a spot at Wai'anapanapa campsite on the East side of the island close to Hana (before we left), so our first taste of Maui was the coolest beautiful twisty Hana highway - which we took straight there early in the morning.

Campsite #1 - Wai'anapanapa State Park

Our first campsite, overlooking the Black Sand Beach.

After we arrived, this was by far our favorite campsite of the whole trip - it's a state park, so you need to get $20/night permits online and pin them to your tent (despite what I'd read, there actually was a dude checking permits while we were there). It was nice and quiet there - well, except during the day when busloads of tourists come to see the Black Sand Beach and you kind of feel like an animal at the zoo for a bit - lol - but there were always few other campers there, too (and, really, we weren't there during the day much). Over the next few days it got busier and busier with campers, and we met a nice German couple and even a few families from around Vancouver!

Over the next 4 days we stayed at this camp, cooked and ate our food on the grill (we gathered dead wood laying around to make our fires), and explored all things in and around Hana with our lil rental car.

Here are some of the close-to-Hana highlights:

Black Sand Beach

This is actually where our campsite was located - overlooking the Black Sand Beach. Gorgeous! Our little tent was propped up on the hillside above it (right behind a really old 'cemetary', too). One morning we zipped open the tent and saw the sunrise through our toes. :) This was literally our view: 

The black sand was super-cool, too! A little scratchier then usual sand, but cool nontheless. Swimming was iffy - some days the surf was really strong, but at sundown it got calmer. There were a few great trails just off the beach, too - one led out to a super-rocky old burial ground, it was gorgeous looking back:

And one led the opposite way to some blow holes and more sharp lava rocks (where I totally wiped out and ripped a hole in my knee on our second day, hiking - lol. Felt like I was five, again). Beautiful!


There was also a cute little cave right off of the beach at the bottom, and two freshwater caves with a legend on a little walk right at the campsite:

Red Sand Beach

We drove into Hana to see this little gem one day, which was hidden close to the outskirts of town. You walk through a random parking lot, and then it was actually quite the treacherous little trail to get to it - first landing at this smaller (but still really beautiful) red sand beach:

And then trailing up and over sandy cliffs into the larger (super-gorgeous and worth the scary trail!) beach. It was so precarious I only snapped this one picture before I had to put the camera away before heading down:

The Seven Sacred Pools

These really aren't sacred - lol - it's just a name. They were about an hour's drive through a jungle-edged road past Hana. It was just gorgeous to drive there (and there's camspite there that we didn't know about, but would have loved to stay at!) - the pools themselves were busy & it was super hard and slimy to actually get in the water, but once you made it in the swimming was awesome! It was a welcome change from the strong ocean pelting me over when I tried to swim.

Koki and Hamoa Beaches

Quiet-during-the-day Koki beach.

These two little beaches just past Hana on a little loop were our go-to's for calm beach days near the end of our time in Hana. Koki was the local kids' surfing beach (in the late afternoon, tons of cute lil kid surfers came out with their boards) - it was nice and quiet during the week. Hamoa beach was known for it's great body surfing, but I likened it to being pelted by waves over and over before finally being able to get past them and swim - the ocean is so strong. We went to Hamoa super-early Friday morning and got the best spot in the shade under a tree. Aah.  It gets busy there!

Our shady spot at Hamoa beach, before the crowd.

Hana Lava Tube

We accidentally ran into this cave on our way out of town Saturday morning, and we're so happy we did! It's a cave that was formed from a lava flow, and you can walk through it with your flashlight and check out the stalagmites and stalactites (we saw some lil frogs, too!). It was pretty cool...

This is my, 'it's so dark in here that taking pictures is silly, but okay' face.

 Nahiku

This little village/stop off of the Hana highway is so beautiful, and a cute picnic spot! It's quite a ways off the highway down into a residential area, and it's lovely.

Hana Highway

After our few days hanging out near Hana, we reluctantly headed back to the busy side of the island - taking our time on the Hana highway, this time, and stopping at some waterfalls and sites along the way. That Friday night the campsite got really busy with locals (for the Easter long weekend, I'm guessing), and the Saturday we left, the highway was super-busy, but with traffic going where we were coming from - yes! some highway sights:

Other must-stop places:

- Halfway to Hana: pick up the beef jerky, banana bread, and coconut candy
- Coconut Glen's: the best darn coconut ice cream ever!!

Notes from this leg of the trip:

- This is the only campsite with actual bathrooms. Enjoy them!! 
- Hana is a must-see! It's worth the long, winding drive.
- Stop at at least one of the family-run pulled pork stands here
- Don't stay in Kahului unless you have to (Pa'ia & Lahaina are cuter options) 
- If you have water shoes, bring them to the Seven Sacred Pools!
- Small propane/butane canisters are sold at Sports Authority in Kahului

There are 2 legs of our trip still-to-come!
Stay tuned - and let me know if you have any questions about anything! :)

Oh, how I love Hawaii!