On Land and On Sea

What a beautiful day!  Dart had the whole day off and we had a blast seeing the beauty of the island.  We went to the Botanical Gardens at Waimea and saw some cool plants and animals, along with a nice flow at the falls.  Dart and I were busy with our cameras, that's for sure, and the weather couldn't have been better. 

Then we had a picnic up by the old Hawaiian temple that overlooks Waimea and took a quick power nap before heading down to Shark's Cove for some snorkeling!  The water was cool and calm and it made for a great experience. 

The highlight of the day was that we saw THREE turtles, the most I've ever seen in one day!  The first was small and headed out to sea so we couldn't follow.  The next came right after and was much larger.  He popped up for air and then headed down to hide out under some rocks.  The last turtle was the best.  He was in shallow water feeding on some plants and was so big!  I got to just hang out within arms reach of the guy (or girl) for a good ten minutes before heading back in.  How cool! 

Then we came home and I made some soup and we watched Avatar (Dart hadn't seen it).  It was a perfect day!

So here is my photo recap of our experiences.  Here are Dart and Nick among the foliage of the gardens.

And Team Taylor, of course.

We saw lots of cool animals, like this peacock up in a tree.

And here he is in all his majesty.

I got the feathers of one on the ground.  There are quite a few peacocks at the Gardens.

We also saw this cute little guy called a Moorhen.  They are found only on Oahu and Kauai.

And we saw a big lizard too, hunting for flies.

Of course, it wouldn't be a botanical garden without cool plants.  These were very interesting.  It's not often you see this aqua blue in plants.  Can you find the bee in the photo?

Very cool colors mixed together.  I like the bell shape and the fuzz on the inside.

These are such complicated little flowers.  They are very similar to fuschias except they are reddish orange.

These are just so unique.  I thought of a pineapple when looking at this flower because of the yellow color and the vertical shape.  The white tufts coming out make me think of a bird.  Bizarre but very cool.

And my favorite.  The lighting was so awesome.  No doctoring on this picture at all, it really just looked that cool.

And at the end of the hike through the gardens, you finally reach Waimea Falls!  Yay!

This is where we had our picnic lunch and took a quick power nap before our adventures in the ocean!  It was such a fun day!