Late season DUMP!

When we came home from Hawaii, it was beautiful weather....sunny skies with highs near 60! Then yesterday Mother Nature decided to squelsh our summertime dreams and dump a recordbreaking snowfall! Heres some pics to show you.

On our deck after it had been snow about 7 hours.

At this time we had about 14 inches...

Three hours later it was still snowing lightly and we were up to 17 inches!

All in all, as of 11am this morning, we got about 20 inches at our house. This snowfall over the Anchorage Bowl made several records including the most snowfall in any April ever before, the third most snowfall amount in 24 hours, and this all bumped the 2007/2008 year to the 6th most snowiest year on record for Anchorage!

The guys thought there was no better time than to duct tape beers in their hands, 24 oz in each hand! Brilliant.

ALOOOOOHAAA!

Since it had been almost 3 years since we had moved from Hawaii to Alaska, we thought it was about damned time we went back for a visit - and Dave Matthews was playing a concert on Oahu....all the more reason to go! So we planned this spurious trip, and even got our friend Kevin to come along. He'd never been and what better way to experience Hawaii than with people who lived there right?!?! Our dear friends Vanessa and Brian were supposed to come as well, however their tickets were through ATA, so they totally lost them!!! :( We sure missed them, but we'll see them in about a month at our wedding!

Here we are getting ready to take off from the Anchorage Airport...

Here we are after waiting an HOUR on the tarmack for the damn toilets to be fixed

Some shots of the Kenai Peninsula....some ice still covering Kenai Lake

A glacier pouring out of the mountains

Back on the Islands!

We finally made it and immediatly wanted to get back "home" to Kailua where we used to live. We took the Pali Highway and stopped at the Pali Lookout.

Made it to Kailua, stopped and saw our old house, then headed straight for the beach! The skies were really hazy from the volcano Kilauea, on the Big Island, which had been very active lately.

Back on our beach!

Lanikai in the background.....where Ben and I will own a house someday :) Anyone wanna go in on it with us? :)

Ben's infamous sand balls

Surfin at Barber's Point

Had to get some surfin in while back in the islands!!!

Kevin tried surfing for the first time here, did really well considering the size of waves he was attempting!

Ben paddling back out to catch more - he and Spring always have a contest to see who can catch the most!

Spring ridin a nice one

HIke in Manoa

Spring (who we also convinced to come back to Hawaii with us! She lived there at the same time as us, now lives in Tucson) took us on a hike in Manoa, whats more fun than starting with a group beer!?

it had changed a bit since she last did it, we kinda missed the train and ended up bushwacking up a stream! :)

Finally made it to the waterfalls, however the islands have been really dry, so not much water was falling. Ben climbing up!

Kevin climbing down!

Hikes then Sandy's

While Kevin and Spring went on the Stairway to Heaven hike (check out her blog for some amazing pictures!), Ben and I went and raged on Koko Head. Its one of our favorite hikes, however we forgot to bring a camera so check out this picture to give you an idea.......we walked up the far left hand side, along an old cog-train railway. REALLY steep - like doing lunges up the side of a mountain!

Now back to present time.....Ben and I then headed to Sandy's beach to check out some amazing boogie boarders on some beefy waves!

Sand Bar and Friends

After everyone's monster hikes, we went kayaking out to the Sand Bar in Kaneohe Bay.

The bathing beauty Spring!

We finished up the night with a bbq with some old roommates and friends....Hilary, Brian, Lisa, Mike and Ben

Great Shots around the Island

Rabbit Island off of Makapu'u

Over by Waimanalo Beach

Some hang gliders over the mountains near Ka'a'awa

Chinaman's Hat Island

Tide Pools at Makapu'u

We wanted to show Kevin one of our favorite hikes, the Tide Pools at Makapu'u. Such an amazing place that everyone walks by, but has no idea its there - you follow a paved path, then have to walk down a steep lava rock cliff to get to them. SO worth it!

Tide Pools cont'd.

Thought we'd try out our new camera's underwater feature......worked out well!

Kevin

Ben

Urchin

Fishies!!!!!!!