Kauai Anniversary Trip Day 4

*Regular Font: David
*Italicized Font: Shantel 

Day 4 put us halfway through our trip. It was Sunday and it was important to us to do some lower-key activities while still enjoying our trip. We woke up and watched the sun rise over the beach by our hotel. This was one of our "bucket list" items, but it was made significantly more fun (and possibly more creepy) by the appearance of hundreds of sand crabs scuttling over the beach. Our attention slowly moved from peacefully watching the sunrise to being intensely invested in the actions of the sand crabs. So much that at one point I looked up and thought, oh wow, the sun is up! When did that happen?" We watched the crabs for over an hour as they dug holes (amazing), fought each other for those holes (intense), and expertly hid in the sand each time a random person/group would pass us (terrifying). As we watched the people pass and the crabs creep out of their hiding holes, we kept saying how amazing it was that those people had NO idea that they were walking inches away from hundreds of crabs hiding in their holes. It made for some jumpy moments when I thought I felt a crab climbing on me and would shout "Crab!" Like I said, it was fun but was also a little creepy. We tried to find a documentary to watch about sand crabs but had to make do with a couple of google articles about them. 

The crabs really were so cool and we laughed a good bit as we watched. The rest of the trip one of us would occasionally shout, "crab!" and it would elicit a good laugh. 

The morning was beautiful and everything about it was dreamy (even those creepy, amazing sand crabs.) We came back to the hotel, got dressed and went to church in this darling little chapel for the Church of Jesus Christ down the road from where we were staying. It was built in 1934 and had beautiful window-filled doors lining the entire chapel with stained glass at the front and beautiful Hawaiian motifs throughout. The chapel opened to an open courtyard that you walked through to access the Sunday School room across the hall. It was testimony meeting and it was lovely to hear the testimonies of so many people and feel of the faith of the saints. I was overcome with feelings of love and gratitude as I remembered my experience at the Laie Temple and the history of the early missionary efforts and the faith of the early Hawaiian saints. I am grateful for their faith and the example they have showed of strength and discipleship. 

Shantel shared her testimony during the meeting and it was really incredible to hear here testimony as she reflected on her great grandpa who had served in Hawaii. We loved the spirit and feeling so much we almost just stayed for the next sacrament meeting that was starting around the time we were leaving. 

After church we ate lunch at a highly recommended diner, The Kountry Kitchen, then rented bikes to ride along the ocean - just enjoying the incredible beaches and time together. 

The bike ride was one of my favorite (okay, yes, I have like 20 favorites) things we did on the trip. It was so cool to be able to ride right along the ocean and hear the waves crashing as we rode. If we had just walked we never would have seen as much, but we rode for two hours and were able to see so many different beaches. We would stop and check out different things as we went. It was also not a very busy path, so it was not particularly crowded and the cool breeze and the Ocean made it so amazing. One of my favorite things here was finding a spot we could just watch the big ocean waves crash into the rocks as the waves hit land. There is something so soothing and cool about that. 

We ended our bike ride by reading our books by a pile of rocks that housed small black rock-crabs, which seemed fitting after our morning.  

Before we went back to the hotel for the day we decided to drive around and hit a couple of other places. We saw several waterfalls and a few other neat things before we went home to eat some pasta dinners that we had brought with us so we didn't have to go out to eat. (Partly because it was Sunday and partly because going out to eat takes so much time, effort, and money. I'm grateful that David and I have similar preferences when it comes to travel because we were both happy to eat some microwaved mac and cheese together and to be able to squeeze in some extra time to go down to the pool/hot tub before bed. Going out to eat for every meal takes SO long, ha. It was just a really nice evening.