Hawaii Recap: Days Seven-Ten: The End

(Cue the collective groans of everyone who reads this blog)

I know, I know, I know. I have been back from this trip for longer than a month and I am still blogging about it. But, I am almost done, I swear. I promise this will be the absolute final blog post about this trip. To make it happen, I have combined the final days of the trip into one comprehensive post. Let's get this over with.

In this picture, you can see my sister Bria flexing in a green top. This is at a cool little pond on the island of Kauai. They had cliffs, a rope swing, and the view was just beautiful.

On the walk back to the car, I decided to add some pictures to my Abercrombie portfolio...

...until Nika couldn't resist the chance to photobomb me...

...she has maneuvered her way into this blog a lot lately...

...finally, we got her out of the way and I was able to get my pose on again.

Our ship traveled right by the spectacular Na Poli coast. Apparently, you can only get close up to this area via helicopter. It's another one of those times where a photo just can't do the beauty justice. At all.

Here I am with my parents in front of the great view.

My cruise ship celebrity status reached an apex when I competed in the Dancing With the Stars competition...

...where my partner and I were an absolute disaster. I can't dance and I REALLY can't dance with a partner. So there's strike one. If you look at the picture you can see that I am also wearing flip-flops. Flappy Wappy Flippy Floppys. Strike two, right there. Strike three came in a big way from an incident in the first round. Take another look at the picture and notice the length of my partner's dress. Pretty short, no? During the song "Sway" from Mikey Bub, I went to the go-to spin your partner move. Her dress blew right up and we gave the audience a view they were definitely not expecting. Yow. After that, my partner was so embarrassed that she wouldn't dance. We were on the express elevator to the top floor of the Building of Suck. The crowd cheered us through the first two rounds until we were eliminated (thank the Lord) after round 3.

We met a lot of cool people on the ship. Here I am with Amanda, Bria, and DJ Hurricane Holt.

Bria, Amanda, me, and Chalis with Jasper. He was one of the crew members in charge of the activities that took a special liking to us crazy Mormons from Utah. He is also a crazy good dancer. Speaking of that, Chalis was also in the DWTS competition and she and her sparkly partner took first place!

Here we are with Chris, who served us our late-night peanut butter and jelly sandwiches almost every night on the ship.

Here I am with all my siblings after eating at Duke's in Kauai. We are a cute bunch of Titmuses.

And here is the whole group! Overall, this ranked as one of my favorite trips of all-time. I had a great time, did somethings I had never done before, made some great friends, aaaaaaaaaaand I was in Hawaii. And Hawaii is awesome.

Road Trip Pt.2

This post isn't going to amount to much. I didn't really take many pictures the last two days of my "vacation". The pictures I did take are not very interesting. (Mostly because I am not in any of them.) But, here they are anyway.

Here is our hotel in Frankfurt, Kentucky. I am sure I woke up at least half the guests here at one a.m. from my yelling and screaming during the end of the Jazz-Blazers game. I feel bad, but sometimes you just have to let it all out.

Here is a quick snap of the capitol building in Charleston, West Virginia.


This road was not meant to be part of our journey. We stopped in some city to get lunch and a few confusing roads got Marcus turned in this direction, far away from any restaurants. Luckily, we got turned around and arrived safely at another Applebee's.
Some foggy river.
This is pretty much all my eyes saw for THREE DAYS!!!!!!!!
I thought the name of this gas station (Wawa) was funny. Do you? You should.
The lobby of the Richmond airport. This was at nine thirty in the morning. As you can see it is empty. There were literally fifty non-employees at this airport. There were no lines for check-in, security, gift shop, or the bathroom. If heaven is like an airport, then I have seen heaven. (Sidenote: The hell of airports is Denver, Colorado)

Once I made it back to Salt Lake, we celebrated the birthday of my baby sister, Nika. She is now 16th. I had the intentions of giving her a full post on this blog wishing her a great birthday. Sadly, I failed as a blogger and a brother. This is now four days late, but here it goes. Happy Birthday Nika!!!

Hawaii Trip Recap: Day Five- Hilo

I know what you're thinking.

When will this guy shut up about his Hawaii trip?

I understand where you are coming from. But I must press on for my posterity's sake.

We started off the day by visiting the famous volcanoes. Everything was a bit different than I imagined, but once I got past that, I loved it.

See! This is me. Loving. It.

The family took a cute little group shoot in front of all the smoke.

My sister Nika (sometimes known as Ne-Ne amongst about 45 nicknames) took special offense to this sign. It would be tough for anybody to go without food. Even NeNe.

One of the best things about looking at volcanoes is when you get to practice your modeling poses. There was a lot of smoke popping out of random locations.
This tunnel was made from hot lava running through it several (thousand?) years ago. Now it is a pretty sweet cave. Also in this picture, NeNe the butt scratcher!
Inside of the cave, I got my drunk face on.One rule about family vacations: There is always time for one more group photo. Always. Even if it is in some place that you won't remember when you are blogging about it three weeks later. Even if it is just in front of some trees. There is always time.
My favorite part of the volcano experience was hiking down to the bottom of this crater. Mostly because there were only four of us who did it.
Next up, we went to a Hawaiian pizza joint where we played Connect Four and I built this awesome tower from building blocks. It's pretty cool, right? Right?
That is one proud architect right there.
Then came the pizza. As you can clearly see, Nika tried to swoop in for a bite of my delicious veggie pizza. I quickly reminded her about the "Don't Feed The NeNe" sign and how it was my job as her big brother to teach her about following signs and not eating when we are not supposed to eat. So she didn't get any pizza.
Afterwards, we visited the magestic Akaka Falls. There was an old lady in the parking lot blabbering about how the falls is named after her family and that you can find two naked ladies near the falls if you look close enough. Sure, crazy lady, whatever you say.
Here I am next to the good ol' Akaka.This is a picture of me with the improv group Second City, who performed on the cruise ship. They are (L-R) Mike, Deanna, me (duh), Piero, Jen, and Rance. I was lucky enough to be called on stage and have them perform a five minute musical about everything I did that day. (Rance played the part of Cody) It was probably the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. Not only were these guys hilarious, but they were also really cool people. Big ups to Second City!!!

Here is a pic of Bria and Amanda doing the stanky legg on the dance floor. The three of us hit up the dance floor nearly every night we were on the ship. Usually, there weren't too many other people dancing with us. But we had a blast every night. I really miss being able to shake my money maker on a nightly basis.