The Sheeder Reader: Wailua River & Falls

On Saturday when Jon got home from work, we were able to go on a little sight seeing adventure. We caught the 3:30 boat tour of the Wailua River in Kapa'a on the east shore. It was a fun little trip where they give you some history of the river and island while you cruise down the river toward the famous Fern Grotto. They also pointed out several areas along the river where movies were filmed so that was pretty interesting. The banks of the river are incredibly lush and green.

Everett humored us by sitting on the bench nicely for about the first 5 minutes.... before the boat even left the dock.

And then he was off doing his usual wild man stuff - going around waving, saying hi and hamming it up with all of the other guests and ripping all the cushions off the benches and dragging them around. Good thing we sat in the center where no one else was or they may have lost their seat!

This was one really pretty movie location for a scene from Six Days Seven Nights with Harrison Ford. It's a little village that is still set up like it was for the movie.

E: "Fine, I'll take a picture with you, Mom, but you've got 10 seconds and I'm not smiling."

The boat took us to a little park in the jungle where there was a short hike to the Fern Grotto. The hike was gorgeous - truly a lush jungle, but the Fern Grotto wasn't anything too spectacular. They said it really never recovered since the 1992 hurricane wiped most of it out. It's a giant cave in the underside of this cliff where lots of fern used to grow upside down. As you can see, there's not much there these days.

Here's what it used to look like pre-1992

But we still had the entertainment that you see in the shot above with traditional Hawaiian singing and hula so it was fun.

After the hike to the Fern Grotto the boat took us back and on the way taught us some hula dances. E loved watching everyone standing and swaying (mostly seniors) and it was actually pretty funny to us too ;)

Then we went to check out the Wailua Falls because we didn't get a chance to see it last time we were here on vacation. Here I am snapping a pic (check out those guns! Haha).