"It's 4 am and I can't get no sleep. I mean what's the point..."

Today's song quote is from "Love, Love, Love" by Tristan Prettyman; although the song contains bad grammar, and has a repetitive title, it's very cute and has made it into quite a few mixes on my iPod.
I actually slept in until 4 am this morning. I'm trying to be a little more quiet, and, so far, D is sleeping like a baby.

So, D and I have come to realize that The Bean, does not miss us one iota (I love that word.) She won't talk to us on the phone more than a couple of seconds informing us that she is just too busy. Little Stinker. It makes me happy that she is having such a great time with Grandma, but I miss her like crazy.

Anyway, I was never able to go back to sleep yesterday morning. So I just spent extra time getting ready. D stayed up as well, and we were out and about the hotel by 6:30. We lucked out and the gift shop was fully stocked with Red Bull. Breakfast didn't begin until 7:00 so we went out to the Hotel's lagoon. It was so refreshing to splash around in the water and we were the only out there. Breakfast also rocked. The cafe was beachside, had an excellent buffet, and we were the only one's dining through much of breakfast.

After breakfast we drove West towards Kaena Point State Park. I was pretty shocked driving through some of the areas. The South West side of the island appears to be very depressed. The houses are all very run down and many businesses in the area were permanently closed. The poverty in this area was so prevalent, I would not have guessed from the looks of it that we were actually in the United States. We also noticed that about half of the beach parks contained extensive shanty/tent towns. There were areas where it looked as if 20-30 people had taken up permanent residence in structures made out of cardboard and plywood on the beach. I really don't know if this is a result of extreme poverty, or a choice made by some really hard-core surfers, but it appeared to be a little of both. I guess if one must live in abject poverty, doing so on a pristine beach in Hawaii would be a number one choice (not to make light of the situation). I mean, seriously, the shanty-town beaches were white sand, crystal clear blue water, and some of them had schools of dolphins swimming out in the water very near the beach. How sweet would that be to wake up to every morning?

Kaena Point State Park is absolutely stunning. I thought it looked cool from the pictures on the web, but I did not expect all that we saw. Since we went so early, there were very few people around, and we saw only 2 other couples in our 2 mile hike out to the point. D got annoyed with me because I stopped to take pictures of everything, but I figure if you are in a place that is that gorgeous, you have to take tons of pictures, because there is no way that someone can remember all of the beauty. Plus, I'm just a photo nut.
The hike was right next to the coastline the entire way, and the other side of the trail rose to a steep stunningly beautiful mountain/hill range. It really felt as if D and I were Jack and Kate walking across the island in LOST (I know, I have a vivid imagination.) But, seriously, wait for the pictures.
Once at the point, D of course hunted out the lone letterbox, and I just chilled out on the coral watching the waves. At the point, you can either look out at either the South or North Shores. I chose to watch the North Shore, because the waves were huge. There were no surfers out in this region, but there was one lady out on the coral that got knocked over by a wave and almost washed out to sea. I swear I did not start laughing about this until she was safely back on shore.
On the hike back, D banned me from taking pictures (I snapped a few anyway) and we quickly made our way back to our car. The trail was getting pretty full by then, so I was happy to move on.
We headed back to our hotel and cleaned up, then drove East out to Waikiki. I have to say, I do not love Waikiki. It is crowded and touristy. Not only that, while walking around, there were alot of people who had small children that were not paying any attention to them. I watched one lady walking with a man who had a 2-3 year-old boy trailing behind her by about 10 feet. She paid absolutely no attention to whether or not the little one made it across as they went through intersections. It seriously creeped me out, because he was so little that if he made a miss-step out into traffic there would have been no way the cars would have been able to avoid him. It also struck me, that if someone were to take this boy, it would've taken the lady many blocks to realize he was gone. This lady and little boy were not the only ones, but we were behind them for awhile so the situation sticks out in my memory.
We went to the International Market, but it was more like a flea market... not at all what I expected. The banyan trees in the middle of it were pretty fantastic, though.
Waikiki has one major redeeming quality. The eats are fantastic here. We had a wide range of excellent restaurants from which to choose. We ended up going to a Japanese BBQ place called Gyu-kaku. The food was delicious and we had a blast cooking it ourselves.
The plan when we got back was to go swimming at the hotel pool or lagoon, but D just crashed.
Today we will be driving up the East coast of the island. There are supposed to be some really cute towns along that side. Plus we are moving to a hotel on the North Shore for one night before checking into the beach house on Monday.

I'll post pictures when I get back to GA... I forgot my USB cable for my camera.