This morning we actually slept in which was awesome. Then we put on our running clothes and headed out on quite a morning run. We ran all the way down Kalakaua Ave. until we came to Monsarrat Ave. and then turned toward Diamond Head. It was about 3 miles until we reached the entrance to Diamond Head State Park. Once at the bottom Mike was kind enough to let me run on ahead. I ran up until I got to the paid entrance gate. We both went in together and then once at the actual trail, we took off on a run up to the top. Since it wasn’t super early in the morning the regular crowds were out and about on the trail. It was fairly easy to continue running up the trail, having to stop here and there, to get around people. Once I reached the set of stairs, I waited for Mike who I knew wasn’t too far behind. For a brief moment I decided to just head up the stairs, then turned around because I thought I had better wait to ascend the last section together with Mike. Turns out that as I was heading down to wait for Mike, he was heading up. Neither one of us saw the other as we were so focused on our footing. I waited for another 5 minutes at the landing at the bottom of the stairs for Mike and then decided that I had better head up. It truly was crazy that we had missed seeing each other in passing. The views from up on top were ridiculous. As we were starting to head back down and small rain shower fell on us. It actually felt really good. We stayed together on the descent and were able to run most of the way down. We ran together all the way back to Kalakaua Ave where we stopped at Lanikai Smoothie for some amazing smoothie bowls. It was a smoothie on the bottom with a layer of granola and topped off with freshly cut up fruit. It was the perfect recovery meal. We walked over to the beach to eat our smoothie bowls and then walked back to our hotel along the beach. We got back and relaxed for a while before getting showered and ready to head to church. In typical Hawaiian fashion, someone must have been a little too relaxed and didn’t update the meeting house times on LDS tools because when we showed up at 1:00pm for church, no one was there. Oh well…at least we tried. We hurried back to the hotel, quickly grabbed a sandwich and headed over to our sales presentation. It was more of the same as the Marriott presentation. We definitely were not interested in what we think is a total scam. However, we listened, got our free 25,000 Hilton points and headed on out to Ko’Olina for a nice evening of watching the sunset and dinner at Mina’s Fish House. The sunset was magnificent. We stood up on the rocks behind the Four Seasons and just watched as the sun went down. It was absolutely the perfect sunset. There were plenty of people out doing the same, even a recently married couple getting their photos taken. While we waited for our dinner reservation, we continued the walk down to the Marriott resorts and by the time we got back to the Four Seasons they were ready to sit us for dinner. Dinner started out a little rocky with a super casual and not very attentive waiter. However, the food was pretty amazing and the views unparalleled. It was a beauty evening of eating dinner right next to the water and a great way to end our fun day.
 |  |
