Day 4 – Finding Focus and Making a Plan

Most days on vacation lack focus (except for sunset watching on island vacations) or a plan, today was the exception. We had a mission, a trip to the North Shore Soap Company, our entire day would focus on and around that visit.

Before we get there though, Mike had a run, very short. We had breakfast of eggs, swiss chard and coconut toast topped with nut butter. While eating breakfast we watched parents walk their keiki to school, usually with the keiki lagging behind or crying. It was the first day of school here in Hawaii, I felt the children’s pain.

After that is was pack the bags and off we went. As we dropped into Wailua, my heart always skips a beat, for me it just beautiful this side of the island. Pictures from an Iphone can’t capture it.

First stop was the beach across from Dillingham airport, just for a quick picture and to see if anyone was kite surfing today.

Nope, so we headed to “Horse Beach” or rather Makaleha Beach to sit for a bit. This is one of our favorite go to places to watch the planes “poop” people out and it is always empty of people on the beach. We set up our new beach canopy that we brought with us and went for a walk.

Last time we were here, five years ago, the beach was level and flat, not today, also the trees were cut way back and the horse land around the beach was for sale (not to self, purchase powerball tickets to buy two lots here when we win). We sat for a while, enjoying the views and snacked on some goodies. We aren’t sit on the beach for hours kind of people, but today we made it over an hour of sitting.

After that time, our mission was at hand, we had to focus on getting goodies for the gift boxes for people who made large monetary donations to our Oahu HeartWalk on Saturday. Shameless plug here, if you donate $200 or more we will send you a gift box. Just click on the link on the words, Oahu Heart Walk.

I also needed some lotion and soap, because we only brought enough to last a few days. You see, eight years ago we discovered the North Shore Soap Factory and we have not used another soap bar or lotion since. I order directly from them!

After that we went over to another gift place to pick up a few more items for the gift boxes. We then headed into Haleiwa to stop at North Shore Goodies for jams and coconut peanut butter. We also needed food. We tried to find parking for Wailua Bakery for lunch, but no luck so we continued on our way. We had another gift giving focus to stop at, North Shore Macadamia Nut Company.

We thought we would head back into Haleiwa to grab lunch somewhere and then we spotted it, another coffee place, Island Vintage Coffee. We had been searching for decent coffee tumblers to take to the beach, we found some on amazon the other day and placed them in our cart, well we walked in there were what we were looking for, with the islands on them and in HOT PINK, oh yes I did purchase it. We ordered a turkey panini with a frozen coconut mocha and picked up another bag of coffee for the house. That sandwich was probably one of the best we’ve ever had.

We had plans to stop at Costco and Foodland on the way home, but two small farm stands called to us, we stopped and picked up some more fruit. Thus we crossed the big box stores off the list for today.

At this point it was late for us, after 2, so we made one last stop at Green World Coffee Farm for more goodies for the gift boxes.

We headed home in somewhat rush hour traffic. Once back at the house, I unpacked and Mike walked to the beach for a swim. I thought I would take a nap, but that frozen mocha had kicked in.