…and here we go with the rental car!

When we began planning The Big Trip, our surfer boy, Tucker, had only one request: we must visit the North Shore.

(Actually, that’s not true…he had many requests, including cliff diving, amongst other ridiculous ones. But taking a day trip out of Honolulu was an easy item to address, especially since the island of Oahu is only 44 miles long.)

We were up and at ’em before daybreak once again on our third day in Hawaii, but we couldn’t pick up the car until 7 a.m. (most everyone knows I am not a morning person, so even typing that sentence cracks me up.). We borrowed towels from the hotel, loaded up, and headed north. First stop: Sunset Beach.

The North Shore of Oahu is famous for big waves and big beaches–pretty much everything a surfer desires…but the most spectacular display of these waves occurs predominantly in the winter months. Turn around to the summer months (we’re still in the Northern Hemisphere here), and these crazy spots of monster waves featured on YouTube are a bit in hibernation…just a bit. They’re still crazy enough to impress the socks off a gaggle of teenagers. I can vouch for that.

Sunset Beach, a little less than an hour from Honolulu, is pretty much a straight shot north up the middle of the island through fields of sugar cane and pineapple plants. The sand on Sunset Beach is ridiculously deep and quicksandish and–to be honest–tough to walk in, but the beach was stunning and almost eerily empty (perhaps because we arrived at the wee old hour of just quarter past 8 in the morning). We managed to keep the boys out of the water here and only stayed on Sunset, squashing up its ankle deep squishy sand for about 30 minutes.

Next stop: Ehukai Beach Park, home of the Banzai Pipeline where waves can roll in at 20 feet high. Fortunately (for me, not for our surfing kiddo), these ginormous waves only show up during the winter months on the North Shore. Still, the waves were pretty crazy, and the boys couldn’t stand not getting in the water.

The photos don’t do it justice; waves taller than the boys would come crashing down on a shore break–meaning the wave just sort of shows up out of the blue and then rolls over right on the shore. The boys were never in water above their waists, yet they would be completely submerged when the waves would come. It was fascinating to watch (and a bit nerve wracking).

After an hour or so of being slammed into the shore, we needed a little break. We headed into the town of Haleiwa.

Russ and Tucker are surf-shop junkies and the North Shore Surf Shop did not disappoint. Right across the street was a beautiful little restaurant, Haleiwa Beach House, so we popped in for a drink and a snack. Of course, nothing in Hawaii is cheap, so while the full menu there looked great (I particularly loved the garlic edamame), we opted to mosey on in to Haleiwa proper to search for something a little less extravagant for lunch.

After lunch, we headed back out of Haleiwa Town towards Shark’s Cove for some snorkeling. I’m not the world’s best snorkeler–something about seeing all those living, moving critters underneath me gives me the willies–but Shark’s Cove was quite fun. We were grateful to have brought water shoes, though. There were tons of sharp rocks, and it’s a slippery walk to get out into the cove.

Snorkeling Shark’s Cove is fantastic–if you have the gear. We all enjoyed it a ton and saw tons of sea-stuff (very colorful fish, flow-y sucker-creatures, what-have-you…remember, underwater viewing ain’t exactly my jam).

Last adventure-y spot for the day: Waimea Bay. I offered to drive from Shark’s Cove to Waimea, which was a critical error in mom-ness. See, for the past two months, Tucker had been jockeying to “cliff dive” while in Hawaii. He showed us multiple crazy, ridiculously dangerous videos of individuals making ridiculously bad life choices by jumping off various ridiculously stupid cliffs/rocks/jetties/what-have-you. We spent many a night ’round our dinner table with me going from merely voicing stern objection to this idea to me absolutely losing my mind over the idea of this idea.

But back to the adventure at hand: it’s notoriously difficult to park at Waimea Bay and its Beach Park. I dropped the boys and the other parent man-child/co-conspirator off, with the intention to meet them *right over there* on the beach as soon as I could park.

Well, they weren’t lying about the tricky parking situation. It was Buzzardville up in there; cars stalking folks walking out towards the lot/road, and it took forever…about 20 minutes, to be exact.

Upon finally winning my round of The Hunger Games in the parking lot, I grabbed the towels and made my way to our designated meeting area where I realized the folks I were to meet were not there.

Hmmm.

Then I looked around and saw the freaking stupid “cliff” from which Tucker had been wanting to “cliff dive” for the past two months. Guess where I found the rest of my family?

At the Waimea Jump Rock.

To say I was not a happy camper after this foolishness is quite the understatement.

Luckily–as is the case with most places in Oahu–the rest of the beach was gorgeous and semi-non-life-threatening.

Finally, we packed up and left the mayhem of Waimea’s magnetic (for some members of our family) Jump Rock and took a slight detour back through Haleiwa Town to visit Matsumoto’s Shave Ice for, well, one of their world famous shave ices. (We’re still not sure why it’s called “shave ice” rather than “shaveD ice” but the line was long and the boys say it was 110% worth it.)

We rolled on back to Honolulu late that afternoon with no plans for dinner. We all desperately needed a shower, so we handled that scenario with a little bit of UB40 playing in the background and then found ourselves with 3 exhausted boys, ready for bed. So Russ and I decided to pop down to a restaurant underneath our hotel; at the last minute, Jack pulled himself out of bed to join us.

Arancino was surprisingly hopping and surprisingly tasty. We 3 sat at a small table in the bar and had a lovely conversation and some excellent pasta to fill our bellies. Jack and I stumbled back upstairs while Russ went in search of the perfect swimsuit a little farther down the road (at least that’s what he said he was doing *just kidding* he came back with a new suit for himself and for Theo).

We had one more full day scheduled with the car and had our sights set on a solid hike followed-up with seeing several exciting parts of the windward side of Oahu on Friday. We had our fingers crossed that we’d all sleep past…oh…5 a.m. on Friday morning, but it wasn’t going to be in our cards (just yet)…