Puerto Vallarta Adventure

This was quite an interesting trip. We were initially headed to Alaska for the weekend with my old roommate Spencer, but when the flights filled up at the last minute we decided Mexico would be fun! What an adventure it turned out to be.

This is Guayabitos, about 45 minutes north of Puerto Vallarta. We flew down early Friday, went and grabbed our cheapo rental car, and took off up the coast. We were going to stay the weekend at a friends place here in Los Ayala. Getting there turned out to be harder than we thought.

After attempting to get up the hill of death to the house, we were all muddy and a little beat up, so we decided to go to this restaraunt on the hill. It had quite the view and was so nice to just sit and hang out, but Chels and I didn't know what half the food was, so the food was a little less than desireable. Notice how our plates are still full....

After we ate what we could, we headed up to the house. It was a crazy bumpy ride in a little piece of crap car, but we did make it. We couldn't pull up to the house because the road had caved in at the entrance, so we got out and walked up to the house.

This is the house we went to. It's the pink one on the right. It actually has a gorgeous view over- looking the beach. It is a really cool location in the middle of this jungle, but comes with all the blessings of a jungle.

As we were climbing to the house we almost walked through the web of this freaky guy. The little one on the left is larger than 90% of the spiders in America, so you can only guess how big the one on the right is. It literally was as big as Chelsea's hand.

They were all over the place. There were none in the house, but they were all over the place outside as we walked around. You had to be really careful not to walk through their webs, which were actually a golden silk thread if looked at properly. Later, we were told that these Banana Spiders are not poisonous, but they were still freaking scary.

Amidst all these freaky spiders, there was this little preying mantis on the railing. It was about the size of a penny. It was SO small and cute! There was also a frog on the side of the house!

This was the view from the back balcony and it really was amazing. We stayed here in Guayabitos for a night, and then decided to go down to Puerto Vallarta for a couple days.

In Puerto Vallerta we decided a zipline tour would be fun. We went to El Eden, the film set for the movie Predator. It was gorgeous driving down the coast and then through the jungle and the little towns.
To prepare for our zip lining adventure, we needed to have close-toed shoes, which neither of us had. So we headed to Wal-Mart and got these awesome cheapo mexico shoes which suited us perfectly. Chels actually really liked them!

This is Mike, swinging through the trees!

Ew, ya, we look like dorks, but had a good time nonetheless.

And this is Chels doing her swinging thing.

We were pretty hot and sweaty due to the hiking and humidity and after a few minutes debate, we decided the cold water would be good for us.

Michael sliding down the waterfall. It was really scary climbing over to the spot where I start. Then it was scary because I got stuck in the current of the waterfall. Bobble-head Michael!

Doing a backflip off the rope swing. We were really glad we decided to play in the water.

Any rain really takes a toll on these dirt roads in Mexico.

It made for exciting, jaw clenching car rides though!

Saying goodbye to Mexico. What a random, fun trip it turned out to be!

Diamondbacks and Cardinals

We went to the Arizona Diamondbacks game with Eddie and Carrie. The stadium is awesome and the game was fun, but I must admit that baseball games go on forever! It was cool to go to a game, but I don't know when we will be going back.

Sorry the pictures are not that great, but I took them on my phone. The Diamondbacks won, so it ended up being a good game.

We also went to a Cardinals game. This was another amazing stadium. This stadium was unreal, actually. Chels thinks it looks like a giant alien saucer! The traffic was crazy on the way out there-the stadium is WAY out there-in the middle of no where! Cardinals won this one. It was a cool experience to be at a professional football game.

Both games were really fun. Now we only need a professional soccer team here in the good ol' state of AZ so Michael will have another source of joy!

Maui for the 4th of July!

We were going to go to Honolulu, but the morning we were supposed to take off the flight filled up. So we decided Maui was a good backup. We flew there and found a place to stay for cheap and spent the first night hanging out on the beach. It was kind of a make shift trip, but we had a ton of fun.

This was on the top of Haleakala Crater for sunrise. We woke up WAY early and cruised up the mountain so we wouldn't miss the sunrise. We barely made it to witness this.

On the road to Hana we stopped and took pictures of these really cool trees. They're the Rainbow Eucalyptus Tree's. Our friend called them the gay trees. They were a little different.


As is Michael sometimes. They brought out his inner self.

This was another stop on the road to Hana. Another black sand beach. We thought these were really cool. Even though people say the road isn't worth the drive, they are wrong. It was worth every bit of it. It is one of the most beautiful drives I've ever been on.

This is at Seven Sacred Pools. We were the only ones that climbed up this top fall, along with our new-found friend Chris. We met Chris and Shirnest at the pools and after hanging out for a couple hours ended up deciding to stay another day and sleep at their place. So they let us stay for free and we took the flight out the next day.

This is the "nuddie" beach. We never went down because there were nakky people down there, but we thought we would get a picture of it. It looked really pretty. Technically it is illegal, but no one really cares down here.

This is the really cool black beach. This is at Waianapanapa State Park and we had a ton of fun here. We picked a guy up on the road to Hana and he told us to come here. He was this really funny old guy and made us take a picture with his "Thank God for Hana" sign.

That rock out there that pokes up is where we jumped from in these next videos. It was crazy cool!

This was a crazy scary jump. The waves were beating in against the rocks and you were standing on this 40 foot rock and the wind was blowing pretty fiercely. . .so much fun!

Chels always looks funny jumping off the rocks.See what I mean. Look in the middle on the left. That's Chels all bent over jumping off the rock.
Michael doing a backflip off the little cliff. We had a lot of fun here at the Seven Sacred Pools. I absolutely love Hawaii for this reason!
This is the sign the hitchhiker gave us. We look like such dorks!
This is a little LDS chapel in Maui. It is the first LDS church built on the islands, so I told Chels we had to find it and take some pictures of it.
This is inside with some of the original pictures. It was such a cool little church. Kind of hard to find, but way worth it.This was the beach we hung out on for the 4th of July. I would have taken some pictures of the fireworks, but none of them really looked like anything, so you'll just have to imagine fireworks over the ocean.
It looks like a really peaceful beach at sunset, but a couple hundred yards away a huge group of kids showed up and drank the night away. Police showed up at one point, so I can only imagine what was going on over there. But we had a lot of fun down on our end. Chels took a couple of pics like this and I couldn't decide which one was the best, so I put this up.
This is another picture of beautiful Hawaii. It was so pretty there. I think I could live there for a while and be perfectly content. I wish we had more time in Hana. We were told not to go out there, but if we ever go again we will probably spend most of our time there. There were a ton of waterfalls and beautiful shorelines as you wind your way through the trees.
Everyone thought we were crazy for only staying a couple days, but when the flights are free it's oh so worth it.
This is another pic from the Haleakala crater. We got up here right before the sun started coming out over the clouds.
We love Hawaii and even though it was a last minute change in plans, we still had a ton of fun in Maui.