After Dole Plantation, we parked in Hale’iwa and shopped the main strip. I was impressed by the quality of the stores. I thought it would be your typical, sea side, t-shirt shops. There was like, one of those, but the rest had great items from ocean gear to clothes to house decor to jewelry. I could’ve spent a lot of money, but I ended up only buying a book called “Surfing animals alphabet” for a friend’s child. We did a first pass through the stores and made mental notes of what we might like to return to after seeing everything.

We stopped at Stonefish Grill for lunch, it was conveniently at the end of the strip, and I had a crab cake salad that was PHENOMENAL. Erin was well pleased with the steak poke. Thankfully, at the beginning where we parked there was a general store, and I bought a SD card from there to hold me over.

After lunch, we worked our way back through and committed to some purchases (after taking some time to mull them over). Then we made our way to Laniakea beach, which is known for turtles. This is a very narrow, picturesque bridge you have to pass through to get there. Some cars choose to wait for you to go through before attempting.

There’s street parking and I was excited we were able to grab a spot. I told Erin not to get too excited, I didn’t know how often turtles were actually there. Either it was our lucky day or they love this spot, but we must’ve seen at least five turtles on the beach and another five in the water. In this next picture alone, you can see three.

This whole day was the epitome of Hawaii, but this certainly was a highlight.

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There were a ton of fun to observe eating and letting the waves just take them back into the water and push them back up. I loved this stop.