Sometime around 4 am, Damon awoke to see a bright glowing light on the horizon. It's rare to see lights on the horizon in general here, but this one was unusually bright. He woke up Amy and they got out the binoculars to see what was going on. We were thinking it was either a ship on fire or a volcano but the image didn't look like either of those. We just saw an orangish light way off in the ocean. Looking through the binoculars it appeared there was water splashing up or possibly steam or smoke coming up. Damon called his sister in Orlando to ask if she saw anything on Google News about it. After a brief search she concluded that there was no special event. About half an hour later it was clear the light was moving. We ignored it and went back to sleep.

When we reawoke it was time to prepare for the zip 'n dip. The zip 'n dip is a tour through a privately owned ranch with a series of zip lines that pass over ravines and streams. They guide you on a total of 8 zip lines, as well as a fun little walk across a swing bridge, a brief swim in the stream, and some meat, cheese, fruit, cookies and pita bread for lunch. The lines were fun and the tour guides, Derek and Sherri, really made the trip all the more enjoyable. Damon used the GPS to calculate maximum speed and used Garmin Mapsource to attempt to create a topographical map of where the zip lines were. Unfortunately, because of how he had to hold the GPS, the maps didn't turn out really well. However, he did clock over 26 miles per hour on one of the lines. Both Damon and Amy took video during the zip.

At one point Sherri pointed out some guava trees and showed us how to eat them right off the tree. They were so good! Derek showed us some various plants and berries, too.

Since the swimming hole was fresh water, it was COLD. Oh, sorry, we're supposed to say "refreshing." We both jumped in and floated on inner tubes for a few minutes, but Amy got wimpy pretty quickly and got out, never to return. They fed us a nice simple lunch that filled us quite sufficiently, and then we were off again to finish our adventure.

Toward the end of the excursion, on our way to our last zip, we were treated to a beautiful rainbow across the ranch, and you could see a faint double, too. We could even see where it ended in the far off trees - it looked like you could just run right over there and get your well-deserved pot of gold. Throughout the day Amy had been wearing a lei that Jeff had sent to our room the previous day with some champagne and Gatorade in honor of our wedding. It smelled truly heavenly. Even Derek kept commenting on how great it smelled, although he and Sherri couldn't agree on what type of flower it was made of. Derek said pua kenikeni, and Sherri said stephanotis. (Amy has since found pictures of both and still can't decide what it was. Both flowers look the same and have strong fragrances and are used for leis. At the airport Amy picked up some stephanotis seeds, so if they grow and flower, maybe we can then determine what the lei was made of.) Anyway, a beautiful fresh flower lei's time is limited, and this one was getting wilted and worn out during the tour. But it hung in there like a trooper, so that on the last zip, Amy could ceremonially remove it from her neck and fling it into the lush ravine as she flew over it. Unfortunately no picture of the event, but it was just a great way to finish off an exhilarating experience.

After the trip we were exhausted. We really hadn't planned on doing nothing the rest of the day, but we were simply beat. We did make one stop at Hanalei Beach on the way back to the condo. We hadn't considered that it would be so late that we would be watching the sunset, but that's indeed what we ended up doing. We took some pictures of the sunset over "Bali Hai" and some ominous rainclouds over the mountains, then we drove back to the condo and spent a few hours there, playing in the pool in the dark. Amy went in the Jacuzzi, although it took her a while because she had a slight sunburn. Damon wasn't about to get near it and was perfectly content with the cool pool water soothing his rosy back and shoulders. Later on Amy got the urge to get in the car and try to find a better view of the stars. It was hard to get away from the lights of Poipu but we found a little spot and watched more shooting stars for a short time. After that it was time to sleep.