Hanalei sandcastle competition 2010

We spent last Saturday at Hanalei bay amidst a group of sand castle builders. Our friend Jeff was the cofounder of the first annual Hanalei sandcastle competition. He and another guy put together a family friendly competition with lots of prizes without a lot of pressure. Jeff camped at Hanalei the night before and built the ALOHA sandcastle below. The detail of each letter was truly impressive. The competition was free to sign up and the beach was covered with participants. Kyleigh competed in the keiki (childrens) division and won a free ice cream at cold stone creamery (as did all of the kids). She really worked hard on her sandcastle and was pretty proud of it. We signed up for the family division but did not work very hard. Our "castle" was mostly a pile of sand by the end of the day. The guy who won the competiton built a sand sculpture of a guy surfing on a shark with the wave coming up behind him. Other awards went to a sculpture of the mountains behind Hanalei bay and the kids favorite, the fire breathing dragon below. However, they were distraught that the fire was coming out of it's nose and not it's mouth. Mike tried to use body boards strapped together to form his base. It was looking good until he unstrapped the body boards and it fell to the ground. He then built a huge spearfisherman laying on his stomach. That was pretty cool but people had a hard time deciding what it was. For those of us who weren't serious builders we had a great day playing in the water. Rusty has a new waterproof camera that he played with all day. He can even take videos underwater. We can finally have beach pictures.

We will be looking forward to the second annual Hanalei sandcastle building competition.