If it wasn’t too long, this post could be more accurately titled, “That Time We Went to Kauai and Only Took Three Photos of One of the Most Beautiful Places We’ve Ever Visited”. Quite a mouthful, right? In truth, we took a few more than three – some of which include awkward beach timer photos that will never see the light of day on this blog – but how we took so few photos on what many, including me, consider to be a once in a lifetime trip to a beautiful tropical island is well beyond me.

I guess “once in a lifetime” only applies when your employer doesn’t fly you around the world though, and last month, Michael made his second trip back out to Kauai for work since the trip we took with my father and stepmother in 2009. While he was away “working”, and I was stuck buried under a few feet of snow, I dug back through my archives and found these three photos of our trip that I felt were good enough to share on the site. Initially, I berated myself for taking so few photos during our trip to this magnificent island – really, what kind of photographer am I? – but then I realized that the number of photos I took didn’t equate to the quality of the trip and the memories I made. On the contrary, I was simply taking in all of the wonders of Kauai – experiencing every moment and activity – the way I sometimes forget to with a camera around my neck.

There are no photos of the time we zip-lined through the jungle canopy, or the small boat ride through massive surf at the Na Pali coast. We have no instagrams of the cocktails we sipped by the pool, or the mornings we spent watching the sunrise from the cliffs. We simply have these three photos (and those awkward beach selfies), along with a handful of truly amazing memories – memories that we made without a camera or a phone in front of our faces. This way of travel seems a thing of the past, but I think that going forward on our tips, I’ll try to make the conscious effort to better balance camera time with real life time.

Photos taken by Meredith Perdue for Map & Menu.