Category: travel

I am the family travel planner. It’s always been that way. Either because I’m so good at doing it or Mike doesn’t care where we go, what we see, and/or what we do while we are traveling. Maybe he’s just happy to be on the move?

More than once, people have told me I could make a living as a travel planner. I disagree. Travel is a very personal thing. Everyone has particular likes and dislikes that must be considered to make a trip a success. From things to see and do, type of lodging, preferred methods of getting around, type of food, experiences, tourist spots, etc., to amount of time allotted in any one spot and locations to avoid. There are a lot of factors to be considered. Especially when visiting a place like Hawaii with its multiple, diverse islands. You have to know yourself and your travel companions very well to “get” what they like or not because many people have a difficult time articulating all of the little details or nuances that can make or break a trip.

I always start trip preparation by asking Mike to let me know if there’s anything in particular he wants to see and/or do in a particular spot or area. His list for Hawaii was short; Pearl Harbor and Volcanoes National Park. Easy-peasy. For me, it was Volcanoes National Park, beaches, beaches, and more beaches. Because the island of Oahu is so populated, if it weren’t for the fact that Pearl Harbor is there, we may have skipped the island altogether.

I’m glad we didn’t skip Oahu, of course. Even I wanted to see where Japan attacked the US in 1941.

One can’t help but try to imagine what it must have been like to have been there during the firestorm. Planes flying low overhead, bombs dropping and exploding, fire and smoke belching and billowing out of structures, people lying dead, dismembered, or maybe only injured. Imagine the myriad sounds and smells…

I imagine there were a lot of screams, too. It wasn’t just the military under attack, although that was the focus. There were many, many civilians in the area, too. Women and children. Elderly people. All going about their normal lives.

The National Park Service (NPS) always does a good job helping people understand the places the NPS was created to protect. There were a number of displays, photographs, artifacts, etc., as well as various videos playing interviews with people who had been there that fateful morning and survived to tell about it. Powerful stuff.

As explained on the NPS website:

The Battleship USS Arizona was bombed on December 7, 1941, about 15 minutes into the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, killing 1,177 sailors and Marines. Over 900 could not be recovered from the ship and remain onboard. Today, Arizona rests where she fell, submerged in about 40 feet of water just off the coast of Ford Island.

Designed by Honolulu architect Alfred Preis, the USS Arizona Memorial was built in 1962 on top of (but not touching) the sunken USS Arizona. The memorial honors the memory of the crew of the USS Arizona, as well as all the other service members and civilians killed in the attack. A total of 2,341 sailors, soldiers, and Marines died as a result of the attack, as well as 49 civilians.

If you’d like to learn more about the memorial and see how it looks from the air, with the sunken ship visible underneath, CLICK HERE.

The pier at the actual site is in need of repair, so we could not go inside the structure and look down upon the ship, which is mostly intact and resting on the harbor floor with about 900 bodies entombed inside.

 

 

 

 

It was a beautiful day for a boat ride.

 

 

 

After a few sobering hours at Pearl Harbor, we were both ready to move on. Our next stop was the Pu’u ‘Ualaka’a State Wayside, a state park I read about in a travel guide, which is described on its website as, “Conveniently located close to downtown Honolulu, Puʻu ʻUalakaʻa State Wayside provides a beautiful, panoramic view of southern Oahu from Diamond Head to Pearl Harbor.”

Who can resist a good panoramic view?

I hadn’t seen pictures, I had only read a little bit about the park. It was a winding, twisty, steep, narrow drive to get to the top. Essentially, we were driving through a jungle. The road was paved and in relatively good condition as there are homes scattered along the route, but the vegetation was very thick and dense.

We finally came to a pull-off where we could get out and see. That’s Honolulu in the shot above.

According to the state’s website, “Diamond Head is a defining feature of the view known to residents and tourists of Waikīkī. The volcanic tuff cone is a State Monument. While part of it is closed to the public and serves as a platform for antennas used by the US government, the crater’s proximity to Honolulu’s resort hotels and beaches makes the rest of it a popular destination.”

There are trails for people to climb to the top of Diamond Head, but we weren’t feeling quite that energetic.

 

 

 

Perhaps it’s clear why we wanted to stay on the other, “wilder” side of the island? It just looked like a big city from afar. So much so that I almost said, “screw visiting Waikiki.” Almost. But we were THAT close to a world-famous beach, I figured we really should make our way through the concrete jungle and its masses of people for a closer look.

The view out over the water from the beach was lovely. I can certainly see the appeal of the beach to people who are visiting the city and have no car and/or no desire to explore less-populated places on the island. But the view looking inland from the beach was just like the view of any other big city except maybe a bit more-colorful, especially since lots of folks were wearing Hawaiian shirts.

I much prefer the wilder side of things.

It may not be as gentle a place for swimming, but it was definitely more peaceful.

 

Even though the beach was more-crowded at that point than we’d ever seen it, I still preferred it to the beach in the city.

It was a long, busy day for both of us. We had a nice, relaxing late-lunch/early dinner, drank some beer, napped, drank some beer, and then started packing in preparation for our first island hop over to Molokai the next morning.

We did capture some interesting pics from the plane the next day.

 

 

 

It wouldn’t be the worst place in the world to live, I guess. But it certainly will not be my first choice if I ever need to relocate to Hawaii.

I’ll have to tell you about the whole island-hopping experience on small airplanes in another post. I was not sad to leave Oahu behind, because I was really, REALLY looking forward to seeing the gem of a cottage I found for us to spend five nights of complete quiet relaxation on Molokai. It made even the North Shore look like a densely populated place in comparison.

The North Shore apartment we rented was not fancy. It was the first floor of a family’s home, although we never actually saw the family. We did see and hear their dogs. And, during the last full day of our stay, a group of men were working on a project in the backyard. The best thing about the place was its location, specifically that it was just a five-minute walk to the beach. Other than the dog noises and those workmen, the house was relatively quiet and was situated in a lovely yard full of tropical plants.

There may have actually been two different families living in the spaces above us. There were at least two dogs.

It’s always interesting seeing shrub-sized plants like these growing outdoors. Where we live, one only ever sees very small specimens of tropical plants like that growing in pots at garden centers or many indoors at a large botanical garden.

We have lizards near us, but none that look quite like the one pictured. There were several of them in and around the garden.

There was almost always a breeze going while we were on Oahu. Every photo I captured of a Bird of Paradise flower in full bloom was blurry. But I think this bud is interesting enough to share.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Apparently there are a lot of different kinds of palm trees.

The next picture was capture behind the apartment.

The rest of the images shared here were captured during a walk to and from the beach.

The image on the far-left of that collage was taken from the beach, heading toward the apartment.

The yard of the next-door neighbor was meticulously maintained. I saw the homeowner on several occasions, carefully tending to the many plants.  It was pretty amazing.

 

 

 

The scene captured in the next two images made me chuckle aloud.

I imagined the person doing the power-washing, a chore that can be quite time-consuming, wanting to get done quickly, so they decided to make wave patterns on the concrete. It’s sort of appropriate, since the house is near the beach, but have you ever seen patterns left behind like that?

I really just think the person doing the power-washing could only think about the beach, i.e., how much they love the beach, how happy they are to live at the beach, how badly they wanted to get back to the beach to swim or surf or whatever, so they came up with this very creative way to do just that. Once they saw how long it took to get the sidewalk really clean, as pictured at the bottom of the image, they said “screw this!” and improvised. I suspect they didn’t really set out to make wave patterns on the sidewalk, they just wanted to get the job done faster so they could get back to the beach. Quite clever, if you ask me.

That was our North Shore neighborhood. In my next post I will be sharing pics from the other, more densely populated side of the island, captured the day we visited Honolulu, specifically Pearl Harbor and the world famous Waikiki Beach.

The North Shore of Oahu is definitely the wilder side of the island. It is far less-populated and less-developed than the south side of the island, which is where you’ll find the city of Honolulu.

I’m happy to report that the “lost” folder of images has been found. The image below is the first one I captured with my point-and-shoot camera. This beach is the one I refer to as “our beach” because it was only about a five-minute walk from the apartment we rented.

I didn’t mention in my previous post just how ready I was for a vacation. Mike and I are blessed in so many ways, but life has presented some challenges of late. Our parents are aging and their health is declining. My Dad is worse off than my mother-in-law (MIL). He’s been dealing with side-effects of pelvic radiation he underwent about 13 years ago to treat prostate cancer. It, along with my mother’s death, has taken a toll on his mental health. Not only am I not sure how to help him, I’m not entirely convinced that he wants help. I mean, I’ve been able to spend some time with him and help address some of the issues, but we need to come up with a long-term solution. My brother has spent some time up there, too, but he lives even further away than we do.

The new job has also been challenging. There are some other family and friend issues I don’t really want to get into here. Just trust me when I say I’ve been quite stressed all year and REALLY needed a break from everything.

The entire time we were in Hawaii, I blocked reality out of my brain. I refused to let my mind linger on any troubling thoughts. It wasn’t easy, but I did it, and it was sooooo refreshing. It did feel a little selfish, but I think I needed that mental break even more than the physical relaxation.

There was certainly enough visual interestingness to help keep me distracted.

That first sunset was a little disappointing. It was beautiful, don’t get me wrong, it just wasn’t the most dramatic sunset I’ve ever seen. What was cool however was seeing just how many people appeared on the beach specifically to watch the sun dip below the horizon. I guess it’s just what people do in paradise.

I took lots of pictures. I was trying really hard to capture that one perfect beach image.

The sky was so blue. And the water, with its varying shades of blue, was absolutely mesmerizing. Pictures don’t do it justice.

Being right there, standing on that beach, was definitely an immersive experience. Couple the stunning visuals with the sound of the waves gently lapping at the shore. The warm sand caressing my feet. The tingling feeling on my skin. I swear, it was almost as if my skin were singing as it soaked up the sun’s warming rays. There was a cooling breeze, too. And birds singing. Not seagulls, songbirds.

I really did spend a lot of time on that beach.

I did eventually return to the apartment where Mike was perfectly content to be reading and relaxing. Later, though, we got in the car and made our way a little west of our apartment to see Turtle Beach (not its real name).

Yes, there really was a turtle there.

It almost looks dead, right? Apparently, a lot of people who happen upon turtles like that think they ARE dead.

Because I was careful taking both of those pictures, you can’t tell how many people are milling around the poor thing, gawking. You can see what I mean in the next shot.

We couldn’t bear to stand there amongst the throng. So we got our chairs out of the car, walked further down the beach and found a shady spot to sit and chill.

We sat there for an hour or so. I actually lost track of time, which is a good thing. Then we went and had a late lunch before continuing west to an even more-remote part of the island.

That was where we got our first real look at a bunch of lava rocks.

There weren’t as many critters in the tide pools as we expected, I guess because the waves are so strong.

 

 

 

 

 

It was really a lovely place. You can’t tell from the pics that it was very windy there. The waves were crashing against the rocky shore. It was definitely music to me ears. 🙂