ToadMama – Page 16 – ToadMama.com

May 9, 2019

Pearl Harbor and Waikiki

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.

Hawaii is pretty much in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

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…

It’s hard to image such a beautiful place under attack.

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.

Interpretive displays near the memorial.

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.

Pretty blue water visible on Waikiki Beach.

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.

View of Honolulu from just above the airport.

More of the city, which wasn’t visible in my pics from that wayside overlook.

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.

Best Diamond Head capture, thanks to Mike.

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.

April 30, 2019

North Shore Neighborhood

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.

Our apartment was the entire first floor.

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.

April 24, 2019

Oahu’s Wild Side

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.

More-remote beach on Oahu’s northern shore.

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. 🙂

April 22, 2019April 24, 2019

A Whole Lotta Nothing on Oahu

When Mike and I married in 1993, we decided that we would take a “big vacation,” one that involved air travel to a faraway place, every five years. The first trip was to Arizona in 1998. The second trip was to California in 2003. In 2008, we went to Alaska.

The plan got derailed a bit when we started vacationing with friends. We enjoyed a vacation in 2013, it just wasn’t specifically considered a 20th anniversary trip. We were both okay with that. The unspoken point of the plan has always been to make sure we travel and make time for us. That was particularly important in 1993 when we married. Between us, we had three young children. Our marriage was more than the joining of two people, it was the blending of two families, which came with its own unique set of challenges.

I have always been the one doing most of the planning. It’s always been up to me to do the research, find accommodations, and come up with the overall plan for each trip. Our the trips have gotten more and more interesting as the years have passed. Not only have our likes and dislikes evolved, there are far more tools available and a wider variety of choices in terms of accommodations. In 1993 when we got married, a trip to Cancun with Apple Vacations seemed really exotic. It wasn’t. It was fun, but Cancun caters to tourists and has a very American feel. Some people like that. We don’t.

Typical “touristy” vacations are not our thing. We don’t like crowds. We hate waiting in long lines. Neither of us like noise either, something that’s really hard to escape when visiting popular vacation hot spots. We tend to avoid cities, too, which is probably because of our aversion to crowds, waiting/lines, and noise!

As our 25th anniversary approached, I actually dreaded the whole Hawaii plan. To me, nothing says “touristy” like a trip to Hawaii. I mean, it’s one of those things many, many people say they want to do. Not just Americans, either, people from all around the world aspire to visit the remote island paradise. It is a busy, year-round destination, so I knew that avoiding crowds would be a real challenge. So much of a challenge, that I really was not all that interested in going. I mean, I wanted to go, a trip is a trip, I was just dreading the touristy part. But it was the last US state Hubby had to visit before he could say he’d been in every state and it was also the last state he had to explore on two wheels before he could say he’d ridden a motorcycle in every US state. So we HAD to go.

All the research I did revealed that early April and the month of September are the least-popular times to visit Hawaii. If we were going to go in April 2018, I would have had to start the real planning, buying plane tickets, booking rental cars and accommodations, in January and February. Since we’d learned just before Christmas that our dog, K, was terminally ill and we had NO idea how long she would be with us, I was reluctant to make plans to travel in April. I knew that I would not want to leave her if she was still hanging on in April, so we put the plans on hold.

We could have gone in September 2018, but doing so would have meant doing the aforementioned “real” planning in June or July. My layoff in early June nixed that. So that’s why we ended up celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary near the end of our 26th year as a married couple.

There are not many direct flights to Hawaii. Lucky for us, United has direct flights from Dulles, our home airport. Direct flights are typically less of a hassle, but the duration was a bit concerning. Ten and a half hours on one airplane, in one cramped seat, is a very long time. So, when United reached out via e-mail a few weeks before our departure, offering discounted upgrades to first class, I decided to splurge. It was a big celebration, after all. And we don’t usually spend money frivolously.

I’m glad we did, too. It wasn’t the standard first class seat, it was actually an upgraded business class section that United has been adding to some of its long-haul flights. Not only is there a wider seat and more legroom, the seat reclines to a fully flat position, like a little bed.

It was so worth the extra expense. We arrived in Hawaii more-relaxed than I’ve ever felt even after a two- or three-hour flight. The premium seats were largely responsible, coupled with the fact that families don’t usually sit in the premier cabin, so we didn’t have to listen to anyone else’s children. A HUGE plus.

Map of our drive from the airport to the North Shore.

Once we landed on Oahu, all we had to do was retrieve our luggage, pick up our rental car, and drive to the North Shore, as far away from the large city of Honolulu as we could get while staying on that island.

It was midday, local time, when we arrived (Hawaii is six hours behind our home state of Virginia), so I decided to direct Hubby to take a route around the island instead of driving across the island. I thought it would be more-scenic. Looking at the map, it looks like the road follows the coast. The road DOES follow the coast, but there are houses all along the beach, many of which are fenced-off for privacy. It wasn’t scenic in the sense that we got to enjoy uninterrupted views of the water, but we did get to experience a bit of Oahu off the beaten path.

After about an hour, we reached our rental unit. It wasn’t a fancy place, just a one-bedroom apartment on the first floor of someone’s house. But it had everything we needed and it was just an easy five-minute stroll to the beach.

I seem to have misplaced the pics I captured in and around the yard of our apartment, which is a shame. The yard was really nice. It was full of interesting vegetation. There were lizards, too. But the nearby beach was the best part.

The North Shore gets hit with really big waves during the winter months. In fact, this little beach isn’t far from the infamous Banzai Pipeline with its 20+ foot waves.

The color of the water was mesmerizing.

I really could just sit, watching and listening to the waves all day long.

Not far west of where we were staying was a beach where sea turtles like to hang out. Some of the pics I captured at that beach are with the misplaced apartment images. We did see a couple of turtles, but, because the beach was right beside the road, it was thronged with people. Seeing the turtle was cool, but it didn’t feel very “wild” seeing it surrounded by a large circle of gawking people. So we just walked a ways down the beach, found a shady spot for our chairs, and sat for an hour or two.

Turtle Beach (the turtles and people are off in the distance).

Temps were in about the mid- to upper 70s, and there was a lovely breeze. One thing that surprised me about Hawaii was the absence of seagulls. It was unusual, but very nice, to sit on the beach listening to the sound of waves mingled with the voices of songbirds instead of the loud, grating squawk of seagulls.

The beach was visually stunning. There were quite a few rocks and many places where the sand had been compacted into giant, pockmarked boulders. I’m not sure if that’s coral, or if it’s sand that was baked into a solid, massive sheet at some point by a volcano.

Sitting on the beach in Hawaii under the shade trees is much nicer than baking on the beaches like we are used to doing on the East Coast of the US.

I’m hoping we can locate the misplaced folder of images captured with my camera during the first couple of days in Hawaii. If not, we will just have to go back and do it all over again. 🙂

April 17, 2019April 17, 2019

Three-week Celebration of Us

Today, April 17, is our 26th wedding anniversary. We have never really made a big deal out of anniversaries. Birthdays either. Not because we don’t think they are important. I think it’s more because there are now so many societal expectations around bigger and better celebrations of milestone events that celebrating in any big way sort of feels like giving in and becoming just another consumer in a society driven mad by consumption. Think about it, there are entire industries built on human’s desire to celebrate stuff. Greeting cards, balloons, flowers, cakes. I like all that stuff, but I like it best when it’s not expected, if that makes any sense.

This year was different. This year we celebrated our 25th wedding anniversary in what was, for us, a pretty big way. First, Mike and I flew to Hawaii for a two-week vacation. Then, we topped it off with an entire weekend hanging out at home with our three children. Today, our 26th anniversary sort of marks the end of a three-week celebration of us. Not just us, the husband and wife, but us, the family.

It’s been a journey for all of us, really. Full of various bumps, misdirections, obstacles large and small, with some mental and metaphysical challenges thrown in that were more monumental than I think anyone ever expected. But we have all persevered, and we all continue to grow. Some of us are struggling more than others, but that’s sort of to be expected. We are, after all, each in various phases or stages of our individual life’s path. But we still like and love each other, and I think we always will. That’s huge. We may not all be bound by blood, but we are bound by something. It could just be familiarity and a collection of shared experiences, but it feels like more.

We have all come a very long way from being the people we were in that picture to the people we are now.

It is not often that we all get the chance to just hang out and reconnect. In fact, I think the last time we were all together without significant others and offspring was in 2004 when we took a family vacation to Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Parks.

It is fun to look back and see how far all of us have come.

None of us are exactly the same people we were back then. We have all grown so much since then, in so many different ways.

Mike and I have been blessed in so many ways. And we are very proud of these people we were each given as children to raise. They are each very special and very unique in so many ways. They have all grown into amazing adults.

We are so very glad they all chose to come visit and help celebrate our 25-year anniversary milestone. It meant the world to both of us, to all of us, really. Even when Mike and I are dead and gone, the kids will still have each other. Isn’t that what all parents want? Being a family, whether or not related by blood, doesn’t always guarantee that good, strong connections will be forged. That takes work, careful nurturing of spirits, and maybe even a little bit of luck.

I, for one, am happy and proud to be able to share my life with each and every one of these very special people. I love them all very much. Especially this guy.

Happy anniversary, Honey! Here’s to many more years to come. And thanks again, Shannon, Amy, and Eric, for wanting to come together to celebrate with us. It meant more to both of us than I suspect any of you will ever truly understand.

April 12, 2019

Be the Reason Someone Smiles

WD#1: What do you want your legacy to be?

There are a lot of words in the English language that have multiple meanings. I can’t imagine being an adult non-native English speaker and having to learn the language. Take “legacy” as an example. It typically refers to property or money one leaves behind when they die. That wasn’t the first interpretation that came to my mind, however, when I read today’s writing prompt. I read that question more as asking what people will remember about me once I’m gone.

The truth is, I have not really given much thought to how I will be remembered after death. Some, yes. But definitely not much. Now that I am forced into thinking about it by the first random card drawn from that mysterious Wordsmith Deck mentioned in yesterday’s post, I am not coming up with anything particularly monumental.

I can’t say there is any one thing for which I want to be remembered. I’m good at a lot of stuff, but not an expert at anything. I’ve played a variety of sports, dabbled in many hobbies, joined a social club or two, but no one significant thing stands out to me. What comes to my mind first is not a thing people will associate with memories of me, but a feeling.

I try to live life as a good, kind person, but I am certainly no saint. I like to think I did an okay job as a parent, but know I could have done better. The kids all turned out just fine, but, looking back, I know I could have been stricter, more doting, a better teacher, more patient, less-driven to fit society’s mold, etc. I try to be a good friend, but even that has its challenges. I do think of myself as a hard worker, but being remembered only for the quality of one’s job performance feels sort of shallow and sad.

Once my body is dead and my soul has moved on to wherever or whenever it is that souls go, I would like people to smile if they think about me. Smiles are powerful things. Real smiles, not the fake, forced variety. I want to be remembered with the kind of smile that steals across one’s face without thought when remembering something I did or said during the course of this life. Humor really is some of the best medicine ever, and a genuine smile can be a fierce weapon. Especially now, as this crazy world of ours starts spiraling more quickly and closer down into chaos. If every single person made a conscious effort just to smile more, the world would be a much brighter place.

Really. Try it. If you or someone you know is having a really crappy day, if you feel anger, resentment, jealously, or even hatred boiling to the surface, smile. It may seem simple, as in stupid, but it works. When things get really bad, the mere physical act of smiling can seem so ridiculous, one can’t help but smile as a result. And even if you only feel the least little bit better as a result, better is a good thing.