Thursday, July 9, 2015

Hawaii, So Far

Sorry about the lack of posting, but the wife crammed our schedule so full of things to do, that we've been getting back to the timeshare at around 2200, and I'm just too beat to post!


So, since the only thing we have planned for today is a luau at 1800, I stayed here while The Girls went out running around.

Monday we took a drive up to the Northern end of the island to see the original (1880) King Kamehameha, and had lunch in the "artist's village" of Hawi. If you're ever in Hawi, stop by the "Local Dish", a small eatery. The food was great, the service excellent, and the staff very friendly.

Tuesday we flew over to O'ahu to see Pearl Harbor, visit the Arizona Memorial, and see some radio friends on the USS Missouri.

When we were on final I was watching the marine traffic below, and saw a boomer headed out for her patrol.

The Arizona Memorial is a very somber place, as you'd expect. The young Navy guys who run the motor launches from the museum to and from the memorial exhibited some of the best boat handling I've ever seen. I didn't need the small pack of Kleenex I had in my cargo pocket, but came pretty close to it several times.

After that, we went to Schooner's for dinner, and then our taxi was waiting to take us to the airport, and our flight back to Kona.

Yesterday we went on a tour that took us from our "base" here in Kailua to "Kona Joe's" coffee farm, then down around the Southern tip of the island to the "Black Sand Beach"  (actually fractured lava) where we saw 5 sea turtles napping on the beach, and finally to the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park, where we went through the Thurston Lava Tube, took a walk through the rain forest, and then went to Volcano House for dinner.

After a leisurely dinner, we headed over to the Hawaii Volcano Observatory to wait for the sun to set so we could catch the glow from the current eruption, and visit the Thomas A. Jaggar Museum.

Then it was a two hour drive back to Kailua, and time to hit the hay.

I'd post some pictures, but in my haste to grab the smallest, lightest laptop I have, I forgot to put a card reader in the bag, so I can't get the pix off my wife's camera onto this PC!

She said she has a "cable for the camera", so if she does, I'll grab the pix that way, and update this post.

Been a very interesting vacation so far, but my wife crams a lot of stuff to do into our vacations, so it's been going by in a blur!

14 comments:

  1. I love THE LOCAL DISH. Have you had their sandwiches? They are to die for. Really first rate. It is literally my favorite place to eat on the Big Island. In fact, while it's a long drive, I've been known to go there every day for lunch. They will even "close" the place for you and your wife to have a romantic dinner at night.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I had the pastrami, my wife had the grilled cheese, and her friend had the tuna wrap.

    And the girls had some local beer.....don't remember the name, but they said it was good.

    ReplyDelete
  3. It's easy to over-program while in HI. We did the "outings every day" on our first trip. Since then, we try not to do much more than two events per week, preferring to just laze about, the rest of the time. YMMV and all that...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yeah, no matter where we go, my wife wants to schedule 2 or three activities per day.

      That's too many for me!

      Two activities is fine as long as you don't have an hour's travel between them, but to do three, and really do them right unless one is a "throw away" type of thing, is just cramming too much stuff in one day.

      I *easily* could have spent two days at Pearl Harbor just looking at the air museum and Missouri!

      Delete
  4. You're having way too much fun, Jim. Time to come home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We're headed home on Sunday, is that good enough?

      :-)

      Delete
    2. Sure thing pal. Glad you're enjoying your vacation.

      Delete
  5. Have a wonderful time. My daughter was adopted by Hawaiians. She's fluent in the language which is sort of comical as she's an extremely fair, six foot redhead and people always do a double take when she starts talking

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's an interesting language. One of our tour guides, and the Park Service employee at the Volcano National Park, were not natives, but could speak it.

      It sounded a bit "different" when a non-native speaker was using it, but then most languages do!

      Delete
  6. Glad y'all are having fun! Post when you have time, but enjoy the vacation!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Roger that!

      Good to hear you're getting out of the rat race!

      Delete
  7. The Big Island is the best! We got married at the parking circle of the Holoholokai Petroglyph Park and I taught my wife to snorkel there in the crystal-clear waters. Some friends live out past Hawi at the end of the road, and are friends of the owners of the local Dish

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Yep, it's very beautiful here.

      We stopped at the Local Dish kind of by accident. The girls had wanted to go to the Bamboo, but it's closed on Mondays.

      So, we walked a bit, and smelled the aroma coming from the Local Dish, saw it had almost a crowd, and went there.

      I wanted corned beef, but they were out of it, so I settled for the pastrami.

      Delete
    2. There used-to be a really cool thing up there called "Flumin' Da Ditch" where you could go for a ride on a kayak through the old irrigation canals: the aqueducts (100-feet up at least) and tunnels (one some 200-feet long) on the north side - but the earthquake six or so years ago killed it.

      Delete

Keep it civil, please....

Annnnd.....We Got Zip.....

 Total snow was about 6~8", but half o0f it melted as soon as it hit, and we never had more than 3" on the ground at any one time....