Farewell, Oahu!

 

In 2000 when Paul and I were discussing where we wanted to go on our honeymoon, Hawaii was high on our list, and at that time I thought we'd spend a week on Kaui. I knew that we could *never* go to Hawaii without visiting Pearl Harbor, so back then I assumed we'd add a few days on Oahu to that trip, but we ended up going to St. Lucia for our honeymoon, and we don't regret that choice. We went to several different Caribbean islands in subsequent years, and St. Lucia remained our favorite. Ironically, when I planned this trip to Hawaii, Kaui wasn't included in our itinerary. Considering we were only on Oahu for four days, we certainly didn't thoroughly visit the island. During our week on Hawaii (aka "Big Island") we will almost completely make our way around the island. When the kids were younger, we stopped at almost every science or children's museum along the way. They outgrew children's museums first, and now it's much rarer for me to include a science museum. We've had an ASTC membership for quite a few years, but ours expires this week, and I'm not planning to renew it. More recently we've been visiting zoos and aquariums far more often than we had in the earlier years, but on this trip, I didn't include any zoos or aquariums. Ironically, we were parked in the zoo parking lot today as it was close to where the kids had their surfing lessons. I figured we would just enjoy seeing animals in the wild on this vacation. 

August 7, which was Oliver's 13th birthday, was definitely the kids' favorite day of our trip to Oahu as they all loved the dolphin boat tour and the parasailing. Surprisingly, Paul said that dolphin experience was his favorite also. In particular, he loved it when a sea turtle swam right up close to his face. You're supposed to stay 6 feet away from sea turtles, but the sea turtles don't seem to know about that rule. Pearl Harbor came in as #2 in his rankings. Nadia and Oliver said their top three for Oahu were the dolphins, parasailing, and surfing. Ian agreed with their top two, but he picked the Kailua beach as his third most favorite. Paul's third favorite was the hike to the summit of Diamond Head. 

August 8 counted as the first day of 7th, 10th, and 12th grade for my kiddos because we toured Iolani Palace and then spent six hours at Pearl Harbor. The kids earned Junior Ranger badges. We visited the USS Arizona Memorial (by boat) and the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. We had a guided bus tour of the USS Oklahoma and USS Utah Memorials on Ford Island. We had dinner at the Pit Stop Food Truck near our lodging. I *thought* we'd spend time at Waikiki Beach that evening. Our unit was a few minutes' walk away from the beach, but we opted to just relax in our unit after dinner and forgo the time at the beach (and skip seeing the fireworks that one hotel does every Friday night).

Today our day began by hiking to the summit of Diamond Head Crater. This is a VERY popular hike. You have to have paid reservations to do it at a very specific time, and even so it was crowded. We did a total of four hikes on Oahu. None of them were terribly long, but all of them involved significant elevation changes. The least was the first one (about 500 feet), and Diamond Head was pretty similar at 560. I thought the Lanikai Pillbox Trail (613 feet elevation change) was definitely the hardest. Manoa Falls included about 800 feet of elevation change. I purposefully excluded The Koko Head Crater trail although it is located very close to the first trail we did because it has an elevation gain of 1,200 feet in just seven tenths of a mile! After our hike, we had lunch at Barefoot Cafe on the beach. Oliver learned he doesn't like to eat raw fish as he ordered a poke bowl for lunch. Kudos to him for trying many new things! After lunch, the kids had surfing lessons. Oliver was the first to succeed, but all three were successful! After surfing, we began the process of returning the vehicle (we remembered not to get gas right near the airport) and going back to the airport. In hindsight, we should have packed sandwiches for dinner. The prices of food in the airport in Honolulu were ridiculous. Finally, we found some breakfast sandwiches at a Starbucks that weren't as absurdly priced. Our flight on Southwest was very short. The flight wasn't full, and they didn't serve any snacks or drinks due to how short of a flight it is. After we landed in Hilo, we got the van we've rented through Turo. This van was parked MUCH closer than the one in Honolulu. We had a long walk again today (with our luggage) after we returned the van in Honolulu. We stopped and got some groceries and then checked into an Airbnb where we are spending two nights before we head over to Kona's side of the island. 

I haven't even looked through all the parasailing or surfing pictures yet, but I've included a few surfing photos in this post. I took pictures, and Paul took some videos.