8. It's ALOHA Time Again!

Here we go again! This time we are having a wonderful vacation time in Hawaii. This year, more than in the recent past, we are enjoying sharing the event with family. Mary Etta and Chester Brown, my sister and brother-in-law, are sharing the island spirit with us, along with Lorita Simonds, Cynthia’s sister. We have settled into Honolulu for a few days, staying in the heart of Waikiki Beach. We’ll be here till the weekend, when we fly together to Maui, where we will enjoy yet a different experience of island life. While we will likely go different directions in the daytime, we are sharing our evening dinner times. Our first dinner together was at Duke’s restaurant, named for Duke Kahanamoku, who popularized the surfing sport in the early 1900’s here in Hawaii. The setting was spectacular, overlooking the torch-lit Waikiki Beach at night. It was a beautiful event, as a traditional Hawaiian Grandmother trio came and sang to us at our table. Honolulu has many landmarks and beautiful sights to experience, in addition to Wikiki Beach, and its traditional landmark of Diamondhead crater. Our plans included a visit to the USS Arizona Memorial, followed by touring the Dole Plantation, which has become a popular destination of its own. So yesterday, we went to the newly renovated Visitor Center at the Arizona Memorial, walked through the museum exhibits, then watched the video presentation before going out to the white memorial structure, built over top of the mostly below water remains of the battleship that was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Afterwards, we began the drive upcountry toward the Dole Plantation. However, we found the roadway closed by the police, due to a raging fire that had closed the highway and prevented us from getting to the Dole attraction. So, as a detour, we ended up on the North Shore, ate in a local eatery, and then toured a coffee company where the owner explained the process of harvesting, drying, and processing both the coffee beans and the cacauo beans that result in the various flavors of chocolate. We ate our first “shave ice” there, before following his suggestion of viewing the Makeena point area of rugged beach at the northwestern tip of Oahu. There we found several kite boarders gliding over and flying over the surf.