I visit, I visited, I'm a vistor

OK, so here is the long awaited update on our vacation to Hawaii. I don't mean to brag but it was close to being the perfect vacation. If only we could have had all of you along with us.

We arrived on Tuesday and watched the weather that evening to see the 5 day forecast. High-88 Low-77 every day. I need to move to Hawaii and become a weather man.

I arranged ahead of time to have someone meet our flight and present Vivian with an Aloha greeting and a Lei. (I know, who cares about that romantic crap, right? Our wives do so figure it out.) We stayed at Bellows Air Station on the East (windward side of the island. Many people we met said Bellows has the best beach on the island and I agree. The beach is private during the week for Air Force only and their guests and open to the public on the weekend. The crowd on Friday night was enormous. I guess the locals all agree it is the best beach around. We walked down Waikeke beach and it was rediculously crowded and commercialized. Bellows was private and secluded and a perfect place to watch the sunrise, which we did every morning. (who can sleep with a 5 hour time difference anyway) Here is a picture of Bellows just before sunrise and the house we stayed in.

We love to hike so each morning we watched the sunrise, went on a hike and then swam for several hours. In the afternoons, we had lunch, swam some more, and visited with our friends the Brenners. They were there visiting their daghter who's husband is a Marine and just got deployed to Afghanistan for the 3rd time. She lives at Kaneohe and we spent two nights on the base there. We all went to the Polenessian Cultural Center one night for a Luau and stage show. It was great and not too expensive with our military discount. Ryan knows the fire knife dancer but he was so busy signing autographs and things that we weren't able to say hi. We climbed Diamond Head and then Koko Head which is a very steep climb but worth the view. The next pictures are from Koko Head.

You can see the steep steps in this next picture. There are 1048 of them. They are railroad ties that were once used to pull a small rail car up to the top loaded with ammunition and supplies for the guns and lookouts at the top. They must have had quite a view of Pearl Harbor when the bombs started falling on Dec 7th. They obviously weren't awake before then.

This picture (above right) is the beach at Bellows. The water is the most beautiful blue. We took several pictures of Haunama Bay which is a volcanic cone on the windward side of the island where the sea wall has reoded away to let in fish and sea life but is still secluded and a very popular place.

We went on a drive up Tantalis Rd. that has one of the most beautiful views of both sides of the island. It is above the Punch Bowl which is the military cemetary on the island. That is Diamond Head in the distance. Finally we went over to the North Shore to watch the big waves at Sunset beach. They have a beach over there where the sea turtles like to sun bathe. We ate Hawaiian shaved ice at a place that Ryan told us about. It must live on it's reputation. There were several other shaved ice places on the same road but they were all empty while this place had lines around the corner of the building. They put a scoop of ice cream in the bottom of the bowl and put shaved ice on top with whatever flavors you want. Eventually it all runs together and the ice cream makes it really creamy. Oh yeah, we ate pineapple till it became embarassing then we ate more. Man was it good. We really ate like 8 while we were there. It would sure be fun to take the whole family there someday. What a wonderful place to relax. After Eric's death and the crazy week that proceeded this vacation, I needed a break and really got one. I don't mean to overlook the fact that mom and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary. It was all part of the package deal and one more element that made this the perfect vacation.