Our first day right after we checked into the Pacific Beach Hotel on Waikiki Beach.
That night, we enjoyed a wonderful Hula right on the beach. What a great way to start off a relaxing vacation.
Just as the sun was getting ready to set.
This is the anchor at the USS Arizona Memorial Visitor's Center at Pearl Harbor.
This is the foundation for the stern gun turret of the USS Arizona, one of the few parts of the ship which remain above water.
The USS Missouri.
Almost done with the audio tour of the USS Arizona. The USS Bowfin submarine is in the background.
Getting ready to try and learn how to scuba dive. We went with a group out off of the west coast of Oahu.
Shelly surfacing with her instructor after her 40-foot dive. If you are wondering where I am at......well - let's just say after about 25 minutes of trying to continuously breathe through my mouth and not my nose compounded with an impatient wife who passed off her certification in about 2 minutes - I decided to go back to snorkeling. I will definitely try again and maybe sometime in my life I will get farther than five feet under water.
They had some nice warm water to rinse off with which Shelly was very happy to have.
After my frustration at scuba diving I was ready to go para-sailing. We convinced mom and dad to come and observe.
TAKE-OFF!
This has to be us way up there. Thanks to mom for taking over the photography for us.
At the end of the ride we get a nice refreshing dip in the blue ocean.
I can't quite tell if Shelly is enjoying her adventure-filled day of scuba diving and para-sailing.
Mom thought that since we had so much fun that she may as well give it a try as well and it seemed like dad was already chomping at the bit. This was of course the whole plan when we invited mom to come and observe and I must say that it was a complete success. Way to go! (By the way - I have plenty more pictures as proof but I liked the dip in the water the best.)
While mom and dad were up on their ride, two humpback whales surfaced twenty feet in front of the boat and gave us all quite a show.
The next day we took a drive to the East and followed the shoreline. One of our first stops was Hanuama Bay. It is supposed to be one of the best places to snorkel. We'll save that for next trip.
Next stop was at the Halona Blowhole, which is a natural tube in the rocks that spurts water up when the waves come crashing in.
Right next to Halona Blowhole is what is called Sandy Beach. This is a wake-boarding only beach because of how shallow it is. The water all over is soooo beautiful.
As we round the west side and start going farther north we come up to Chinaman's Hat Island. We stopped here and found plenty of shells to take home.
This is on the BYU - Hawaii campus. We stopped for lunch before we headed on into the Polynesian Cultural Center which is right next door.
Our first stop in the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC) was the village of Samoa. It was a great show full of coconut husking and cracking, fire starting, tree climbing, dancing and lots of laughs.
At the end of the day at the PCC we stopped by the waterfall for a picture together. We had a great day at all of the villages, watching the canoe parade and dance, going to the big luau and watching the amazing horizons show.
The next day we headed inland to the Dole Plantation pineapple fields. There is nothing like extremeley fresh pineapple. I probably ate 20lbs of it the whole trip.
We ended back up in Laie (which is where BYU - Hawaii and the PCC was) to visit a friend of dad's who served at the same time as him in Hong Kong when he was on his mission.
We also stopped for some pictures at the Laie LDS Temple.
Our final morning in Hawaii included a tour to some of the places we had already seen but definitely didn't mind going to again. We added Pali Point to our list of places to visit which is where over 300 warriors jumped to their death instead of surrendering to King Kamehameha, who became the first King of Hawaii. This was definitely one of the windiest places on the island.
One of the last stop's before we went to the port to board the cruiseship was the Punchbowl, which is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
We then boarded the Pride of Hawaii and got underway. This was the last voyage as the Pride of Hawaii. The ship was on it's way to the Mediterranean and was going to LA to be rechristened as the Jade.
We had a wonderful 5-day open sea cruise to LA. One of the last evening we got together with what family was there for a photo after lots of lobster.
We arrived in LA and said goodbye to the Pride of Hawaii. Aloha!
