Our fifth day in Hawaii was Sunday, and, at least compared to the other days of our trip, it was a day of rest. We were relatively lazy until church time, and had dinner with George's family after church.
And then we did a somewhat traditional Hawaiian Sunday drive. At least I've done it once before. We drove up to the Pali Lookout and then over to Punchbowl, and then up around Tantalus Drive, the same way that we did on my first Sunday in Hawaii.
Pali Lookout
Somewhere on Tantalus
This time was a little different in that we stopped and took a little
hike up through a bamboo forest (that both looked and sounded really cool!), and then afterward we
swung down to downtown Honolulu and saw the Iolani Palace and the King
Kamehameha (as Brandon would say King Kame-hame-ha) statue.
Near the start of our hike
Cool Bamboo Forest
At that one park near the end of Tantalus where you can take great photos
Hail to the King!
Also I sprained my ankle in such a hilarious fashion that when I finally recovered enough to stand up, Cara had turned away in tears from trying not to laugh. Just from my experience when you feel it roll and you hear it pop, its time to get all your weight off of that thing. Apparently me going down like a sack of bricks was entertaining. :)
Our 4th day in Hawaii was Saturday, and the big things we had planned for the day were: Pearl Harbor, the swap meet, and babysitting kids while George and Kimi went out for their anniversary.
We had reserved Pearl Harbor tickets (to go out to the USS Arizona memorial) online (for $1, I think) but still had to pick them up an hour before the scheduled tour time, which was ok, because there were a few museum buildings to wander through and see artifacts and diagrams and watch some movies about the attack and other surrounding events.
A few things I thought were interesting there:
A pennant from the USS Utah
A rough draft of FDR's "A Date Which Will Live in Infamy" speech
Before long it was time to go into a theater to watch the "official" visitor center video (I'll be honest, I slept through a lot of it) and then to board a shuttle boat to take us over to the Arizona.
This veteran was there being honored in some fashion while we were there.
Looking over toward the Missouri
This guy was driving our shuttle back to shore and commented on the Utah shirt I was wearing, said his brother had played football at the U. Turned out it was Nai Fotu's brother.
They give you more time for taking good photos on the way back.
I didn't take any photos the rest of the day, but I can tell you that Brandon thoroughly enjoyed the swap meet, especially the T-shirt stands and he bought lots of them. He even bought all of us (George and Kimi, too!) T-shirts. I picked up a couple beach towels, and that was about it.
We ended up getting late lunch at a nice local place in Kaneohe called Fresh Catch which was going to be featured on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives just a few days after we were there. Everyone got fish but me, but my meat and onions dish was pretty tasty, too.
Babysitting wasn't too bad either as there were 4 of us and 4 kids. I mostly took care of Cole: fed him dinner, changed his diaper (successfully dodged when he tried to pee on me), and the other kids were pretty well entertained by iPads and iPhones. :)
We decided to spend our second full day in Hawaii over in the Waikiki area.
We started the day driving over to Diamondhead, the crater of an extinct volcano where there used to be some sort of military installation. There's a little park in the middle, and a trail that takes you up to rim overlooking Waikiki and Honolulu and the ocean. Pretty quick hike, though the additional humidity over what I'm used still had me sweating before too long. There's a nice view from the top, and i was worth doing once, but I don't feel like I NEED to do it again.
From the top of Diamondhead
Cara's the King of the World!
The only other thing we had planned for that evening was the weekly fireworks show at the Hilton after dark, so we just decided to hang out down in Waikiki the rest of the day. We spent a couple hours walking past ABC stores, and checking out the international market place, and then found a place we could park all day and picked out a spot with a little shade on the east end of Waikiki beach to hang out. We took the boogie boards out for a bit, but mostly we just ended up laying around napping and reading and being lazy for most of the day.
Looking through some banyan trees at a yoga class on the beach
Our hanging out spot
At one point we took turns walking into town for lunch, and toward the end of the night, Brandon and I stopped to watch a little bit of beach volleyball that was starting up. Eventually we drove over to the west end of Waikiki and after a few tries at figuring out the one way streets over there, were able to find a parking spot and walk over to the Hilton.
Sunset
The fireworks didn't seem to last quite as long as they had the year before when I was there, but they were still fun.
Fireworks through the palm trees
Afterward we were all ready for bed, so we headed home, possibly grabbing some dinner on the way. At this point I don't quite recall.
Remember when I used to blog? Its been a while, but I've had some other stuff on my mind lately, namely purchasing a townhouse. So that's my excuse. And then I didn't have internet at home for a few weeks (apparently that's something that comes in handy more than ever these days).
Anyway, since Christmas is coming and I'm going to need to summarize the year before long, I figured I better get cranking on some of the stuff I did the last third of the year. And it kind of seems fitting to get back to writing up my Hawaii trip since it's Thanksgiving morning and my whole family is over there. Yes, I was invited, it just didn't seem like the best thing to do to go so soon after August. Anyway...enough rambling...
August's trip to Hawaii was my first time going with friends, as opposed to going with my family. Liz and Cara came over to our house and Brandon's mom picked us up and took us to the airport.
Waiting at the airport
The flight over was fairly uneventful, watched a couple movies, etc. We landed in Honolulu, grabbed our luggage, and picked up our rental car -- free upgrade to full-size SUV! (Lincoln Navigator) (we'd paid for mid-size, but it was nice to have the extra room) -- and headed to Costco to get a few things. Then it was over to the other side of the island to George's house, where Kimi graciously had made us dinner.
Our sweet ride
And that was about it for the first night. I mean, we chatted, and played with the kids and did some setting up of beds, but with the 4 hour time change it starts to feel late pretty quick that first night.
Which is why I always like to go over to Hanauma Bay the next day or the day after. It's free (and less crowded) if you get there before 7, and I'm always waking up by 5 at the latest anyway. George was off work, so that made it even more fun as he was able to go with us.
Hanauma Bay
Hanauma Sunrise
We spent a couple hours there, and I took a few breathers along the way, but definitely snorkeled more than I have in the past. We saw several turtles (phew! I always like to know that everyone got to snorkel with at least one turtle when we go) and on George's recommendation I took a long swim out to the far end where the water was much clearer than it is where we usually are and there were some great colors of coral as well.
Turtle!
At one point there was a large (for Hanauma at least) school of convict tangs cruising around
Half-decent shot of a nicely colored wrasse (Christmas, maybe? or Pearl?)
Eventually we'd had our fill (and I'd gotten some sweet triangular sunburns on my shoulders), and we headed back home for lunch.
Post Snorkeling
In the afternoon we took Kimi's recommendation and went down to Kailua Beach Park and just took it easy, laying on the beach, reading books, and napping. Not the kind of stuff my family typically likes to do, but it was definitely nice to just relax.
Kailua Beach Park
For dinner, we went to Teddy's Bigger Burgers (Liz got something from Whole Foods) and also checked out the nearby farmer's market before calling it a night.
Farmer's Market
More to come soon. Feel free to browse all my pictures (and some of my friends') here.
I've been back from Hawaii for a week now, and I probably should get my trip written up, but I've been catching up on other stuff first. In the meantime, I thought I'd just throw out some of the beautiful views we got to see while we were there:
After several years away from the great state of Utah, my favorite band, Counting Crows, was back in town on Saturday night and I was lucky enough to get to go see them. If anything its a testament to how long I've been blogging that I actually blogged about the last time I saw them back in '06. This year they've dubbed their tour "The Outlaw Roadshow" and have hand-picked some bands to tour with them. So there were 3 opening acts before the main event.
All of the bands were pretty good. I especially loved Kasey Anderson & The Honkies and Tender Mercies (featuring 2 of the Counting Crows). Field Report was pretty good, too and above all interesting to look at. They all wore business suits, and one of the guitarists looked strikingly like a former bishop of mine.
Kasey Anderson & The Honkies - Apparently Kasey has relatives in Salt Lake and mentioned enjoying Jazz games in the Salt Palace and going to the Galleria when he was a kid
The lead guitarist was pretty great
Field Report
The guy on the left was the one who looked like my former bishop
During Field Report's set, Adam (lead singer of Counting Crows) was just chilling back on the corner of the stage, sometimes singing along
Tender Mercies -- the guitarist on the left and the piano player in the back are both members of Counting Crows. Another band was supposed to be on the tour but had something come up, so the Crows got the rest of Tender Mercies to come on part of the tour.
As Counting Crows don't have quite the following the once had in the late 90s and early 2000s, by arriving 30 minutes before the opening acts started, I was still able to get a nice spot in the all-general-admission-standing-only audience, about 5 people back from the stage and 7 or 8 from center stage. It was a pretty great spot and I was able to take quite a few pictures that I was really pleased with. Also Picasa has added some new toys for playing around with your photos (probably to compete with Instagram or something), and I was able to do some fun things with some of the pictures using those, too.
Their newest album, Underwater Sunshine, is made up entirely of cover songs, though the songs are primarily ones I'd never heard of before. But thankfully their 2 hour set included a nice mix of songs from all their albums, including August and Everything After favs "Rain King", "Round Here", "Perfect Blue Buildings", and "Anna Begins". They also played "Long December" which has always been one of my very favorites. And of course, seeing Counting Crows live is never quite like listening to their albums because they're always doing new arrangements of the songs and mixing in bits of other songs that they like in the middle of their own songs.
"I am the Rain King"
Call for Audience Participation
Here's my (less than high quality) record of "Long December". Warning: There is a little swearing (including one F-word) when Adam messes up around 2:30 in the video, in case that bothers you.
Here's the full setlist as best as I could keep track of it while also enjoying the show:
Rain King
Untitled (Love Song)
This Desert Life
Four Days
Hospital
Black & Blue
Anna Begins
Mercy
Mrs Potter's Lullaby
Perfect Blue Buildings
Children in Bloom
Good Time
Look at Miss Ohio
Long December
Round Here
(might have missed a song or two here, can't be sure)
Encore:
Le Ballet D'Or
You Ain't Going Nowhere
Hanginaround
For the last two songs they brought back all 3 of the bands that had played earlier and had them on stage singing along.
All in all a pretty fantastic night. As they left, Adam said "We'll be back", so hopefully it won't be another 6 years before they make it back. :)
The list of blog ideas I found online, unfortunately has "Vacation Hiatus" for days 7-9, and as I'm really taking Vacation Hiatus whenever I feel like it (perhaps for half a year), I needed to find a few more ideas for 3 posts worth. And honestly it's taken me quite a while to find a few more prompts to throw into my own list of 30. But I finally found a couple here that I liked, and I'm sticking those in where the Vacation Hiatus was on the original list I found. I realize of course, I could just pick whatever I wanted to write about and make those the topic, but I find I enjoy the constraints of someone else's topic and forcing myself to think about something that maybe I wouldn't other wise.
Anyway, that's enough yammering for now. :)
#7: Your favorite store
The best writing prompts, or at least the ones that I enjoy the most, seem to be the ones where I don't really have an immediate answer off the top of my head. Like this one. Especially in this age of online shopping, I probably buy more stuff from amazon.com than any actual store (except maybe Smiths where I buy my groceries). But I don't really think of amazon.com as a "store". It's just a webpage.
Having taken some time to think about it, I think I will probably have to say that TJ-Maxx is my favorite store. (Runner-up: Barnes & Noble). It was interesting to realize how few stores I go to any more. It wasn't really that long ago that I would stop into a MediaPlay and browse through the CDs, or go to the mall and try on a bunch of stuff trying to find things I liked. And granted, I do make it to the mall a few times a year, but shopping just isn't something I do all that often. And have you seen the people in the mall these days? What is happening to America? :)
Anyway, back to the topic at hand, probably more of the clothes I own were purchased at TJ-Maxx than anywhere else. And its always kind of fun to just drop in when I'm in the neighborhood and see what they have. I guess that's half of the reason I keep going back: you never know what you'll find for sale there. And the other half is that everything is pretty cheap. :)
From the "Downtown SLC Newsletter"'s description of an upcoming hip-hop show:
Don't
miss this year's biggest hip hop show to hit downtown SLC, Summer Jam at
the Gallivan Center. This year's Summer Jam features J. Cole, Kirko
Bangz, Kid Ink, Baby Bash, and more.
Tickets are $20 at all Smith Tix location and children 5 and under are FREE.
If something can clearly take place "wherever" and "whenever" with "whichever" "whoever" ("whomever"?) you desire, why can it also take place "anywhere", but not "anywhen" with "anywhich" "anywho" ("anywhom"?)?
