Gettin' Behinder

With so much goin' on, it's hard to find time to blog and keep you up to date on what's happenin'. Guess the easiest way is one little step at a time. Wanta follow along? Get out your map of Hawaii...

Sunday we had planned on loading up the cars and heading Northwest out of Honolulu, taking the H1 to the H2, which cuts through the heart of Oahu to the North Shore. Rain kept us from doin' that, so we switched that plan to Monday.
Monday dawned sunny. GH called and said she had been awake all night... gave us permission to go without her.
The uphill climb out of Honolulu was not as steep as I expected, but our ears popped several times nevertheless. We passed Mililani and Schofield barracks, and it began to rain just before we stopped at the Dole plantation for some pineapple ice cream. They have several attractions for wallet extractions there, including a maze made of Hawaiian plants that was touted as Guinness certified "world's largest" for a period of time.
We picked up Highway 99 and continued until we saw big waves, then turned Northeastward on Highway 83, stopping whenever we saw a beautiful beach view or an interesting shop. We stopped about Noon at the Waimea Valley Audubon Center, hoping to walk back to a waterfall there. The walk back was a little farther, and the toll to take the walk was a little higher than we expected. Time-wise we were on a short leash, so we enjoyed photos of the falls and passed on the opportunity to see them in person.
Highway 83 follows the shoreline and turns Southeastward at the Kahuku Sugar Mill, providing gorgeous views along the way. We stopped for photo ops several times along the road, including once at "Chinaman's Hat", which looks like its name...
a neat rock island off Hualoa Beach Park.

That's where time began to be a problem. We had reservations at "Paradise Cove" for their luau and needed to cut our drive short to be on time there. We continued our drive until we picked up the H3 back to Honolulu, and passed through the Harano tunnel, cut through the Ko'olau mountains. Neat.

We freshened up a little back at the Navy Lodge, then set off to meet GH and Ken at the Paradise Cove.
Cousins, (we're all cousins in Hawaii!), Paradise Cove is beautiful. Big Bubba took lots of photos, we ate a wonderful meal and saw a wonderful show... Hula, Fire Dancing, Hawaiian music.

Folks, that was our Monday.
You can see why I'm behind in my reporting to you!
More to come.