Once we took a wonderful vacation to Hawaii & California. On Waikiki we rode war canoes and experienced the thrill of the ocean waves, like surfers, going 35 miles per hour! Walking to the summit of Diamond Head and overlooking the ocean was super and we also found World War II bunkers with gun ports! Andy crawled in the bunkers and took fantastic photos. Visiting Pearl Harbor was gripping in its serenity and sorrow.
We learned of a wonderful, but seldom traveled road. This road rises sharply from the National Punch Bowl Cemetery entrance and winds for miles among the tops of extinct volcanic mountains. The mansions on this road are hard to see, but the scenery of God's natural, living green jungles are beautiful: large bamboo groves, twisted banyan trees, four foot long leaves.
On the Big Island we watched the International Iron Man Triathlon Parade of Flags from the outdoor balcony of a Thai restaurant. Later taking a cruise in search of whales and dolphin. Being naive about the ocean I turned green from hanging over the bow taking photographs of dolphin! That evening we ate sticky rice at a Filipino cafe. Sticky rice is rice blended with coconut milk and honey and then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Delicious!
An all day trip to see volcanoes and black sand beaches was great. Driving through the Kilauea area we saw steam coming from banks and craters, and tons of hardened, crusty, old lava covering the roads and mountainsides; later we walked through a twelve foot high hardened lava tube that is over one block in length.
Driving further down the mountain we parked and walked right up to the lava flow where a park ranger said the flow was moving twelve feet per twenty-four hours. The surface was hard but the interior was still moving. Many fool-hearty people were walking on this “hardened” lava; some were poking sticks into the flow and the stick would burst into flame, but the lava on the stick would become fragile like glass.
The following day our flight from the Big Island to Maui took fifteen minutes. Maui is the prettiest island we have seen and our hotel was on a beautiful white sand beach. For dinner we had pineapple boats filled with tropical fruit!
In the countryside we saw fields of pineapple and sugar cane and stopped at a botanical garden and sampled breadfruit, passion fruit, and tiny bananas. Later driving through lush green valleys to the Iao Needle which is a tall, skinny mountain that projects itself through the canyon floor. We enjoyed driving to an extinct volcano that rises from sea level to ten thousand feet; the crater is about seven miles across. Because of the iron and sulfur the colors of the crater and the cinder cones are beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow and brown. It was particularly remarkable to see clouds climbing ever higher only to drop inside the crater! Our color slide of this scene won third prize in state competition.
Later we played in the warm 85-degree ocean, took a tour of an old whaling ship and walked through shops of seashells, nautical goods and scrimshaw ivory.
Now on to California! [SEE PART 2]
We learned of a wonderful, but seldom traveled road. This road rises sharply from the National Punch Bowl Cemetery entrance and winds for miles among the tops of extinct volcanic mountains. The mansions on this road are hard to see, but the scenery of God's natural, living green jungles are beautiful: large bamboo groves, twisted banyan trees, four foot long leaves.
On the Big Island we watched the International Iron Man Triathlon Parade of Flags from the outdoor balcony of a Thai restaurant. Later taking a cruise in search of whales and dolphin. Being naive about the ocean I turned green from hanging over the bow taking photographs of dolphin! That evening we ate sticky rice at a Filipino cafe. Sticky rice is rice blended with coconut milk and honey and then wrapped in banana leaves and steamed. Delicious!
An all day trip to see volcanoes and black sand beaches was great. Driving through the Kilauea area we saw steam coming from banks and craters, and tons of hardened, crusty, old lava covering the roads and mountainsides; later we walked through a twelve foot high hardened lava tube that is over one block in length.
Driving further down the mountain we parked and walked right up to the lava flow where a park ranger said the flow was moving twelve feet per twenty-four hours. The surface was hard but the interior was still moving. Many fool-hearty people were walking on this “hardened” lava; some were poking sticks into the flow and the stick would burst into flame, but the lava on the stick would become fragile like glass.
The following day our flight from the Big Island to Maui took fifteen minutes. Maui is the prettiest island we have seen and our hotel was on a beautiful white sand beach. For dinner we had pineapple boats filled with tropical fruit!
In the countryside we saw fields of pineapple and sugar cane and stopped at a botanical garden and sampled breadfruit, passion fruit, and tiny bananas. Later driving through lush green valleys to the Iao Needle which is a tall, skinny mountain that projects itself through the canyon floor. We enjoyed driving to an extinct volcano that rises from sea level to ten thousand feet; the crater is about seven miles across. Because of the iron and sulfur the colors of the crater and the cinder cones are beautiful shades of red, orange, yellow and brown. It was particularly remarkable to see clouds climbing ever higher only to drop inside the crater! Our color slide of this scene won third prize in state competition.
Later we played in the warm 85-degree ocean, took a tour of an old whaling ship and walked through shops of seashells, nautical goods and scrimshaw ivory.
Now on to California! [SEE PART 2]
