7:00 a.m. - We had originally planned on going to Pearl Harbor this morning, but we heard that you need to get there early or it can be an all day experience. We didn't have all day and after three days with early mornings and packed schedules, we are exhausted. So we decided the night before to let Pearl Harbor go and try and sleep in and get rested up. Unfortunately, downtown Honolulu is not a quiet place and I awake to the sound of street traffic and sirens. Get in the shower. My shower is a quick one as I start to suffer from bouts of clausterphobia before too long.
7:26 a.m. - There is no laundry options in our hotel on Maui so we knew that we would have to do some laundry at this hotel in order to make it through the week. I head down to do the laundry while Shannon gets up and gets ready for the day. I am told the laundry is in a structure behind the second tower. Silly me, I assumed a structure would be...I don't know...a building? Nay nay. This "structure" has chain link fence walls and a tin roof with two washers and two driers and two plastic chairs, all of which are occupied, and I am now in line. This could be a long morning.
7:54 a.m. - Finally get my clothes into the washer. That is the positive. The negative is there is no room in the "structure" for me so I have to stand outside and it has started to rain.
8:22 a.m. - Getting to know my fellow Hawaii vacationers as we all wait for our laundry or for the opportunity to do our laundry. One of these individuals is a lady from Scotland who is here for two weeks before heading off to Vegas for a week. That would be quite a vacation in and of itself, but this actually comes after cruising the French Polynesian islands for 17 days. While she has been gone, her brother died and she might miss the birth of her grandchild. Holy Crap! I have never considered going on a vacation where upon my return I might have Rip Van Winkle type experiences. I have always thought that I enjoyed vacations and, if given the opportunity, I could vacation with the best of them. This lady has proven I am a child among men when it comes to vacationing. Good gosh, 6 weeks!?! That is the length of most maternity leaves. I don't know what that correlation has to do with anything but...there it is.
8:41 a.m. - Wash is done, but now waiting for a dryer. Shannon calls my cell phone getting slightly concerned about me. I assure her that she should make herself comfortable. It will be a while. I also let her know that it would do neither of us any good for her to come keep me company in the "structure".
9:58 a.m. - Check out of the hotel and go to pick up our car. The very kind valet personnel stroll the length of a school bus to get our car for us. I believe we paid $2 per step for that "service". Once we leave the parking area, we realize we are starving and need to find a place to eat. Right by our hotel was an IHOP that now we can't find a parking spot for. We have checked out so our valet spot is no longer available and Shannon gets a little perturbed at me for jumping the gun on getting out of there. We decide that we will just drive toward the area we are going and see if we can find anything along the way.
10:24 a.m. - We are going to a place called the Valley of the Temples which houses the Buddhist temple called The Temple of the Gods. We get to drive the Likiliki highway again (snicker snicker), but there is no where to eat between our hotel and this area. Fortunately, right across the street from the Valley of the Temples is a shopping center. We hope there is something in there.
10:28 a.m. - We have a choice between two diners serving breakfast. One has not a single soul in it while the other has a handful of people who appear to be local. We decide the locals probably know best and choose the Times Coffee Shop. We look at the menu and they have freshly made blueberry and banana pancakes. That sounds delicious as we are just starving. We try to decide if a stack of three and some eggs on the side will be enough. The waitress says, "Our pancakes are kind of big." Fine, I will settle with two banana pancakes and a side of eggs while Shannon will have the blueberry with a side of eggs..
It would have been so much more helpful if she had said, "Our pancakes are the size of a plate and an inch thick each." I personally think that description is different from "kind of big". These pancakes are enormous. I quickly realize I have ordered too much food...for our entire family if they had been there. But let me tell you, these are the BEST pancakes I have ever had. Especially when I combined them with the coconut syrup they made fresh daily. OH MY GOSH!!!!!! Best breakfast EVER!!!! I recognize that I am somewhat prone to use superlatives way too often but in this case, I do not believe I am exaggerating.
However, this does cause a problem. When you order way too much of something that is truly amazing, you tend to eat way too much of it. And boy do we. We leave there feeling as if we may explode all over the Valley of the Temples. I had to laugh at the lady who collected the bill afterwards. I told her how good their pancakes were and she said back, "But you didn't finish them." Oh that's nice. Make fun of the fact that we ordered way too much by rubbing in our faces that we couldn't finish it.
11:18 a.m. - Arrive at the Temple of the Gods. I can't describe the beauty so here are some pictures to try and do it justice.
11:32 a.m. - In a gift shop off to the side, they have bird seed that you can purchase. If you put the bird seed in your hand, the birds will fly up and eat right out of your hand. I feel positively Mary Poppinsish.
11:46 a.m. - We stroll one more time around the grounds and take some more pictures. Interesting things of note about this location. I once remember seeing a Magnum PI episode filmed here. Also, this is the location where they filmed Jin and Sun's wedding. If you don't get that reference, shame on you. Just suck it up and watch Lost already. Also, in the time we have been there, we have seen five tour buses pull up, empty, reload 15 minutes later and leave. The Scottish lady I had spoken to earlier said this is the way all of these tour buses operate. You get 15 minutes at a site and then they herd you off to the next site. Memo to me? Memo to me. NEVER tour a place by bus! Oh wait, I already knew that one.
12:02 p.m. - We have finished at the Valley of the Temples and it is lunch time. (Pardon while I burst into uncontrollable laughter). We couldn't possibly be less hungry. We have a tour of movie locations scheduled for 2:30 so we have some time to kill. We are just driving when we come across the Macadamia Nut Farm. That sounds interesting. Well...Not so much. Just a tourist trap (complete with a constant stream of tour buses coming and going) that has all the typical Hawaiian stuff to sell. But wait!!! They do provide free coffee samples!!! Fantastic for the Mormon couple. One interesting thing though is the bathroom. I walk in and there is an open window that cannot be closed that faces the parking lot. So as I stand there doing what comes naturally, I am able to view all of the fresh faces coming to visit the Macadamia Nut Farm. The whole time, I am praying that no one takes an interest in the open window off to the side of the main interest. Fortunately for me, my prayer is answered. Crazy me, just not that into public urination.
1:30 p.m. - We kill enough time that we feel comfortable going over to Kualoa Ranch where we will be taking the movie sites tour. Why is it that every time we need to get out of our car and into a building, the rain just starts pouring. We can drive for quite a while with no rain, but as soon as we need to get out...torrential downpour.
2:30 p.m. - We are ready to start our tour and they take us out to our tour vehicles. They are ooooooollllllld school buses painted green with all the windows removed. How tropical. The main problem is that it is still raining and the seats are all wet. There are two buses on our tour and we are directed on to the second one. We couldn't figure out what the criteria was for the separation until the tour started and we realized the other bus was strictly Japanese speaking. As we take off, there is suddenly this hideous screeching. We thought for a moment that they were giving us a preview of the Jurassic Park section of the tour, but no. It was just the brakes on the bus, which clearly hadn't been serviced since the reign of King Kamehameha III. However the tour was pretty cool. We saw the log that the dinosaurs jumped over in Jurassic Park and we saw the site for Hurley's Golf Course (again just watch Lost and be done with it) and the site of the cafe from 50 1st Dates among other things. Pretty cool!!!
3:26 p.m. - As our tour is coming to an end we hear an interesting factoid that is a repeat from one we heard from our zipline person. Over 80% of the vegetation in Hawaii is not native. Apparently, unlike Arizona, just about anything will grow in Hawaii. The downside is that it will force the fragile local stuff into extinction.
3:41 p.m. - We leave Kualoa Ranch and start back for Honolulu. We figure we have enough time to get dinner and then head back to the airport to catch our flight. On the road is a general store and I am feeling in the mood for a Dr. Pepper (which rarely happens) so I pull over. I walk into...I am not sure how to describe it. 90% of the stuff in this place can't possibly be for sale. If it is for sale, they seriously have to take a class on presentation. A quarter inch of dust covers everything and Hawaii is not a dusty place. There is one small rack of candy and a cooler in the corner with about 15 sodas in it. (I thank my lucky stars one of them is a Dr. Pepper.) I look around for a place to pay. That right there is a problem when the cash register area is not easily identified. I see a counter, (at this point I still have yet to see a person) and behind it is a stairwell into one of the dirtiest kitchens I have ever seen. A very old lady peaks around the corner and comes down. I am pretty sure she doesn't speak English. But if she does, she doesn't speak it to me. At this point, I am simply motivated to get out of here. This place is starting to resemble a set from a horror movie where people just up and disappear. However, there is one aspect that is truly positive. Along with everything else being very old and outdated, so is the pricing on my Dr. Pepper. I am pretty sure it is the cheapest one I purchased the entire week.
4:45 p.m. - Our thought process had been that we would come back into Honolulu and since we had a gift card to Cheesecake Factory, we would eat there and then get back to the airport to catch our plane. Oh how naive we were. Honolulu traffic is kicking our butt at this point. Heading into downtown is just brutal. But it gives us an opportunity to take in the city around us and...my way of putting it would be imagine being in a Los Angeles that had decided not to update since 1962. There are so many buildings that are that old 60s style that have not aged well and are really ugly. It is clearly not near as big, but the feel to me was very similar to LA. Anyway, we finally get to where the GPS is telling us The Cheesecake Factory should be and we realize we are right on the main road by Waikiki Beach.
A couple of things about Waikiki Beach. 1. There is no parking. I have clearly lived in Thatcher too long to think that we could slip into an area like this and have dinner and get back out reasonably quick. Sheer stupidity on my part. 2. TOO MANY PEOPLE!!! I am seriously missing Maui at this point. Oahu is feeling like Phoenix to Maui's Thatcher. I can't think of one town on Maui that I think is bigger than Safford and Thatcher put together. This strip on Waikiki Beach feels like the strip in Vegas without the seriously objectionable stuff. This is going to sound way too judgmental and it could be seriously affected by how frustrated I was trying to find a parking spot and then just giving up and trying to find a way out, but it looked like a bunch of posing people going to posing places all in an attempt to be hip. I now will accept the moniker of grumpy old grandpa and Waikiki Beach and I will agree to part ways peacefully and do our best to never cross paths again. Once more, to be fair, I didn't actually get to see the beach as I was trying not to get in a car wreck nor hit anyone which was actually harder than it sounds.
5:51 p.m. - We looked for a while for a place to eat, but just like Los Angeles, once you get to a place where you can actually park, you can't find a decent eating establishment to save your life. (A quick aside; this moment totally reminded me of the time that Shannon and I were with my parents and drove for, I am not exaggerating, 25 minutes in Los Angeles just looking for a restaurant. Any restaurant. We were so desparate we would have taken a McDonald's. That is something that would never happen to you in Mesa or Phoenix.) So we give up and start back for the car rental place. We have nicknamed the GPS Dave and he is doing a great job. Without him, things could have gone horribly wrong several times. However, it begins to rain heavily and traffic is tough when we are directed to go under the freeway. We are so close, but in our final moments of need, Dave leaves us as we lose signal for the GPS. So, we of course miss the turn we are supposed to make. By the way, there are a couple of places we could choose to grab a bite, but let's just throw in that they were located near the airport under the freeway and leave it at that. We are able to correct fairly quickly and soon are on our way back to the airport on the car rental shuttle.
6:33 p.m. - We are through security and starving. As I have mentioned before, one of the things I had been really looking forward to was the exotic eating choices we would have in the tropics. So you can imagine how disappointed I was with myself as we headed into an airport restaurant for dinner. The food was...ok and certainly was needed at that point, but we have now had meals in an airport, at McDonald's and a hideous fast food joint in Laie. I will have to beat myself repeatedly with seaweed when we get back to our Maui hotel...oh wait, there is no seaweed here. Yeah!!! That makes up for some of our culinary disappointments.
8:15 p.m. - We are boarded and on our way. We are still taxiing around a corner, when all of sudden we begin to accelerate to take off speeds...while still taking the corner. Got a bit of a cowboy pilot here it would seem.
8:48 p.m. - Definitely a cowboy. We are coming in for a landing when 5 seconds before touchdown, it feels like we accelarate. A lot! I thought maybe it was just me, but Shannon confirmed that that seemed really weird to her as well. So we are cruising past the airport at a pretty good clip. After what seems like an eternity, we finally slow down enough to turn. I am half wondering if we actually went past the airport and caught the Hana Highway with as far as we went. I look out the window and I can't even see the airport and I am on the right side of the plane to be seeing the airport. Over the intercom the pilot announces we will be taxiing for a while and to please keep our seat belts on. That's great Mr. Andretti but maybe we wouldn't have had to taxi so long if, again, you hadn't slammed on the gas AS WE WERE LANDING and gone half the length of Maui in the process!!! Have I mentioned my least favorite part of flying is landing? If not, my least favorite part of flying is landing. Now you know.
10:01 p.m. - After an uneventful pick up of our Maui car and a stop for gas (and some kind of liquid pick me up that has a slight essence of prunes) we drive the road back out to Kaanapali. It is funny, because at this point in our trip, we have spent more time on Oahu than on Maui, yet I feel like I have come home. And it feels good to be home. Oahu had some neat stuff, but a small town boy feels more comfortable on a small town island.
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