Sunflower Six: Hawaii Vacation

I guess there are benefits of Jon traveling to Hawaii, it means that every so often I can go with him!! I still don't like the being in a plane over the ocean, but we made it to and from safely and had a great time.

I know it's a month late, but I wanted to write about our vacation. I think I have been feeling very overwhelmed about how I would choose from the 1600 pictures I took and not leave out any details. As time has passed, I have grown to care less, so I have picked out just a few that remind me of what a great time we had. So for starter's...Jon and I on the plane getting ready to land in Kauai.

We went on this amazingly hard, but extremely beautiful hike along the Napali Coast Line.

There just aren't words to describe the beauty of the beach, the amazing shades of blue in the ocean and the deep green vegetation.

We did some beach time....

Watched the sun go down...

I was fascinated by these trees....

When we got off the plane in Oahu, it had just finished raining and this beautiful rainbow was there to welcome us.

These trees are so cool. They are called walking trees. The roots actually grow down from the branches. As the tree ages, some of the inner roots begin to die. As new roots grow, the come down over the old roots and grow outward lightly, so over time (long periods of time), the tree will actually 'walk'. I thought that was pretty amazing!

I am probably the only person that has never eaten at a Cheesecake Factory....until now. They have such great food there! We need one here so I could go back and enjoy the food again!! This is were we celebrated Jon's 36th birthday!!

I am not a huge fan of shave ice, but this totally ghetto place, (the kind of place that makes you feel like illegal things might be going on in the back room), had the best shave ice ever. They put some vanilla ice cream in the bottom for starters, then pile on the shave ice and top it off with some very flavorful syrup combinations.

The other thing I learned is that it is not called 'shaved' ice, rather 'shave' ice, which sounds weird to me.

I guess some people think that warnings don't apply to them....or you get into the water at a location other than where the sign is posted and learn the hard way. On our last day in Hawaii while we were killing time before we needed to be at the airport, we stopped for one last dip in the ocean only to have Rebecca and Jon get stung by jelly fish. It sure left some good size welts on their skin.

The only thing I have to say is that there is always an adventure to be had when Rebecca is around!!

Jon and I got stopped by what I call a con artist...he walked up too us and basically hands us these birds and then has them do tricks and gives us this big long spill about these birds and then has the nerve to ask us for donations. I don't love sales pitches, especially not from some stranger on the street. They were beautiful birds though.

We had the opportunity to spend an entire day at Pearl Harbor. It's hard to describe the feeling you have while visiting there.

We rode the fairy out to the USS Arizona Memorial. It was heart wrenching to be out there and see the remainder of the sunken ship below and to see the names of all those fallen soldiers who died that December day.

We also had the chance to tour the USS Bowfin Submarine. I got down inside and started having MAJOR panic attacks and feeling extremely claustrophobic, so I got myself back to the surface and waited for Jon to finish the tour.

This is part of the USS Arizona Memorial Wall. These are the names of of the remaining soldiers that have since passed away. There remains are brought back to the USS Arizona and their ashes are taken under water by a scuba diver to place them inside the sunken Arizona to be laid to rest with their fellow men.

Then we took a bus over the tour through the now retired Mighty Missouri. I am flabbergasted at how massive these ships are, all the weight and machinery they carry and they still stay afloat. I am grateful to those that are willing to serve our country and live or be stationed on one of these ships. It is way to cramped and claustrophobic for me. The living quarters were the tiniest spaces I have ever seen.

We also got to walk through one of the hangers on the military base at Pearl Harbor. There are still bullets hole to be seen in the windows from the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Our next adventure was a visit to the Polynesian Cultural Center. It is a really cool place to learn about all the Pacific Islands, but I will have to say that they are still using some of the same jokes they told when Jon and I was there thirteen years ago!! It definitely was a great experience, but I don't know that I would be sad if I never got to go back.