Hawaiin Village Fireworks

Hilton Hawaiin Village set off fireworks every Friday night over the lagoon at the west end of Waikiki Beach. These pictures are taken from our lanai, so we have a great dispaly of fireworks every Friday night at 7:30. Can you believe it!?

The Windward Coast

These pictures are from the south east side of O'ahu. There are some of the best beaches in the world over there. Sandy Beach outside of Hawaii Kai, is probably the best boogie boarding beach-it is so fun to watch the teenagers go at the waves out there. My travel book tells me that it has the dubious distinction of being the most dangerous beach in Hawaii with more drownings, broken backs and broken necks than anywhere in the state


We went on a fun date over there. We barbequed shish kabobs on a beach that was very private, just north of Sandy Beach, then we laid out on the beach and read and slept. Today we are going snorkeling in Hanauma Bay with a picnic lunch. The bay is just south of Sandy Beach. There is a cool blow whole over there, too.

Sunsets and Rainbows

Noah and Ikey

Just thought I'd include these adorable boys in my blog. Hope they enjoy seeing their picture on Grandma and Honey's blog. I never thought about it before and then I was reading a web site about blogging and I learned something new! Blog is short for web leg. The things we learn on the net!

SEA TURTLES

On Sunday, the 20th, we went to the North Shore, for the 3rd time, and I am absolutely positive we will go again and again. A fellow nurse told me about a beach where sea turtles go up on the beach to rest, get away from the sharks, and get warm.

Haleiwa Alii beach park right in Haleiwa town has a great boogie board beach and surf beach, but better than that it has the coolest beach with the turtles on it. We went right up to them and got our pictures. They open their eyes and move their heads around a bit but mostly they just rest. There were 5 of them along the beach and this one sunbather just laid down right between 2 of them! Hope my grandsons enjoy these pictures.

North Shore or The Country as the 'kama'aina' call it.

The north shore is sooo beautiful. We will go back many times, I'm sure. We drove over the Ko'olau Range using the Likelike Highway and went up through a tunnel-very cool to get to the other side. We saw the LDS Temple-gorgeous, we had shrimp plates from a shrimp truck-super delicious and a little expensive, ($13.50) The Sunset Beach waves were hugs and they happen to be having a surfing competition-Da' Hui Back Door Shoot Out-2008. How lucky was that to just come upon it. Always go where the peeps are! Unless you want to have a little Hawaiin romance more on that in the next post! Later, we went to the Ala Moana Beach Park-fun people watching. That evening we walked up to Waikiki beach and watched a hula show at the Hilton Hawaiin Village and saw a cool sand castle.

Diamond Head or Bust

Aren't these great pictures? This was a fun hike to the top of Diamond Head Crater. There are 99 stairs to get up there and that is after a switchback hike up the inside of the crater. The views are wonderful, you can see Honolulu, the southeast and the more windward side from Koko Head to Wai'anae, all from the top! We had parked near the zoo, which is at the east side of Waikiki and then walked around the whole crater to get into the entrance, entrance fee-$1.00, shave ice-$3.00, the view-priceless! haha

Hi'iaka, (sister of Pele-the fire goddess), gave the name Le'ahi to the crater because its resemblance to the forehead (lae) of the ahi fish. Western explorers of the 1700's mistook the calcite crystals for diamonds-so they renamed it Diamond Head.

This is me on top of the world-just like in the movie Titanic!

99 stairs on the wall, 99 ridiculous stairs, etc...that is a song, right?

Great waves that day-we could see lots of surfers out there that day, you can barely see them in this picture-they are so far away.