Hawaii Five-O and University of Hawaii in One Day!

The last few days have been busy! This is a quick blog about our Thursday in Hawaii. As you may know, I am a huge Hawaii Five-O fan. And on our adventures on Friday, one of the tour guides really knows (and I think this was who he said) Taylor Wily, who plays Kamekona, the big guy with the Shrimp truck who usually serves up the comic relief.

So one of the things on my must see list was to find and get a picture of the King Kamehameha Statue that sits in front of Five-O headquarters--actually the building behind the statue is the Hawaii State Supreme Court.

 

Glad to see that I wasn't the only one taking pictures!

After this quick stop, we were on our way to the University of Hawaii to meet up with my colleagues in the Extension Pesticide Program. We first met up with Charlie Nagamine in his office and then Barry Brennan (who is now retired but still has an office) met us at the student center after lunch. It was interesting to hear about their program. Charlie had just come back from a training on another island. Two of the people in attendance are in charge of the grounds on top of one of the tallest mountains in Hawaii. This land is now being leased out to many foreign countries who are interested in various types of research--satellites for one I think. However, everything going up the mountain must be pest-free because invasive species can be devastating on the local ecosystem.

After lunch, Barry and Charlie gave us a walking tour and provided some history of the campus, and even tried to get George and the kids into to a gym to play basketball. However, although Barry had his Faculty ID, only those with ID could play. We did talk to the kid checking IDs and he told us about a park down the road with a basketball court, so the kids did get some shooting in later in the afternoon. 

The University was started with 9 people, 8 of which from Cornell University. The University was badly flooded a while ago, including the ground floor of the library ruining many old books and maps. The campus has some really pretty spots, courtyards that you wouldn't know were there unless someone knew they were there to show you. Lucky for us! However, some gardens on campus were used for weddings and pictures a while ago, but then I guess they were having too many (I think it was free) so they stopped that. Here are a few pictures from the University.

Garden where the weddings were held, absolutely beautiful!

Barry, Sharon, and Charlie

Wet n Wild -- Lucky to be Alive!

On Monday we went to Wet n Wild Hawaii, which is only 5 minutes from our resort! Although we paid the full amount to get in (less a $5 per ticket coupon George found in a magazine) we were disappointed that 3 of the 5 large rides were closed for maintenance.

No one really looked at Damon before we left--doesn't he looked so coordinated!

There really wasn't a lot of people there and we secured a prime spot under a hut at the wave pool.

At 1:30pm everyone had to leave the wave pool, and they restricted access. You could pay $10 extra and you got a quick surfing lesson and then the waves were a little faster and harder and you could try to ride your board. Only about 10 people were in for the lesson but many more paid to go in with the larger waves. We just sat and watched. Some people knew what they were doing and others had no clue--which is why we watched!!

They did have a ride that we hadn't seen before at a water park which was quite fun! It was a short slide but instead of leading right into the water, this stopped about 6 feet above the water! When I went in, I never thought I was going to get back up to the surface, the water was quite deep. Damon loved it!

I saved the best story for last! We all could ride the Raging Rapids so up the steps we went, which was quite a hike. Since there was a line, I was reading the rules and regulations stating that the weight on these 6-person rafts were to be between 350-600 pounds. Well, we all get in and what a ride we had coming down! First George was going down backwards and no one likes going backward, so he had no idea what was coming. We were going so fast and twisting and turning, I almost landed on George sitting across from me at one point. Damon smacked the side of his head just below Nicole's eye--hopefully she doesn't get a black eye! Brandon almost flipped the raft over at one point. And the ride just went on and on and on. Finally it ended and we all got out, lucky to be alive! Then it hit me, and I started adding up our approximate weights, and we by far exceeded 700 pounds! The rest of day went a little slower after that ride, let me tell you!

Visit to the Dole Pineapple Plantation

After we booked our trip to Hawaii, I started looking around for things to do. One of the things that popped out at me was the Honolulu 5K. I think Nicole would have ran it with me, but Brandon wasn't too interested. The more I looked into, the more complicated it seemed. We would have had to pick up our race materials on Saturday at some predetermined locations, which we were not familiar with and then the race started at 6:30am (which I guess that wouldn't have been the problem) but Honolulu is about 30 minutes away from us. The race was to benefit the Hawaii school system (all islands) so when you registered you had to pick a school to donate a part of your application fee. I think this would have been a major race! I decided not to try that.

Our resort sits next to a harbor that has a little lagoon, our hotel has a lagoon, the resort next to us has a lagoon, and the Disney resort has a lagoon. The public has access to these lagoons but not up into the resort grounds. They have a nice sidewalk that runs the entire length which is almost 1.5 miles long. I decided to run that. What surprised me was that George wanted to go with me. We left about 6:45am. Well, I quickly passed him up. I ran 3.1 miles! It was so humid out by time we stopped! But it felt good to do a little exercise while on vacation.

Sunday's agenda included the morning at the pools and lagoon, then we ate lunch in our room and was off to the Dole Plantation. We decided to do the Train ride and the Maze of course! Here are a few pictures from that. After that we decided to drive up to the North Shore, now that was quite the ride, and that deserves a blog to itself, so hopefully I can get around to that at some point.

Remember this place? Dole Plantation was a few minutes up the road from where we ate supper last night.

Young pineapple plants

Close-up of young pineapple plants

Can you see the pineapples?

More pineapples

Water reservoir

In 2008, this was the world's largest maze!

You had to find 8 secret stations and trace the icon.

Done in 33 minutes, thanks to Brandon! I just noticed they messed the dates up! I promise weren't lost in there for over a day!

Driving up the West Coast

Saturday, April 27th: George and I wanted to drive up the West Coast from our resort. The kids didn't want to go, so we went ourselves. I just loved seeing the mountains on the right side while the beach and coastline was on the left.

We were quite surprised, but the towns we passed along the main highway did not look the nicest. Some of the streets off the main road were dirt! At every beach you would see pop-up tents and camping tents with lots and lots of coolers, grills, and food. Several birthday parties were going on with ballons and lots of people. We also saw many large fishing poles.

Here are some of the photos we took.