Mom & Dad's Last Two Days

Monday was a workday for me... bummer. I'd previously arranged to exchange my rental car (I rent them for about a month at a time) early Monday morning, so I left to head in to work get the new car and go to work for a while. At the rental car place, they offered me a free upgrade which I cautiously accepted - a cherry-red convertible Mustang! When I arrived at the office, there was only one appointment in the afternoon, so I headed back home to continue the visit with Mom & Dad!

We'd arranged to have dinner with my boss and his wife (Bo & Heidi) Monday evening, so when it came time to go to my appointment, everyone piled into the new car, dropped me off at work for the afternoon and went shopping. After my meeting, they picked me up at the office and we headed to Waikiki for steak in style! Dad insisted on taking these pictures so he could send them to my nephew Josh who recently acquired a black mustang himself. Just so you know - this is not my usual mode of transportation... it's usually something far more fuel efficient and mundane. Convertibles and my sensitive skin don't mix very well!

Bo & Heidi arrived at the steak house and everyone had a great time! Bo is a former Marine in the artillery, so he and dad had several stories to tell. Dad was really impressed with Bo (as am I) and Bo later told Heidi that, "Joe's dad is just like him - only older." Hey, quite a compliment! We finished off our dinner with a strawberry flambe (shown here dimly in the picture) and some rich Port wine. Just so you know, we didn't tour Waikiki with the top down after dinner, though it was tempting to show off the two beautiful women in the convertible!

I arranged Tuesday's meetings for later in the afternoon so I could spend the morning at home. Dad and I got up early and took a nice brisk walk down to Kailua Beach and back for exercise. We got dad a new digital picture frame that plays movies so I created a chip with hundreds of pictures and movies to display at home and we packed it up for their trip back home. Later, we all headed down to Cinnamon's again for a late breakfast before heading down to the airport to drop off the vacationers. DeAnna stayed home and I went up to work for the rest of the afternoon to cover my meetings.

I know Mom & Dad are getting older and we don't get to see them very much, but it's always great to have a relaxing visit - especially when we can also be the escorts for high adventures! That's the way I remember my parent's visit - relaxing time with high adventures together!

I'm looking forward to the next great adventure...

Mom & Dad's Hawaiian Adventure

This was the day we were going to try our luck at snorkeling in Shark's Cove on the North Shore. Because of the many tourists, we wanted to start out early so we hit Cinnamon's again and headed north on Kamehameha Highway through Kaneohe. Our first stop was at the northern edge of Kaneohe Bay where we mugged for some pictures at Chinaman's Hat (an offshore island)!

Hugging the coastline, we made our way to La'ie where we stopped at another favorite - La'ie Point. This is where we like to watch the waves smash into the hole-in-the-middle island just off shore and also where we take a lot of pictures! There are no offshore reefs in this vicinity, so the waves really pound the rocks and toss up huge splashes! It didn't look like very good snorkeling conditions, but we weren't going to snorkel here anyways...

So, It was on to Shark's Cove! We found a reasonable parking space (which isn't always easy) and toted our gear to the water. Mom stayed on the ledge above to keep watch (she wasn't interested in the cool ocean water). Dad, DeAnna and I trekked down the the rocks and donned our gear. soon, we were in the water watching the myriad of fish among the rocks.

The water was clear and much better than the previous week's adventures in Kauai. Dad was a natural fish (a possible hint of my love for the water). I was glad that dad went out to watch! Although it was a little scary to climb around on the slippery rocks, dad never hesitated. You'd never know that he celebrated his 80th birthday just one week earlier!

I swam around taking lots of underwater pictures and movies like this one of Dad viewing the fish! Doesn't that Billabong Rash Guard Shirt look good on him? (SPF 50+, baby!) Dad saw a large eel along with many colorful fish, but missed the sea turtle!

It was great to be able to get out to Shark's Cove. This is the same place where we saw HUGE waves last year. Mom & Dad were amazed to realize that after seeing the movies of the waves from this blog!

After leaving Shark's Cove, we headed to Haleiwa for a visit to Matsumoto's Shave Ice! It's more than just a snow cone. Hawaiian Shave Ice has vanilla ice cream in the bottom (or optional Japanese Azuki Beans), three flavors on the ice and topped with a coating of sweet condensed milk! Mom & Dad got a Hawaiian (Coconut, Banana and Pineapple). We returned home to relax for the evening. It was so nice to just visit and chat without interruption. Two more days in Hawaii to go!

Mom & Dad In Hawaii

Getting back to my parents visit (sorry for the long delay between posts)....

Since Mom & Dad visited when I was teaching, I wanted them to limit their Oahu tours for the weekend so I could go with them! So on Saturday morning (after a required stop by Cinnamon's for breakfast), we jumped in the Saturn Aura and headed for the Southeast side of the island.Driving on the Kamehameha highway, through Waimanalo, we stopped at the Makapu'u Beach overlook to watch the body surfers. Then we headed over to Halona to see the blowhole.

Halona was interesting because the park has been closed for months undergoing renovations so the parking lot was closed. I was afraid that Mom & Dad would balk at the suggestion of parking on the side of the highway and crawling through the barricades, but we did just that - and it was worth it!

The new viewing area will be really great when it's done - especially for tourists that like to ham it up!




Halona Beach was as captivating as ever. We were all amazed that there were crazy people swimming in the roiling surf and large waves kicked up by a brisk trade wind. I offered to take pictures while mom & dad rolled around int he sand like Burt Lancaster, but they declined... go figure...

Next, we stopped by Spitting Cave, but no one was particularly interested in hiking down the cliff in the mid-day sun, so we stopped at Teddy's Burgers for lunch. Teddy's has become a standard stop when family is in town. After that, we took the long, leisurely, winding drive up Tantalus Road to the stunning views from Pu'u Ualaka'a State Park!

For our trip back home, we stopped by the Nuuanu Pali Overlook - always beautiful, shrouded in mist and eternally windy. In fact, there were a few kids who threw pennies over the cliff only to have the pennies float up and back over their heads! The kids were astounded, but the wind was actually kind of chilly!

That evening, we introduced Mom & Dad to our new Wii and the Wii Fit! None of us would pretend to be gamers of any sort, but everyone had a fun time with the challenge of the various (simple) games. Mom built her own Mii and we did a lot of games and Fit exercises. Mom's forte was cow jumping... Dad did the ski jump!


We watched King Kong before turning in for the night. It's an exciting movie, but we were all looking for scenes from Kauai and didn't see very much that wasn't washed by special effects so it was kind of disappointing. Still, we were ready for a new adventure to the north shore and some snorkeling in Shark's cove!

The Parents Arrive - Trip to Kauai

This past week, my parents (Paul & Janet) have been visiting us from Alexandria, Virginia! We've been trying to get them out to Hawaii since Winter, but the schedules have only now aligned. It's been a busy and grand week. Because of flight availabilities (they used air miles), the flights in and out were on Tuesday.

This wasn't so bad except that I was teaching a class all last week, so I couldn't take any time off to visit except in the evenings. Fortunately, we had a plan... During previous visits to Hawaii, my parents were able to see Oahu and Hawaii and Maui, but had never been to Kauai, so DeAnna arranged a special trip over to see the Garden Isle! While I taught, they toured Kauai and had a grand time. They visited several waterfalls, and took a river tour to the Fern Grotto on a boat with Hawaiian music and stories!


They toured the north shoreline beaches and sights, having lunch at Princeville where the views of the tropical mountains and ocean were stunning!




The next day everyone went down to the beach and get in some snorkeling! Although the water was kind of rough on the windward shore, DeAnna and Dad managed to get in and swim for a while. Then after a cleanup, they headed out to Waimea Canyon up in the mountains on the west side of Kauai.

Waimea Canyon is a long drive across the island and up into the mountains before looking out on the deep canyon from 3,400 feet altitude. As mentioned before in this blog, the site is called the Grand Canyon of the Pacific - and it lives up to that reputation with huge gorges, waterfalls and rivers!

From there, they took in the sites at the Na Pali coast from 4,000ft. This is where they filmed some of the movie, "King Kong" although you wouldn't recognize it (we rented the movie later and there wasn't much to see of Kauai for all the special effects). The view of the coast was stunning though and worth the trip to the top of the ridge.

The rest of the trip was a relaxing drive to see various sites, but after a while it was time to head to the airport for a quick flight back to Oahu where I had finished teaching and was ready to pick everyone up. After all, There was still lots of Oahu to explore!

Hiking New Sites

Last weekend, we specifically checked out a few sites for their hiking potential when mom & dad come to visit next week. They specifically have said they want to relax and most of our hikes and adventures have been... well not a casual undertaking. In fact, before DeAnna woke up, I went to my favorite local hike on the Ka'iwa Ridge. I've been trying Trail Running which is scrambling up the ridge and scrambling back down. The hike is about 1 mile long, but ascends 550 feet so it really causes your muscles to burn and your lungs to ache when you do it fast.

So after I got back to the house, we looked up a few short hikes to some well-regarded places and set out to see what they were like. Our goal was three places topped off with a trip to the Ala Moana mall.

The first place we checked out was the Pali ridge hike. This is actually the old roadbed that hugged the mountainside. It is a beautiful hike and isn't too aggressive. The roadbed continues on for several miles as a trail, but as you can see, it offers some great high-altitude views of Windward Oahu and Kailua.

The next place we visited was Kapena Falls. These falls are located along the Pali Highway on the other side of the mountains. Although they are fairly easy to access, they aren't exactly a "destination". You have to walk along the side of the highway and then climb along a short trail to the falls. You end up about 30 feet above the falls, but the view is marred by graffitti. The water seemed a little stagnant when we arrived, but it was a nice hike.

Lastly, we drove to Manoa Falls, the second most popular hiking destination on the island (after Diamond Head). The tour books say this is hike through the tropical rainforest is rated "easy", but we found it to be somewhat challenging. Maybe it was the muddy 1 1/2 mile long trail... maybe it was the slippery stream crossing... maybe it was the rocks or the roots or even the many other tourists, but the trail was not easy enough to be called "relaxing", so it's off our list of places to go with my parents.



Still, there were several nifty photo opportunities like this giant elephant-ear plant or winding through Banyon trees.




Afterwards we were tired and hungry, so we took our muddy feet to the high-class mall and got a late lunch before doing a little shopping and returning home for a relaxing evening watching a couple of movies.

We're still studying potential locations for my parents, but the day's adventures yielded only one suitable destination - the Pali Overlook Hike. The search continues...