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!