July 2024 – Aloha

Honolulu from Diamond Head

This post is out of order.  Sorry about that.  But, as cool as Nashville was, we’ve been in Hawaii the past couple of weeks and I want to write about it.  This leg of our travels will be told in two parts with a third post of pictures.  And no, ha ha ha, we did not drive the motorhome here. :P

We flew American (no more United for us, no sir) from Richmond to Charlotte to Los Angeles to Honolulu.  Good flights, smooth layovers, a bit of bonus time sitting on the apron at LAX while they sorted a water problem and then another “minor mechanical”, but really nothing to complain about.  It’s just a long time to sit on airplanes – Lesson number 1 about Hawaii, there’s no easy way to get there.

But it takes a long time because Hawaii is really, really far away.  So far, in fact, that many people who live there spray paint, “Hawaii is not America” on any surface not covered by a chicken.  Lesson number 2 about Hawaii – there are free range chickens everywhere.  Why is it that nobody has ever told me this?  As I am writing, a hen and her chicks have come to surround my lanai and demand a handout.

Andrew and Katie picked us up at the airport and whooshed us off to their home on Hickam, a drive that took less time than walking to baggage claim.  The air was sweet with botanicals, the evening comfortably warm, and we slept in until 4 am HST (10 on the east coast of the mainland).

Andrew drove us around the next day and we got a taste of Oahu, touring from Honolulu up the East coast following the H1 to 72 past Diamond Head, Maunalua Bay, and Koko Head to a stop at the Halona Blowhole Lookout – it’s worth fighting for a parking spot and don’t let the tourists with their cameras and rented SUVs and tight schedules rush you.  There is nothing CONUS that even comes close and I don’t care how many times you’ve watched “50 First Dates” or “Gilligan’s Island”, you haven’t experienced Hawaii until you are actually standing there, on a jagged cliff’s edge of black igneous as the ocean leaps skyward against the island that’s in its way.

If you only have a couple of hours on Oahu, take a drive on 72.  It is one of the most breathtaking roads I’ve ever been on, even with the traffic.  It was a clear day and we could easily see Maunaloa on Molokai across the channel.

From there we drove on to the Makapu’u Point lighthouse park.  As with every other place we stopped, parking required waiting for someone to leave.  Lesson number 3 – in Hawaii, there are more cars than places for cars.  There were a lot of people but it was a beautiful day and there was a spacious paved trail.  So spacious, a man older than me was able to ride his road bicycle up and down it without a problem, even playing show tunes from his handlebar speaker.  

We continued along 72 past the site of the Robin Masters Estate to Bellows Field, an Air Force installation the Marine Corp uses for navigation training.  We used it to put our feet in the Pacific, get some ono grinds, and satisfy Andrew’s need to show us some pea fowl.

We left Bellows to continue north beneath Lanikai up through Kailua to the Naval Exchange on USMC Base Hawaii.  I bought a towel.  Don’t laugh, it’s a very cool towel.  It says, “Aloha” on it.

We headed home via the H3.  It rises dramatically from the ocean to the Tetsuo Harano Tunnel on a stretch of highway elevated above the rainforest often seen on the “hit” TV show “Hawaii Five-O.”  It descends, though not as dramatically, to the more industrial Pearl Harbor/Honolulu sprawl.  There’s a monorail but the development has been… political… so it doesn’t really serve anywhere people want to go and is generally empty.

JBPHH (Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam) is a relatively calm, low-rise, stretch out and breathe hub of activity with wide avenues shaded by mature trees, quiet streets, brightly colored birds and flowers, and the calming scent of a tropical flora menagerie carried on a constant breeze.  It’s a great place for dinners grilled in the backyard, sunset strolls along the ocean, and to host your parents.  It’s also a place where some of the buildings still bear battle scars from December 7, 1941.  There’s fresh paint, but no mistaking the history.

We play a lot of Sequence which, if you haven’t tried it, is a blast.  And we watched “Barb and Star Visit Vista Del Mar” which, if you haven’t seen it, is a hoot.  And we went to Costco where I found the best bag of chips and bought a cake because nobody makes a cake like Costco and Andrew said he’d help me eat it.  I left half of it when we left for Kauai but that part of the trip is in the next post.

We spent a day at the museums of the USS Arizona Memorial but didn’t go out to the ship.  We hiked Diamond Head and saw a blue stop sign.  We went swimming on the West shore where we saw a sea turtle from the beach and explored a creepy sea cave filling with tidal waters.

They have shrimp flavored potato chips and mushroom popcorn.  The sea is an unconscious part of everyone here, but so is the incredible fusion of Eastern and Western cultures with the Polynesians.  It’s a generally polite and unpretentious place that, much like the black bears in West Virginia, only gets mean when you poke it.

There’s something else too, something intangible.

We’ve spent a lot of time at the ocean.  Southern Maine (HA!), Cape Cod, South Carolina, the Golden Isles of Georgia, Florida’s Clearwater, Coco Beach and Destin.  The Virgin Islands, Nevis and St. Kitts, Puerto Rico and Haiti and Grand Cayman.   I don’t think I realized how many places or how much time until writing that list, how incredibly fortunate we have been.  Experience, right?  And yet, Hawaii is different.  Completely different.  Soul touching different.

We took off with the the Mobile Mojo Dojo Casa House to tour the country and decide where we wanted to live.  If it weren’t for all the chickens, this might have been it.

That's the tide coming in