The Best Part

Upon being home from vacation, I asked my wife and my son what their favorite part of the trip was.

My wife said her favorite thing was our jaunt over to Kailua beach. Just like the sand there, it was pretty fine.

It was also an interesting part of the trip, as the boy stayed back at the hotel. We'd gone to lunch, and he'd had a turkey sandwich, and he claimed the tryptophan was putting him to sleep. Also, there was a Goodwill store a block over, so we'd gone there and done some shopping, and he was bored for that. Found myself an orange T-shirt from a local radio station (although, not the one The Woody Show is on there) and a vintage looking Hawaii Pan Am shirt.

There was a sign that there were man 'o wars (men 'o war???) in the water, but fortunately we didn't see or encounter any. We splashed about in the water for a bit. It was fairly excellent!!!

My sons' favorite part was the Dole Whip at the Pineapple Plantation. Yeah, it was pretty good, too!!! Funny thing, he follows Menace on Instagram, and shortly before we went Menace had posted a picture of the Dole Whip!!!

The Plantation has a train that takes you on a tour of the grounds, and we went on that. Don't our outfits go with the background foliage???

It wasn't the only area with them there, but we saw a few roosters.

Out in the the entrance to our lodging there was an outrigger canoe. Probably because it's called the Outrigger Waikiki Beach. The second morning we were there, I asked my son if he wanted to go jump in the ocean when we first got up. We swam for a while. They rent the aqua trikes on the beach there, and we were looking at doing that, but never got to it. They had them at the resort we stayed at on the Big Island, too, but we spent hardly any time there and missed out on them there, too. One evening, when we got back, they boy and I went down to the pool and swam for a bit. It is a pretty good pool, fully tiled. They have a bar with a live acoustic trio playing there, doing old standards in a somewhat Hawaiian style. When we were drying off to head up, I recognized the tune they were playing as Louis Armstrong's "What a Wonderful World". I called that to the boy's attention, and he was berating the style they were doing it in. He began doing his Satchmo impersonation of the song. The funny part, and he wasn't aware until we'd left the area, it appeared that a woman fairly close to us was recording the song on her phone, so hopefully she's got him berating and vocalizing on her recording!!!

Over on the Big Island, we'd set out for the Volcano park. In a logistical misstep, our lodging was about a half hour north of the Kailua-Kona airport, which is north of Kailua-Kona, which is where most of the action on that side of the island is. Anyway, we drove down that way, then around the south end to the Volcano park.

We got to the Volcano park, and apparently they are doing an anniversary special and letting people in for free, so that was nice. A good amount of the park is inaccessible due to recent eruptions and volcanic activity. Got to see a lot of sulfur and steam vents, anyway. The lava tube was off limits.

On the return trip, it routed us through the middle of the island, through Hilo and then between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. There was a lot of cloud cover as we were heading out, but about half an hour before we were back at our lodging, I pulled off to the side of the road to see what it was like. It was clear and fully dark in the area, and it was as many stars as we'd ever seen!!! I can see why they have some of the best telescopes in the world there!!! I messed with the settings on my phones' camera, and tried bracing it on the roof of the car, but it was quite windy, and this was as good as I could get. The photograph in my head is far better.