Brooke and her Dad posing with some hard to see turtles at the Hilton Hawaiian Village where we stayed.
Here is me with some penguins in the same location, yes penguins in Hawaii. We thought it was weird as well, but here is photo proof.
This is the wedding chapel at the Hilton, it was a really nice location and probably a fun place to get married.
We spent our first day at the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie Hawaii. It was a fun place to go and learn about a lot of the Polynesian countries, it is very "hands on" and there are a lot of different demonstrations and shows to see. Here is Brooke with a hat made out of palm leaves.
Yes, it's temporary.
Not necessarily authentic Polynesian food, it was time for lunch.
You can't go to Hawaii and miss out on seeing a guy climb a tree to get a coconut. I think he just climbed the tree though, there weren't any coconuts up there.
Another shot at the Polynesian Cultural Center of Brooke and her Dad.
We took a short detour over to the Laie Hawaii Temple. It is in an amazing location and the grounds are beautiful. It's quite a site to see. The city of Laie is home to the Temple, BYU Hawaii and the Polynesian Cultural Center, so it's 80% LDS people. Following is just more shots of the Temple and the grounds.
I especially liked this shot, from the temple looking down. It's amazing, you can see down the street and right into the ocean.
Flowers like this were everywhere, the plant life on the island is amazing. We learned that most of it is actually not native to Hawaii, interesting.
Back to the Polynesian Cultural Center where we took a little canoe ride around and learned more about the species of plants and the different countries represented.
Of course we went to a luau, it was really fun. We received lei's made of of real flowers, which are actually quite annoying to wear. We had a nice show and some great food.
The food.
It was very important to Brooke to be "festive" each day. So she became part Hawaiian with flowers in her hair, a lei and an authentic skirt.
We were very fortunate to take a tour of Pearl Harbor and visit the USS Arizona Memorial that is located there. It's an amazing place and very interesting to visit. You can walk out on the memorial and see the ship still laying in the water, a permanent resting place to over a 1,000 of the men who lost their lives.
I tried to be a little artistic and take a photo of the flag just outside of the memorial. The flag pole is actually attached directly to the ship below, where the rest of the memorial sits above the ship and doesn't touch any part of it. Lucky for me the flag was flying at half mast that day, I am not sure why, but they said that it doesn't permanently fly at half mast.
A monument on the USS Arizona with a piece of the ship in the background that is sitting out of the water.
Next we were able to have lunch on the USS Missouri which was another battleship located at Pearl Harbor.
We went down to the mess hall on the ship and were able to have lunch.
The USS Missouri was the last battleship that was ever made, from then on out it was the aircraft carriers that took over.
Brooke was a little shy of handling the gun, I was pretty sure it wasn't loaded.
From the Missouri you can see the Arizona Memorial in the background.
The "Peace Deck" of the Missouri was where the Japanese signed the terms of surrender. They have the US and Japanese copies as well as the actual pens used on the ship. It was cool to stand in the place where World War II with the Japanese officially was over.
Another shot of the Arizona Memorial from the Missouri.
The next day it was on to Waikiki beach for some fun in the sun. The weather was perfect, in the high 80's each day and the water temperature in the ocean was actually pretty warm still.
Waikiki beach with Diamond Head in the background.
We took a chance and tried to go surfing. It is an extremely difficult sport and we were only mildly successful. It sure was fun to try though.
Yes, I know how white I am, but feel free to make fun of me in the comments.
After getting crushed by huge waves, we decided to hit the freshwater swimming pools at the hotel.
The worlds largest "Aloha Shirt" at Hilo Hatties in Honolulu.
We went out for a nice dinner at Benihana.
The next day we went to the International Marketplace in Honolulu to do a little shopping. A little shopping is all we did, there were some fun stores but most of them sold the same things.
We had the chance to take a lunch time cruise that went through Waikiki and around Diamond Head. It was nice to get out on the ocean and see the island that way.
The Dole Pineapple Plantation actually turned out to be one of our favorite spots on the island. The plantation is located in the country and far away from the city, it's more typically what you expect to see in Hawaii.
We took a tour of a garden they have their with tons of different and interesting plants.
They have a train ride that you can take that teaches you about the pineapple plantation and how it was started. It takes you on a tour of the plantation and teaches you how they grow and harvest the pineapples and sugar cane.
This is what it looks like at the pineapple plantation, it's a beautiful place.
We went snorkeling at Hanauma Bay and the highlight was seeing two really large sea turtles. It was fun to go snorkeling and even though Brooke doesn't like it very much, she really enjoyed snorkeling around and seeing all the different types of fish and especially the turtles up close.
And a final parting shot before we left for probably the worst flight I have ever been on. Our flight left at about 10:00 at night Hawaii time and arrived in Utah early in the morning around 7:30 AM Utah time. It was brutal and I didn't sleep much, I had also developed a cold on the last day. It didn't help that we left perfect weather for the cold fall happening in Utah right now. Oh well, it was all worth it. Hope you enjoy the pics, leave your comments.
