Category: Hawaii

Spending 2 nights in Honolulu (October 17th and 18th) was a last-minute change to our itinerary that was necessitated by the tragic fires in August that completely destroyed Maui’s cruise port, Lahaina. Our only plan was dinner at a place that’s very special to us, and that’s really all...

On October 16th we were docked at Kailua-Kona (usually just called Kona) from 8:00am until 6:00 pm. Unlike our busy 2014 visit when we rented a car and went to Kona Joe Coffee and Pu’uhonua o Honaunau National Historical Park (see “Exploring Kona, Hawaii“), we had no plans and...

For pretty much forever, I had 3 bucket-list things to do in Hawaii. The first, and perhaps the prompt for the other 2, was to watch the sun rise from the summit of Haleakala. That was accomplished in May 1972, a few days after getting married in the old...

This was the first visit to Kauai for both Cathy and I, and since we booked the cruise I’d been dreaming of doing a bucket-list flight along the Na Pali coast. Cathy booked us with Ali’i Air Tours, in a Robinson R44 with the doors off. She was only...

On Thursday, we began the 4,000-mile trip home. We were scheduled to fly out of Honolulu at 1:15 pm with Alaska Airlines, have a very short overnight in Seattle, and be in Whitehorse just before 2:00 pm Friday. Although there were some bumps along the way, that’s not too...

With the end of our Hawaiian vacation nearing, there was one more site we needed to see on Oahu – Nu’uanu Pali Lookout. It was planned to be a very short excursion with MJ and Jim, but we got a bit sidetracked 🙂 From our hotel to the lookout...

On Tuesday, we finally reached the special day that this trip was planned to celebrate – Cathy’s 50th birthday. After our long and hot day at Pearl Harbor the previous day, this would be a calm beach day, with dinner at a great restaurant that night. After a walk...

This is part 2 of our day at Pearl Harbor, which began with about 3½ hours at the USS Arizona Memorial. We would have less than 2 hours to go through the Pacific Aviation Museum, which I knew would not be enough. It had become clear that to see...

The only big day we had planned for Oahu was a visit to Pearl Harbor, which we had booked months ago for the 4 of us. The USS Arizona Memorial was the first priority, next was the Pacific Aviation Museum, and if we had any time left there were...

Saturday evening was a busy night for most of the passengers on the Celebrity Solstice, but not in a good way. For about 2,400 of the 2,800, this was our last night on the ship – on Sunday morning we had to disembark. The other 400 would continue to...