Manana Island off the coast east of Oahu
By Sandy and Rick Krause, Lilburn, Ga. | My wife and I recently visited in Hawaii. We never had a goal to see all 50 states, but this trip accomplished that!
We toured the four main islands—Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and Hawaii, starting in Honolulu, Oahu. We stayed a block off Waikiki Beach and enjoyed walking around downtown and the beach.
Among the places we visited was the World War II Valor in the Pacific National Monument at Pearl Harbor. We took a Navy launch to the USS Arizona Memorial, watched a film, and visited the museum. It was most touching. We also toured the National Cemetery of the Pacific, State Capital, Chinatown, and Iolani Palace.
Punchbowl, National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific
On a tour around the Island, there was Diamond Head, Oahu’s famous North Shore, a Dole Pineapple Plantation, and plenty of scenery. Pineapple farming is dying out in the state. Hawaii had been home to 85 percent of the world’s pineapple production. There was also for us a whale watch, and we saw several Humpback Whales.
We then flew to Kauai, the “Garden Isle,” for beautiful scenery, including Waimea Canyon and film locations for the Jurassic Park movies. On a helicopter tour of the island, we could see Jurassic Falls and the gorgeous NaPali Coast.
It was in Wailua that we discovered Hawaii’s love affair with Spam. This item is widespread on menus morning, noon, and night in fast food and upscale restaurants. Hawaii may be the only state where McDonalds has spam on the menu. A Safeway that we shopped had an end cap full of Spam—more than 460 cans!
On the eighth day, we flew to Maui, and crossed the island to Kaanapali Beach on the west coast. We saw rusting buildings of sugar mills. Sugar cane and processing are also dying out in Hawaii. We learned that Hawaii’s five biggest industries today are tourism, macadamia nuts, Kona coffee, orchids, and cattle.
Another day, we took the “Highway to Hana,” which is regularly on compilations of the best road trips in America. Later we flew to Hawaii, and drove across the island from Hilo to Kailua Kona. We toured Volcanoes National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Kona has a touch of bohemia, similar in ambiance to Key West, which brought back memories of our stays there in the early 80s.
The trip was most pleasurable; the islands, beautiful. There were some negatives. Hawaii is wrought with species extinctions and alien species invasions. To illustrate one: we planned to bird watch, and before we left home, researched birds we might see on the trip. Entire families of birds have been taken to extinction, and a significant cause was man’s unintentional introduction of wharf rats, then the purposeful introduction of mongoose, to eliminate the rat problem. All this was worse than a failure, and now, there is an increasing problem of feral cats.
However, we toured this beautiful place and blotted these from our mind and focused on the positive attributes and properties of the islands. And when is the best time to visit? Whenever your weather back home is disagreeable, it is said, it is nearly always nice here. So consider Hawaii any time!
Aloha, and Mahalo!
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