Oahu

So. You probably noticed that I went missing from the blogosphere for awhile. ;) If you're friends with me on Facebook, you've been getting updates. For those who didn't...or who just want to hear more...here's the story:

At the start of the month, Nathan flew out to Hawaii to spend a week working at Hawaiian Airlines. (He's done this three previous times over the past year. He does contract work for them on their website. Tough gig, right? lol) At the end of that week, for the first time EVER, I flew out to Hawaii. Woooohoooo! Yup, for the first time since having Noah almost 15 years ago, Nathan and I managed a vacation of longer than 16 hours or so together and without kids! (HUGE thanks to Nathan's mom for flying out to stay with the boys!!)

Awesome!

So. First off, I flew to Honolulu, where Nathan met me at the airport with a beautiful lei and then took me for a walk on a beach in Waikiki before we headed back to the VRBO (vacation rental by owner) place he'd been staying at in Kailua. 

We walked down to the beach and enjoyed that before heading into town for some dinner and further adjusting to the humidity, lol.

The next day, we headed to Pearl Harbor and took a ferry to the USS Arizona Memorial...

...then toured the Bowfin submarine nearby, along with touring the various museum exhibits all around.

(There was a fun little Filipino woman employee in the control room who took my phone and made us pose for a bunch of photos, like that one in the top right. She was hilarious. ;) Also. Nathan apparently is too tall to work on a submarine, lol.)

After that, we grabbed some lunch nearby (heads up: there's a marina just north of the memorial area that's not well marked but has a fabulous restaurant) then drove north through the middle of the island. We stopped at the Dole Plantation to browse the shop, complete the maze (apparently a world record largest maze), ride the train/tour and enjoy some delicious Dole whip.

Did you know pineapple grew on little plants like that?! Yeah. I totally didn't know that. ;) We actually learned lots of fun facts during our train ride tour. :)

Then we got back in the rental car and headed even further north and found these amazing sea turtles (they call them honu in Hawaii) at a beach along the north shore. (Technically, it's called Laniakea Beach and isn't overly clearly marked that we could tell.)


And then we went back to the VRBO and walked down to the beach to try our hand at boogie boarding...which was great fun!

The next day (Sunday), we decided to drive around the island counter-clockwise on our way back to the airport. We stopped first at Byodo-In Temple:

 and then continued on (stopping here and there for things like food and window shopping but basically just enjoying the time and the scenery) to the end of the road in the NW corner of the island:

We found that white coral all set out that way. :) 

And then we made it to the airport and flew from Oahu to Kauai...