THE HAWAII TRIP (Part Three)

After looking over Bob's house we headed down the coast road on the way to his employment, where he manages the maintenance of numerous tour boats for pacificwhale.org. The weather was ideal and the view everywhere, full of sea and sand and swaying trees out of a paradise dream. The pace of Maui is slow compared to the big Island of Hawaii with perhaps only a tenth of the population. We were leaving for Honolulu the next day so I tried to soak in as much of the surroundings and still visit with Bob. He's a humorous guy so it wasn't easy.

He had told me to be sure to bring my coat when I came to Maui because I would need it as fuel to start the barbecue. We visited a well maintained aquarium facility near his work and all the bright colored types of fish in the huge tanks put on quite a show. Bob finally had to go to work and I walked around the shops, ate genuine pineapple/coconut ice cream. Pineapple in Maui tasted better and sweeter than any pineapple I had ever had before, anywhere else. I looked in store windows and inside shops at all the unusual souvenirs for sale, & purchased a couple.

That evening, Bob, Chris and I took the 30 minute flight to Honolulu, rented a van and met my Dad and Bob & Chris's daughter, Melissa, at a fancy hotel called the Embassy Suites. The traffic was immense and the buildings forty stories high or more. Dad & Melissa had just flown in from Seattle and we all had a restaurant meal, visited and hit the sack. Dad & I shared a room at a nearby hotel, since there weren't any more available rooms at the Embassy. Dad & I renewed bittersweet memories, ate breakfast with Bob on the rooftop cafeteria on top the Embassy, chasing away birds that tried to help eat our fancy breakfast. We were able to see the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial Site in Pearl Harbor on the next day, not knowing that they would park the U.S.S. John C. Stennis, aircraft carrier, directly across from there. (See the story called "Carrier Cruise).

That following day, Michael, Melissa's brother, joined us and we all went to Pearl to see the display of what happened on December 7th 1941 that started World War Two. We were able to listen to an audio program of that event, provided by War Memorial while we looked at the presentation, saw a movie of the terrible day and then rode out to U.S.S. Arizona, taking lots of pictures of that vessel 4o feet down and sunk in about 20 feet of mud. Many died aboard the Arizona, sealed below decks. Naturally, the whole mood is somber and the very thought that Pearl Harbor could have been bombed that way and by surprise, seemed fantastic. The next day, Dad, Bob & I met Scott, our son as he came in on the Stennis. After giving us a tour of the ship, Bob & Dad headed for Maui and Scott & I stayed in a hotel, ate a fancy meal at a street side restaurant and walked up and down the streets of Honolulu looking at all the lights, enjoying the sounds and getting reacquainted. The next day we began our carrier cruise.