BOX 186: O'ahu and Kaua'i.

I found it hard to decide which newly-scanned slide of our first trip to Hawai'i to open this post with. I finally chose the first one in the box: my arrival with Anne at the Honolulu Airport, where we were greeted by her brother Bob and soon-to-be sister-in-law Tripit. They were already living on O'ahu, and we were arriving for their wedding--some weeks in advance. It was my first time in Hawai'i, but Anne had spent a couple of her high-school years there, and it was her first visit back to the place she loved more than anyplace she'd even been--you can see from the photo how glad she was to be back.

If I had gone for scenery rather than people, my choice would have been the last slide from this box of a side trip to Kawa'i:

I'll say more about this view later, but let's return for now to the airport. Here are the other photos Anne and I took, while wearing the plumeria leis Bob and Tripit had made for us:

They drove us to their apartment in Waikiki, and very soon we were on the beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian Hotel:

At some point during our first days on O'ahu we drove to the house in Pacific Palisades where 20 years previously Anne and Bob had lived with their parents and other siblings:

One day, maybe later this same day, we drove to Waimea Beach on the North Shore:

The parking lot there had a spectacular tree in bloom:

We drove back along the Windward Side, with Anne and me sitting in the bed of Bob and Tripit's pickup truck:

Before the arrival of more people for the wedding, including Aron, Becky and Michelle, Anne and I spent a few days on Kaua'i and then on the Big Island of Hawai'i. The first photos I took on Kaua'i were overlooking the Wailua River and Falls on the eastern side of the island. There was some sort of model village built near the river, but we didn't visit it:

We stayed at a place with little cottages on the edge of the town of Hanalei on the North Shore of Kaua'i. Here is Anne outside the cottage:

I think these next shots are looking across the road from our place toward the mountains (and a waterfall), in afternoon and then the next morning:

Here's a Hanalei church, across the street from a café, if I recall rightly.

And here are a couple of wider views: of the coastline looking west from Princeville, on high ground east of Hanalei; and toward the mountains near sunset:

For a much more up-close shot, here is a heliconia and some Hawaiian fern leaves near our cottage:

Anne and I both loved the vegetation of Hawai'i--here we are posing next to some foliage, with Anne wearing a pareo she had just bought:

We drove west along the winding road from Hanalei to the point where it ended, at the Na Pali cliffs, passing the outcrop posing as Bali Hai in the movie version of South Pacific; swimming and snorkeling at Ke'e Beach at the end of the road: and walking along a jungly path:

Before we left the Hanalei Valley we took one more photo:

We had a different cottage rental on the South Shore of Kawa'i; I don't remember it at all well compared to the place in Hanalei, but I see that I liked it well enough to take some photos of it:

As you drive westward along the South Shore you come to the entrance to Waimea Canyon, where you can drive up a winding road that provides ever deeper views of the canyon below:

Finally, at the top of the road there is a park and overlook where you can see the Kalalau Valley, on the North Shore, with the Na Pali cliffs to your right:

I've already posted my second (and I think better) photo of the Kalalau Valley near the top of this page. In the next post I'll report on our stay on the Big Island and our days back on O'ahu before Bob and Tripit's wedding.