Visiting the North Shore

This is a street in Waikiki that we drove on several times and I can remember loving this street when we drove on it over 10 years ago during our honeymoon in the same area.  As soon as we were driving on it again, memories from 10 years ago came flooding back.  I love how a physical reminder of a certain time can bring back so many "forgotten" memories.

Looking a little like the prairies for just a second!  Flat!

This is the Dole Plantation  but I guess that's a little self explanatory. :) We drove by, but never went inside.  I think Little Mr. was still sleeping at this point.

We saw entire fields of pineapple plants!  This was cool to see.  I thought the plants would be a lot bigger for some reason.  You could see the pineapples on the plants and it made me hungry. :)

Behind the evergreen trees, you can see rows of Waialua Coffee plants.

After nap time, it was lunch time.  It was sunny so I tried to get Little Mr. to wear his sunglasses.  He always takes them right off so we need to practice more.

While trying to decide which beach to go to, we randomly pulled in to Turtle Bay Resort and saw that they had a public beach access area.  It turned out that we stumbled upon a perfect kids beach and it was beautiful too!  The beach is in a small cove so it is protected on both sides.  The opening to the cove has a reef that sticks out of the water, so the waves mostly break out there and not on the beach. When the waves reached the beach they were very small and not strong enough to knock over the small kids that were running in and out of the water.

Snack time.  He is eating cheddar Snikiddy Baked Fries.  They are "all natural" junk food. :)

This was Little Mr.'s favorite way to enjoy the water, kicking his feet!

To come to the North Shore we took a cross-country/cross-island route, so for the drive home we stuck to the coast and were rewarded with beautiful scenery.

Mokolii or "China Man's Hat" is an island that you can walk to in low tide or kayak/take a small boat to.  I read that it has a couple of sea caves, you can climb to the peak, it has two palm trees and two beaches and that it is a pretty cool destination.  I was thinking "oh we totally should have gone there!" until I read that the reefs surrounding the island are very beautiful and are also a hammerhead shark breeding area.  Although they said that the sharks are harmless, I really don't EVER want to be swimming with one.

There are so many flowers blooming in Hawaii, even way up high in the tree line.  I only caught about 1/3 of the height of this tree in the photo.

This highway looks like it is going to run in to the Koʻolau mountain range.....

.... and it does, but you just drive right though via an approximately 1 mile long tunnel.  There is one tunnel for each direction and they are called the Tetsuo Harano Tunnels.

Back in Waikiki we drove past this building and I found it quite interesting and pretty cool, so I had to snap a photo.  I looked it up and it is a condo building.  The larger floors at the top of the building are where the penthouse suites are. The smaller building in front of it is the 11 floor parking garage, which has two pools on its roof.  Must be nice!

Coming next: Hanauma Bay!