Tuesday July 18

Jet lag has finally caught up to most of us.

Monday we tried to take it easy by hanging out at the beach. It was great fun, but boy was it crowded! For dinner we decided to go to "Duke’s Canoe Club", the food was excellent, but the wait was long. We didn’t get seated until about 7:30, and by the time we got home, everyone was exhausted.

Tuesday we got everyone up early so that we could go snorkeling at Hanauma Bay — unfortunately, the bay is closed on Tuesday. We quickly did some new planning and decided to climb Diamond Head instead. It really wasn’t too bad of a hike (less than a mile each way), but we did have to climb up almost 200 very steep steps. Haley is deathly afraid of heights, so I really had to coax her up the final spiral staircase.

The view from the top was spectacular! Well worth the effort.

Nancy saw in the guide book that there was a rain forest we could drive through. I must have missed it, but we did have a beautiful drive along a heavily wooded area. Then we stopped at Nuuanu Pali lookout. The view was awesome.

Nancy, Haley and I went to the ‘Iolani Palace — the former palace of Hawaiian royalty. It was sad to hear about the history of Hawaii and how a few rich men basically stole the country from the Hawaiian people. What is sad about the palace is how much of the possessions were sold off when America annexed Hawaii and how they have been lost.

We came home and crashed because tomorrow will be a long day. We will get up and head through the middle of Oahu to the Dole plantations (one of the families that got rid of the Queen), then up to the North Shore on our way to the Polynesian Cultural Center.