Friday Activities

Friday was a busy day for us. We started out looking for Da Kine Bail Bonds. All the fans of Dog the Bounty Hunter will recognize that business. If not a fan, you can read a bit about him here. Dianne snapped a picture of me out front. Unfortunately, no one was in the office. The white board had pictures of two people taped to it and written below them inside a heart was “Leland’s most wanted”. My theory is they were out tracking someone down. The office is much smaller than it appears on TV. Dianne was glad they were closed so I couldn’t get a Dog T-shirt. In case you want to find them, they are close to the state capitol area on Queen Emma street.

After that we had lunch at Grace’s. It’s one of Dean’s favorites, but a familiar spot for Dianne as well.

We drove up through the Nuuanu area and saw several temples. We stopped at one to look around and you can see several pictures here. There were many offerings of cut flowers and plates of apples and oranges. There were several altars where incense was burning. In one of the buildings behind the main temple, there were some folks saying a chant. It was very pretty, but I don’t know anything about the Buddhist temples.

We continued by going up the Pali highway and stopping at the lookout point. It’s near the ridge of the Koolau mountain range at about 3000 feet overlooking the windward side of the island. It’s near the spot where King Kamehameha drove his rivals over the cliffs in his quest to “unite” the islands. The picture here gives a sense for the steep cliff. The set of pictures here shows some of the view. It was a bit cloudy and extremely windy when we were up there. You can read more about the Pali here. Fortunately we were there during the day so we didn’t have to worry about the Night Marchers (or as I like to call them, the Midnight Stalkers).

After going over the mountains, we followed the highway north along the windward side to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center (PCC). We stopped and got a couple pictures of a windward beach that you can see here and here. The PCC has areas set up for many different South Pacific islands. In each area, they have historical buildings representative of the island and have programs or craft exhibits conducted by people with a connection to that island. We visited the areas for Hawaii, Fiji, Samoa, and Tonga. It’s one of Oahu’s top tourist destinations, so it wasn’t number 1 on Dianne’s list of places to see. But it is an interesting spot and we hadn’t been there since we were married. I thought it was nice and there are several pictures here. The day at PCC was capped off with a buffet dinner and an evening show highlighting song and dance from each of the islands. Thanks to Milton for arranging tickets for us.