This morning Mason took the car to work. We figured it would allow all of us to get our bearings on the area and setting in to our new location. The night of sleep was rough because Woodrow was up quite a bit coughing which kept Mason up tossing and turning. Mason headed off to work by 7:30am, but Woodrow decided to sleep in until 10:30am (which would be a normal wake-up time in Guam), but I didn't want to wake Woodrow at all. Max, Theo, and I hung out in the living room. Theo did some school work, we Facetimed my parents, and when Woodrow woke-up we decided to take a nature walk around the hotel area. I think I could build a photo album on just the flora and fauna alone. It all looks so healthy and smells amazing. Right next to our hotel lobby was a small part and the kids had a blast playing for a half hour while we waited for Mason to come for lunch. They enjoyed trying the monkey bars, fireman pole, and twisty slide. Max took a snooze on me, so I was forced to read for a few minutes on the shady park bench. It was rough.
Mason swung by a few minutes after noon and said he had to be back at 1 for his meetings, so we drove to a quick strip mall he knew of and grabbed Panda Express for lunch. I got to drive the minivan back while he scarfed his lunch down and promised the kids we'd get them food after taking Mason back to work. After dropping Mason at work I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do with the kids, but lunch was the priority. They picked McDonalds-shocker-and I looked up a local garden I thought would be fun to eat at. Now, I should either just invest in renting the GPS with the rental car, or pay to have my phone turned on to work in Hawaii...I so need directions. Fortunately we survived the day by using Google maps which worked just enough to show me the little blue dot where I was on the map.
I was able to find the Maunaloa Gardens, but after arriving in the park lot, I realized it looked like a large grassy field with some trees that you had to pay to enter. It looked nice, but I didn't really want to pay for our picnic lunch, so I scoped out my map, and decided we'd hit the road on an Ellen Adventure--I had somewhat an idea of the route I wanted to take, but no set plans. We'd stop if I saw something cool and go from there.
I found a road that basically went North from Honolulu across to the other coast and then looped around the Eastern tip of Oahu and decided to go with that. The road took us through mountains, and beautiful greenery. There was a cutoff that I decided to take on a whim, and it was like this magical foresty area. The road was the Nuuanu Pali Drive and it was so pretty. The trees arched over the road, you could see bamboo, hear birds chirping, and see flowers growing. There were several cars pulled over in one area so we stopped too and it was a trailhead. I hadn't really prepared to hike (not lots of water and we were in sandals), but we walked in a little bit before the path crossed a stream and it was so beautiful! It reminded me of some hikes we've done in Tennessee with Mason's family. The boys had fun running around with sticks and checking out the large boulders. If we were more prepared I would definitely have checked out the Judd Trail more. A few people were on it and said it was fairly easy, but I didn't want to chance crossing the stream without a backup plan.
We continued along the main road, Pali Drive, to the Nu'uanu Pali Overlook. I wasn't expecting to pay $3 for this overlook, and I did try to pass my ticket off to another guest at the end, but since their was security in the parking lot, we did pay. I guess I wouldn't have minded if it was optional...anyways, the view was really nice. We kind of laughed when it said high winds could blow bees nearby and sure enough there were bees flying all around, not really trying to sting you, but being blown by the wind. The view looked down over Kane'ohe Bay and you could even see the island of Molokai in the distance. The kids mostly enjoyed seeing the wild cats and chickens.
Back on the road we headed down to Kane'ohe Bay and along the boast back towards Makapu'u Beach/Overlook. There were several little spots to pull over and take photos along the shore line and we even saw some hang gliders which the boys thought was neat. There were mild waves, lava rocks, and the Makapu'u Lighthouse to see (I hope to do that hike one of these days).
By this time we needed to head back so that we could pick up Mason by 5:00. After a slight detour (I took some wrong turns/missed an exit) but we got him in time. After taking a breather and doing a quick clean up we decided to head to Buffalo Wild Wings for dinner followed up with a quick grocery run at Walmart. There aren't any Walmarts in Guam, so it was Max's first trip, lol!
Again, everyone has been passing out fairly quickly in the evening. I've been staying up grading papers and responding to work emails now that I'm teaching this semester. And I'm about 100 pages close to finishing my book, so it's hard to not stay up all night reading.
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