Oregon Living 2022 – Blog #32 – The Honeymoon Starts!

  

Sunday, August 7^th., 2022……  We had some more errands to run today. Cathye headed off to church and I went and got breakfast. I did some laundry for the last minute items we wanted to include for our trip. I did catch up on some of the Little League World Series Regional games. They will continue on through the week but I won’t tape those and will just wait until Wednesday when they get to Williamsport. I also caught up on the Nascar races too.

Monday, August 8^th., 2022……  We had everything packed. Ok, I had everything packed! Cathye finished up and we were ready! We ran off to Albany and gave Jamie his money and talked with him a bit about his future. Mental Health Services has been working with Cathye trying to find him a better place to live. If they can get him qualified, he could possibly move to a home care facility where he will receive more care. They have talked with Cathye this past week and they say they now have an opening at a place here in Lebanon that has a room and they are trying to get him in there. So, she spent some time this morning talking to Jamie and getting his take on all of this. So far, it’s in the preliminary stages but we want Jamie to have time to process all of this since it’s a life-changing step for him. His living blood relatives (aunt and brother) are both in the Phoenix area and are saying they are good with this. The alternative to that is to turn over his care to them and nobody wants that, including Jamie. So, this is the best thing and we all hope they get approval!      

Tuesday, August 9^th., 2022……   We were up early this morning. We walked and fed the dogs, then got the last minute items together and packed and the bags put in the back of the truck. I had already loaded up the foldable ebike that we were taking up to Josh. Cathye took Jama over to Misty and Lona’s and were ready to go!  Josh gets off of work at 3:30pm so we planned to get up there by then. We fed Butthead early and headed out. Cherrelyn will be here in a few hours and will stay the week to take care of Rylee and watch the house and do some watering. It was an easy ride up to Portland and we got to Josh’s apartment and unloaded the bike and he came out and continued on with us to check in to the Airport Radisson. We chose them because they offered park and fly, where you can leave your vehicle there and shuttle to the airport. When we booked the room, we were told (by the third party booking company) that parking for the week was included in our quoted rate. But, when we got to the hotel, they informed us it was not!  After some complaining, they agreed to add on $5.00 for each of the 6 days it will be there. I relented after running everything in my head about moving hotels or driving to the per day airport parking lot and agreed and we were all happy. We got checked in and then all went down to the hotel dining room for dinner (very good start!). We discovered they had no pool/spa so we decided to go see Bullet Train. Wow, we were glad we did!  It was an excellent movie – given the language and extreme violence – and Brad Pitt was the perfect person for the role! After that, we drove Josh back home and came back to the bar around 9:00pm and had a drink before heading off to bed. Our shuttle tomorrow is at 7:00am.       

Wednesday, August 10^th., 2022……  We were up early, showered and got going. We ate at the hotel and made the shuttle for the 5 min. ride to the airport. Super easy check-in and TSA. We had mimosas before boarding. 

It was a nice flight. 5 ½ hours – but going first class made it easy!  I have National Emerald Aisle membership so we headed straight for the parking lot. The ONLY thing available was a Nissan Sentra but we had those before and were good with that. We got to our hotel with no issues. We will be at the Waikiki Beach Marriott Hotel and Spa for 6 nights. We chose valet parking which is $50.00 per day. Yeah, we know!  But self-parking was $45.00 per day. Go figure!  (note - valet worked perfectly and was the way to go!). We unpacked and rested and then got a delivery!  Champagne on ice, compliments of our hotel! Nice!  We took a couple of pics of the view from our room plus one of the gift

and then walked down and crossed the street and went over to the beach and got our feet wet. We were here! We stopped and got shave ice and then went back to the hotel to rest a bit. The hotel has several bars and restaurants. Tonight, we chose Queensbreak Bar and Grill and had drinks and a nice meal. It’s 3 hours earlier her than in Oregon, so we had to adjust to the time. Later we went down to the hotel concierge desk and got booked for Pearl Harbor/Missouri tour, Coral Crater zipline tour, and reserved our entry time for Diamond Head. I had to do that one online but that was easy. We did choose the 6:00am entry but parking was not available at that time. So we will be getting a cab or uber for that morning. I also have to go online to book us in Hanauma Bay for snorkeling. They say you need to book 2 days prior and must be online at 7:00am and times go fast!  We have that on our list of things to do on Friday morning! We already have the Polynesian Cultural Center booked and paid for. That one is for tomorrow, so we think we’ve got everything covered. More on that later! Then, it was back to the room and early to bed (9:00pm).          

Thursday, August 11^th., 2022……  I discovered early this morning that our tickets for the Polynesian Cultural Center were NOT for today, but were on Monday!  So, we looked at our schedule and decided that we could do the Pearl Harbor/Missouri tour and then drive to the North Shore and still be ok to do both venues. Wheew!  But we will stop by the concierge again to see if something can be changed. We walked down to the main drag (Kalakaua Ave.) and looked for breakfast. We chose Kai’s and had coffee and sandwiches. Just ok.  We then got the car and headed to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We were there before the 10:00am opening, so we chose to continue on and hit the North Shore. This is where surfing – as we know it – began. Of course, Duke Kahanamoku was the originator of modern surfing, but those at North Shore put surfing on the map for the world to see. I remember watching tv and seeing the kids out at Waimea Bay and Banzai Pipeline surfing the big waves. In my generation (including my surfing days) we all used longboards and it was so nice to see them still being used here. It was off season for the humongous 20 footers and the perfect pipeline curls but at least we got to see the beach. We will be going back later but turned around in time to get parked and get tickets for the train and garden tour combo and got on the train before the crowds got crazy. The train was ok and the grounds were amazing!  We shopped and had pineapple drinks and ice cream. We left there and decided to continue on to the north shore. Just a quick note – Honolulu/Waikiki Beach is on the south shore and the drive across is 45-65 minutes. We stopped at Waimea Bay and hit the parking lot of a road!  We inched our way around the island there and I guess that was good because we could get a good look at the beaches, houses, and little villages as we passed by very slowly.  We stopped at Shark’s Cove and found some food trucks. We chose fish tacos. Cathye had a pineapple drink – inside removed and pulped into juice and then put back into the pineapple. It was pricey $12.00 – but very fresh and tasty! We continued on past the Polynesian Cultural Center, where we will be on Monday, and then we stopped at Punaluu Beach and walked on the beach. After we made our way back to the hotel and rested up a bit, we walked down to the main street and went to Cheeseburgers in Paradise for lunch. I had been before when we were last in HI, so it was a must-do for me. We split a cheeseburger and onion rings and we both found it the best meal so far! We walked out to the beach and stayed out to see the sunset. We topped it off with champagne in our room! A fun day!    

    

Friday, August 12^th., 2022…… Our Zipline tour was today and we had to be out on there by 9:30am for our 10:00am tour. So Cathye slept in and I got online to try to get a reservation for Hanauma Bay. Long story short, we did not get one!  So we then headed out. We drove through the local Jack in the Box for a quick meal and made the drive out H2 to the west side. We discovered when we got to Coral Crater Adventure that the girl at Jack in the Box did not give us our credit card back!  We found their number and called, and yes, they had it, and yes, they would hold it for us for pickup later!  Wheew!  So, we felt a lot better when we went in to get suited up for our zipline tour! We bought the long 6-line tour and we had already signed our waivers and we were ready. We were not disappointed! Our guides Nick and Dillon, did a great job and made it fun. This is really a crater and you would never see it driving past!  We saw some of the local resident pigs and turtles and then hit the first zipline.

Some were short ladders or steps and some were way up!  We had to hike from one section of the park to the other and the hikes were pretty tough!  But we had trained for the hike up Diamond Head so we were ok with that! We even did a double where we were paired up and raced to the end. The first one I won but she said “I was sightseeing.” The second one I gave her a head start and it was a tie!  They had a few spots to stop and take pics and such. We also saw the quads down below us on the trails and also the obstacle course tower. Both of those were separate tours. We changed out of our gear and took off to head back to get the credit card back. Yep, no worries. They even gave us our receipt too! After we got back, we rested up a bit and then went down and hit Cheeseburgers in Paradise again. This time, we had lunch there. Then we changed and went to the pool for a few hours. Cathye had gone online and found and booked us a sunset dinner cruise for tonight. Tonight was also fireworks night on the beach!  We got dressed up and took a cab to the marina (maybe 3 miles) and he found our boat. BTW, this is the same marina that they used to film the opening scenes for Gilligan’s Island, way back when!  When we saw the boat, we discovered that this was only going to be a drink/party cruise!  They apologized for the confusion saying they change up their cruises and they failed to update the website!  We hadn’t eaten because of this trip and they had NO FOOD on the boat so we were not going to go and would forfeit this as a loss for the night. But they said they would credit back the cruise costs. We’ll see… Anyway, we called an uber and got a ride back to Waikiki Beach. We chose The Royal Hawaiian Plaza. This place has the famous pink hotel right on the beach. Although now it is surrounded by a huge area with stores and restaurants. We chose Il Lupino for Italian and we were not disappointed! We ordered Blue Hawaiians (supposedly invented here) and then split the seafood fettucine.  Both were amazing! After that, we made the short walk back along the beach to our hotel, stopping to see the Friday night fireworks. Not really. Those of us on the east side of the Sheraton could not see too much. They were barely visible and hundreds of us all left disappointed. We got back home and went to bed early. Tomorrow was a big day and we need to be up early!         

Saturday, August 13^th., 2022……   We had the alarm set for 4:30am! We got dressed, got our hydration pack, hiking sticks, and hiking shoes out and on and went down to get a cab. The cab dropped us off ($20. w/tip) 15 minutes later at the Diamond Head National Park entrance. This is actually a tunnel on the north end of the volcano.  Since we were there early enough, we got to see the sunrise!  At 6:00am they opened the gates and we walked through and got to the check-in gate and showed them our tickets. We were ready!  We made the hike up and got to see the beautiful view along the way. We stopped when we needed a breather and walked at a good rate for us. We hit the 175 total stairs and made them with little issues. This is what we had trained for! We were the ‘old geezers’ on the mountain and met and spent time with some really nice folks both going up and coming down. 

We had some quality time up on the peak and saw the beautiful views of the beaches and houses down below. When we got back to the start of the trail, we estimated that we were up there for a total of just over 2 hours. We met another older gentleman (87) who told us he walks it every day and used to run it when younger. He said he made it up and down in 26 minutes one time!  Amazing!  Once we got an uber back, and got to our room, we rested for a few minutes and showered and then walked down to CIP again. Since it was still before 10:00am we had breakfast there. Once we were done, we came back and got the car and drove over to the college football stadium to the swap meet there. We were told this was the place to go for shopping. It was huge!  We only got 1/8 of the way through before Cathye found everything on her list. We came back and rested and then walked out to Kalakaua Ave. again. This time we went the other way and found and chose Lulu’s for dinner. We both enjoyed our meals. I chose steak tacos and she chose mahi mahi. We both had mai tai’s but had to send them back because they were way too strong!  After that, we stopped by our pool area and watched the fire dancer. Really cool! Or I guess really hot! We were given a card for a free dvd rental and chose ‘Dog” with Channing Tatum, which we both liked. Sad, but also funny. I returned it to the rental machine and went back and we crashed from the long day!