Friday we headed into the Pearl Harbor area. The USS Arizona Memorial is the tourist centerpiece of the area, but the Memorial has a two hour wait much of the time because of the crowds. When we arrived there was still a very long line to get the tickets for one's place in line, so we moved along and stopped at the neighboring USS Missouri ticket office. The battleship Missouri has been docked at Pearl Harbor since the mid 90's and can also be visited. After paying the admission we had a tram ride over a bridge onto Ford Island, which is where the battleships were docked on December 7, 1941.

The Missouri overlooks the Arizona Memorial so we could at least see that from the decks of the Missouri. The ship is quite an impressive sight and a bit of a climb to get on board. This first picture shows the Missouri and Ford Island from the Arizona Memorial Visitor's Center.

Looking up at the main structure of the ship is impressive.

We had an opportunity to have lunch on board the Missouri. The Enlisted Men's Mess is set up as a cafeteria complete with all the original tables and chairs (firmly attached to the deck) one level below the main deck. The food was ok, but the setting was special.

Back on deck the Arizona Memorial can be seen. There are white memorial blocks commemorating the other battleships that were also there on December 7th.

Looking out to the west, one can see the Leeward Mountains, our next destination. Before we left we did stop at the Arizona Memorial Visitor Center. We could have taken the launch out to the Memorial itself, but that would have finished our day what with the long wait, so we walked through the Visitor Center instead and went on our way.

From Pearl we drove through some rather crowded parts of the island and then turned up the leeward side of the island beyond the mountains. We drove up to the northwest end of the island. The road does not go around this end of the island so we stopped at the Kaena Point State Park where the road ends. There was a beach there so we walked down the rather steep and rather soft sand to the water's edge and promptly got our shorts wet. The waves were modest, but every minute or so a large one rolled in washing way up the beach unexpectedly. We found that the sand we were standing on became very soft and almost quicksand-like. After some effort we were able to climb back to the car.

The two pictures here show Rich getting his feet wet, and show the Leeward Mountains as we looked south along the shore.

We finished the day driving back down the island, around and up the center of the island and then along the north shore where the big wintertime waves come rolling in. We drove around the northeast corner of the island and back down the windward shore yet again to finally complete our tour of the island's shores.

While driving around we passed some shrimp farms on the windward side. We stopped at a truck stand there for our Friday dinner of fresh shrimp scampi. The truck looked rather curious, but the shrimp were tasty. Giovanni's Shrimp Truck is well known locally so our random choice turned out to be a very good one.

NEW!! In mid November, 2005 Access Hollywood (I think) had a segment about an actor from the TV show, Lost, Jorge Garcia. What caught my attention was that he and his friends were eating at this same shrimp truck. Since Lost films down the road from the truck it isn't so surprising that some of these guys might stop here, too.

From there we drove down the windward side of the island, over the mountains once again and returned to Waikiki, except this evening to the Marriott Hotel two blocks down the street from the Hyatt. The end of the conference pricing meant a move to another hotel and the Marriott turned out to be very nice. More in the Honolulu set of pictures.