Oahu

After only being in Maui for a day, Kim and I took a quick trip to Oahu. Megan had to work on Thursday and Friday, so we though it would be the perfect opportunity to island hop.

I was blessed to know Jared and Jen over in Laie and they were kind enough to let us sleep on their floor. I stole this picture from Jen's Facebook page. I took one of them, but I LOVED this one. We stayed at their place for 2 nights. They're great!

Our first stop Thursday morning was at the Hukilau Cafe. It came highly recommended and for good reason!

We both had macadamia nut pancakes that were delicious . . . and HUGE!

We snorkled for a bit at a place called Shark's Cove. I'm happy to report that there were no shark sightings. We went early enough to avoid the crowds as well. A lot of people showed up just as we were leaving.

We then made a quick stop at Sunset Beach. It was so beautiful!

It was picture perfect. I wish we could have stayed longer.

We did stay long enough for Kim to find some sea glass. How lucky that it was even green! Perfect!

On our way back to Laie, we swung by the temple. It is currently closed for construction, but even under construction, it is still beautiful!

The views from around the temple are amazing!

They've stripped the paint off. That gray color reminded me of a Mayan temple. We heard that at one time, the temple was painted green to camouflage it during WWII I think.

The big activity of Thursday was the Polynesian Cultural Center - a must see for anyone traveling to Oahu.

We went to every single show there, I believe. This guy in the Samoan village climbed a coconut tree. It was really tall!

The canoe show was amazing as always. Here are some dancers from New Zealand.

Besides the luau food, the highlight of the PCC is the night show. This is the stage before it got super dark outside.

I shot this video of the main Tahitian dancer at the night show. Susannah and I were obsessed with the old dancer that used to dance the night show. This girl was really good as well, but I like the old dance better than this one. Tahitian dancing is amazing!
Here's a quick one of the company doing some Tahitian moves. Good stuff, I tell you!I thought I recognized the Samoan fire knife dancer. Sure enough, he was a friend of Susannah's from when she was a student at BYU Hawaii. I had to get my picture with him for her. I had met him when I came to visit her in Laie right after my mission.

The next morning, we took a look around BYU-H campus. It is so pretty! The backdrop with the mountains is amazing.

It's always good for pictures because of the cloud cover.

I love all the flags in front of the main entrance to campus. This is only half of them.

I had my favorite drink there! POG - Passion, Orange, Guava. It's so delicious!

Before leaving Laie, we visited Hukilau beach.

It was so windy, but it was another beautiful beach.

I loved the park entrance to the beach as well.

To get around Oahu, Kim and I had to rent a car. The way things turned out, we could either get a convertible Mustang or a Ford Focus . . . for the same price. You can see what we chose!

I have never seen anything as spectacular as the scenery on the drive from Laie to Honolulu. I snapped a million pictures from the car. You can see that I accidentally got a picture of the car in this shot.

Getting into Honolulu, we went through this tunnel that goes right through the mountain. It was amazing.

I thought this was a funny picture. This is what I looked like most of the drive to Honolulu.

We had lunch with Jen and then headed to Pearl Harbor for the USS Arizona tour.

This is part of the wall inside the memorial that is build directly over where the USS Arizona was sunk. There were a LOT of names on that wall.

This is inside the memorial facing Honolulu. The backdrop was beautiful.

Here's another shot of the inside.

Here I am outside the memorial just about to get back on the boat.

This is a shot as we were leaving.

A big old aircraft carrier came into the harbor as we were leaving the memorial. All across the whole deck, the soldiers had lined up and were at attention. It was an impressive sight. This is majorly zoomed in.

This was another beautiful sight at the museum at Pearl Harbor.

Our last stop on Oahu before the airport was the International Market Place. We just had time to look for about an hour. Too bad!

I liked this sign as well, just inside the entrance. The Koi fish here were so big. We really enjoyed our trip to Oahu!