Oh so sad that the summer is over, but we can't complain too much, because we did miss home, despite all of our fun. Sammi and our friend Torrin help boat us over to the mainland from the island, despite the pea soup thick fog. Thank goodness for iPhone GPS!!!
The kids and I had some time to killi n Bellingham while Jonah sold our car (we were so lucky... sold it only a few hours before our plane was supposed to leave... AND they met us at the airport. We did maybe forget to get sleeping Po out of the car before we sold it, but luckily the new owners noticed that there was a sleeping baby in the back before they drove all the way back to their home in Seattle).
Anyway... with that time to kill in Bellingham, we got some Rocket Donuts and visited our very favorite museum ever, Mindsport. It is a Children's/Science/Art museum. Most of the exhibits are hand carved wooden works of art that the kids can play with and manipulate. There's also a working stream that the kids can build dams on and float little wooden stick boats down. It's the greatest place. And the admission is only $2 or something!
We were glad to get to the airport on time and get our bags checked (we had to be tricky because we were on Allegiant, and they have weird baggage rules. We may or may not have duct taped two bags together so they would only count as one...). BUT, then we found out that our flight was delayed by at least FIVE hours!! That meant we wouldn't be leaving BEllingham until 11 pm and not getting into Honolulu until 3 am!! Wow. And when we called the rental car guy that we had reserved a camper van with on Oahu, he just up and cancelled our reservation. It was awesome.
But, we tried to make the most of it. We had brought a whole lot of food, including some crab that hadn't been eaten at Blakely, so we were all well fed. Allegiant gave us food vouchers and free drinks, so we were especially well fed. Plus, Bellingham is a small but newly remodeled airport, so we had nice accommodations.
When we got to the Honolulu airport, we found a relatively quiet spot to camp out and we all slept on the concrete floor until morning. Well, Po got to sleep in her carseat. It was actually fine.
In the morning, we found a rental van (the lady cut me a deal, but it was still outrageously priced) and took off for our 36 hour whirlwind tour of Oahu (the kids and I had never really been, except for stopovers).
We drove around nearly the whole island...
Of course visited the beautiful Laie temple and BYU Hawaii campus...
And the kids had really missed the warm Hawaiian water, so we spent a good long afternoon at the gorgeous North Shore beaches as we made our way up the coast.
We spent our one night at a friend's house (actually a roommate of mine from BYU Jerusalem 1999) on the north end of the North Shore. She and her family were so great to put us up. Ana and Cam were glad to reconnect with my friend's kids who they had made friends with when they visited us on Maui. I've actually been trying to convince them to move over to Maui, but now I'm realizing maybe its good to have some friends on Oahu...
We made our way back over to Honolulu side so the kids could go to an event in Waikiki where they met some actor from a Disney Channel sitcom they love. We made sure to see some sights along the way...
And had some amazingly delicious dim sum in Chinatown in Honolulu...
And visited the Royal Palace (I just finished a huge history of Hawaii, so I was especially interested in this...Jonah and the kids, not so much)...
And then, right before our plane was due to leave, we made a quick dash so we could see Pearl Harbor...from the fence (it was closed when we finally got there)...
*Not pictured: The loads of time we spent in Waikiki, which we liked a lot more than we thought we would. The kids especially enjoyed the Natatorium (the large ocean fed swimming pool) and the Las Vegas-like Waikiki strip. Cam also liked that his shoes were still there along the boardwalk, even though he left them under a bench the day before. *
Oahu was gorgeous and better than we expected. But, it is amazingly crowded, even by Maui standards. The North Shore beaches are pretty off-the-hook-- stunning, uncrowded, great sand, and supposedly some of the best surf on earth. I also slightly envy the amount of cultural activities on Oahu... they have everything a big city would have. It would be cool to have a little easier access to that...
But, we were pretty anxious to get home to Maui. Maui is still the best. Hawaiian Airlines helped us out and let us come home a day early. The friends who had rented our house this summer left our car at the airport, so we got in our good old car and drove it home. After two months, it sure felt good to be back in our own beds. Ahhh....
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