Hawaii: Condo & Manoa Valley Falls (Day 1)

Alisha and I decided to take a trip to Hawaii shortly after Roscoe passed. We told each other that if Roscoe went to be with God, that we'd take a trip somewhere since we'd been bound to the hospital for about 10 months at that point. Since we'd spent lots of time in San Francisco, we quickly ruled out anywhere cold or hilly (mountains). Neither of us fully relax by camping, so this left tropical locations. Since we didn't want to deal with getting passports, Hawaii became our choice.

Our first intention was to visit the Big Island for 6 days, because it had the active volcano, hiking, and snorkeling. When we discovered that we could stop on Oahu for the same price plane ticket, we decided to visit Oahu for a few days and then fly to the Big Island on Sunday, after visiting with the Hawaii congregation. All told, our vacation stretched out to 10 days.

We initially had a layover scheduled on our flight to Hawaii from Sacramento, but after our plane was delayed due to technical difficulties we were moved over to a direct flight on Hawaiian Airlines:

Alisha spent the weeks before our trip researching places to go and things to do. By the time we arrived, she had a list of options for us to try out. This multiplied the enjoyment of the trip for me because I knew anything we picked would be fun and would fit things that we'd like to do. We just had to pick things off of a list and go do them. I was very thankful that she put in such effort ahead of time!

We arrived in Oahu and stayed for 3 days in a condo near Waikiki beach. It had a great view of a nearby river, golf course, and mountains. It was also just one block up from a grocery store where we bought food to cook for ourselves to save money. Many nights we walked down to Waikiki beach to people-watch and take in the sunset.

We arrived too early to check in to the condo, so we decided to take a hike (literally) at Manoa Valley Falls. It was great to wake up in the drought near Sacramento and then spend the last half of the day hiking through greenery to a waterfall.

We thought the overgrowth on the right looked like

a big green monster, rising from the bushes.

Trees grew into each other to form this doorway

Bamboo groves were enormous!

Near the end of the hike, we saw a wild cockatoo walking along the branch of a tree above us, looking for nuts to pick off of the tree and eat. We know he was looking for nuts, because he finally found one and picked it off, but then it fell down by us so he flew away.

We finished the day watching the sunset from Waikiki beach, then walked back to the condo.