2011 - Dec. 17 - Final Day, Circle Tour of Oahu

The ship arrived back in Honolulu, Oahu this morning. We ate breakfast and disembarked for the last time. Our plane didn't leave until 10:00PM, so we had plenty of time for one last excursion. We had booked the Island Circle Tour in advance, just for that reason. So, once again, we were herded onto the tour bus and driven in a circular tour of Oahu in a counter-clockwise direction.

We saw Diamond Head again, but not nearly as up close and personal as we saw it last week when we hiked to the summit. I think the captions on the pictures will tell the story of our tour. The waves on the north shore were only ten to twelve feet high when we were there, but thirty to even fifty footers or not uncommon this time of year. From the Dole Plantation back to Honolulu, we followed virtually the same route by road that the Japanese attack planes followed on their way to Pearl Harbor in 1941. Our tour guide described the minutes before the attach as we covered that same area. Real interesting!

The huge RADAR dome is in Pearl Harbor being refurbished and updated. It normally resides in the waters off the coast of Alaska. You can see the waterline indicating the rig's normal floatation level. Our driver said that this machine is so sophisticated that if it were in Los Angeles, it could track a baseball hit in Chicago's Wrigley Field. There are 80 men & women working and living on the rig. It will be towed back to Alaska when their work is completed.

The bus got us back to the Honolulu airport at about 5:30PM. We hung around, got some dinner and boarded our plane for a 10:PM departure for Los Angeles.

It was a great trip and we're both glad that we did it. We have now visited all of the fifty states in our wonderful country and Hawaii is one of the most beautiful. However, we saw something in every other state that we never saw in Hawaii - license plates from other states! I wonder why.  ;-))

Aloha!