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Is Unorganized the New Disorganized?

4/13/2015

    Last week after Tom and I returned to the mainland from Hawaii (see posts from 4/1/2015 - 4/10/2015) we spent a few days with Maria, Justin and the grand kids in Los Angeles before returning to Columbus.
    One evening after the children were in bed we found ourselves with a rare quiet moment to sit around and talk.
    In the course of our conversation Justin was telling us a story about an acquaintance of his.
    "This guy is just so unorganized, that...." And the story went on, but I got nanosecondtarily mentally snagged on the word "unorganized", which is one of those words that don't make a smooth landing on my ear drum.
   Hearing "unorganized" used in place of "disorganized" always sounds to me not exactly wrong, but just a bit ambiguously off, like a G chord played in a piano piece where a G7 chord would really nail the melody.
   And yet it seems that I rarely hear the word "disorganized" used anymore. All I ever hear people using is "unorganized".
    So as soon as Justin finished his story I ran these queries by him and the others:
    Are "disorganized" and "unorganized" synonymous?
    If not, then what's the difference in their meanings?
    Is it along the lines of, say, "unqualified", which means one never was qualified, vs. "disqualified", which means one was qualified at one time but no longer is?
    You wouldn't believe how long we threw around the conundrum of "unorganized" vs. "disorganized".
    Finally the general consensus seemed to be that to be "unorganized" means that, maybe for lack of time, for example, one simply hasn't yet gotten around to organizing something that needs to be organized, whereas "disorganized" means lacking the ability to organize what needs to be organized. In other words, "unorganized" is a temporary state and "disorganized" is an ingrained character trait.
    But that was just what we came up with.
    Then last night Tommy and Randy were over hanging around in the family room while I was writing this, so I stopped to ask them what they thought about the "disorganized" - "unorganized" question, since I wasn't one hundred percent sure we'd lassoed the definitive meanings of the two words back when Maria, Justin, Tom and I chased them 'round.
    Randy and Tommy both liked the "unqualified" - "disqualified" comparison and thought that the same applicaton clarified the "unorganized" - "disorganized" matter well enough,

but Randy suggested we look the words up on line anyway to find out their exact meanings.

     Alas, the results were once more inconclusive.
    Here are the meanings offered by the online Merriam Webster Dictionary:
    disorganized: not properly planned and controlled; not able to keep things arranged in a neat or effective way.
    unorganized: not organized.*
    *Which "disorganized" actually falls under in the broad sense, right?
    He then consulted another site which defines "disorganized" as a trait belonging to a person with an inability to be organized, while "unorganized" refers to the state of a place or activity that was not yet organized but had the potential to be organized. On the other hand, an entity such as committee could go from being unorganized to organized but could be disorganized at the same time if the people running the organized committee were disorganized.
    But again, that was just one person's opinion.
    Still I feel like we're all a little closer.
    Now all I have to figure out is whether I'm unorganized or disorganized.

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Two Hikers In Search Of A Trail

4/10/2015

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View from our cottage yard at Barking Sands. On the horizon is visible the island of Ni’ihau, 17 miles from Kauai. Ni’ihau is called The Forbidden Island because no one may visit there, as the 200 Hawaiians who live there, last descendants of the islands’ original Polynesians, value their privacy.

On Tuesday, our last day on Kauai, we decided to drive back up to Waimea Canyon for one last hike. I wanted to try the trail through the Alaka'i Swamp, which is the highest swamp in the world and is supposed to offer breath-taking scenes unlike anywhere else on the planet.

We stopped for breakfast in Waimea at a very inexpensive little place called J’s,

…run by a friendly lady whose auntie opened the restaurant many years ago.

Tom had an omlette with rice and I had eggs with rice, and we split an order of pancakes.

Then we headed back up the 18-mile road to the very top of the Waimea Canyon to a point almost a mile high called Wai’ale’ale which is one of the wettest spots on earth.

    Of course it was raining there.
    Wai’ale’ale is the entry point for the Alaka'i Swamp trail.
     So we started walking.

    About 250 feet into the trail I threw in the towel when faced with the steepest, most slippery and treacherous patch of rock work I’d ever run into. The guidebook had called this part of the trail “moderately strenuous”, with a “strenuous” stretch to follow.
    Right.
    So we turned around and I accepted that the glorious sights of the Alaka'i Swamp would never be seen by me.
    We drove around the top of the canyon consulting our hiking map until we found a promising-looking forest trail rated “easy”.
Which it mostly was.

This trail was a garden of beautiful tropical flora and fauna:

There were even a few gingerbread-looking houses in the middle of the forest.

After our forest hike we stopped for some lunch at a table at one of the picnic areas.

Which we of course shared with the usual crowd:

Our usual lunch on the trail.

After lunch we drove back up to Wai’ale’ale to see if it had stopped raining, and it had, so we ascended Kalalau Lookout, the highest point of Wai’ale’ale, to look at the vista beyond:

Then we headed back down the Waimea Canyon and on our way down caught sight of the point where the Waimea River meets the sea.

From there we drove west to the beach at Poliholi State Park, which is where the western beach of Kauai ends and the cliffs of the Na’Pali Coast begin.

We had a clear view of Ni’ihau off in the distance.

Then we returned to the missile range at Barking Sands and swung by Shenanigans for dinner just in time to see the sunset from the terrace ,

... and another lovely view of Ni’ihau.

Wednesday morning we said good-bye to our cottage and our beach at the U.S. Naval base at Barking Sands Missile Range Facility.

We headed east towards the airport at Lihue, stopping along the way at the Kalaheo Café and Coffee Company,

...where we had breakfast and a cinnamon roll to share:

Tom once again opted for the local custom of rice with his eggs instead of hash browns. Everything was as good as it looks.

And then on to our final stop at Lihue Airport.

Aloha, Kauai.

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The McBryde Garden

4/9/2015

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On Monday morning we headed back to Poipu Beach, our destination there a tour of the McBryde Garden, a 252- acre botanical garden and part of the National Tropical Botanical Garden, whose mission is to discover, study, and save tropical plants in the Hawaiian Islands and Florida.

We stopped on the way for breakfast in Poipu Beach at a place called Joe’s On the Green located at the Kiahuna Country Club.

The country club golf course.

Joe's

Tom and I each had our usual eggs-toast-potatoes breakfast and I ordered us a side of pancakes to split. Last time I ate at Joe’s when I visited Kauai with Romaine we used to eat breakfast here and I fell in love with the assortment of pancake syrups they offer: maple, coconut and lilikoi. We tried all the different kinds on our pancakes.

The view from our table.

After breakfast we headed for the McBryde Garden nearby where we arrived for the 10:30 self-guided tour.

Our bus driver and semi-tour guide was a sweet, funny young gal named Star.

After we boarded the bus, Star drove us high up a steep, narrow, winding road,

The view below while ascending the road.

….to the McBryde Garden where we were free to visit the various plant collections.

A breadfruit tree planted in honor of our First Lady:

Me in a "Jurassic Park" tree.

One of our tour-mates was a friendly young high school science teacher from New Jersey. I noticed that he was carrying on his back what looked like a small guitar case. I asked him if he played the ukulele. He said he did and offered to sing and play for us. I told him I’d love that. So he sang and played for us. When he started “Leaving On A Jet Plane” Tom and I joined in the singing for a ukelele sing-along.

The McBryde Garden was a thought-provoking place, especially a display chronicling the evolution of life. Life on this planet began 450 million years ago. Human beings arrived 200,000 years ago. That means that in the 24-hour clock of existence, we’ve been a mere 4.5 seconds.

After walking among the plants for an entrancing four hours we headed back down the mountain and returned to Poipu Beach.

All hot and sweaty, we found a beautiful little beach called Kukui'ula Harbor (which our guidebook called "the most forgotten beach on the South Shore") and which was protected by jetties on either side which made the waves gentle enough for a non-swimmer like me.

View from the beach

After our refreshing dip in the ocean we headed west towards Barking Sands,
stopping at Waimea for dinner at place called Kalapaki Joe’s.

View of the ocean from our table.

Tom had grilled Hibachi Mahi Mahi and I had ground steak smothered in grilled onions, mushrooms, and gravy with sides of rice and potato salad. It was all really good.

After dinner we stopped at a little place in town called Super Duper 2 owned by a lovely lady named Lisa Johnson who was glad to chat and answer our questions about the island.

I wanted to know about the movie industry on Kauai, since many Hollywood movies are filmed here, and I also wanted to know who was going to buy the 12 million-dollar homes that our tour guide Star pointed out to us were being built up the side of the mountain on the way to the McBryde. Lisa told us that those homes would be bought up, as were all the other multi-million dollar homes that already exist on Kauai, by super-rich mainlanders who buy up the property then come here for vacation or to retire.
Amazing.

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Maha'ulepu And Spouting Horn

4/8/2015

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Kawa'iloa Bay at Maha'ulepu

On Easter Sunday we attended 8:30 am Mass at St. Theresa's in Kekaha, a tiny town about 4 miles east of our cottage at the missile range facility at Barking Sands.

St. Theresa's is the most western Catholic church in the United States.

The church is open on either side.

The view from in front of the church.

Our singing during the Mass was accompanied by an electric piano, three ukeleles and a tambourine, which gave all the songs a lovely Hawaiian lilt.
After Mass we headed east towards Poipu Beach but stopped along the way in the town of Ele'ele for breakfast at a little place called Grinds Cafe.

"Grinds" is Hawaiian slang for food.

Lots of folks at Grinds on Easter morning.

I had standard breakfast fare which was really good while Tom had mahi mahi eggs benedict which he declared to be really good. The fried potatoes were fantastic,

...as were the fresh-baked cinnamon rolls we had for dessert.

After breakfast we continued east past Poipu Beach to hike the wild, undeveloped stretch of coastline called Maha'ulepu.

Maha'ulepu consists of gorgeous beaches,

...fairy-tale wooded paths

Cliffs overlooking the sea:

...and the most breath-taking vistas:

    The only problem was getting there.
    There is no road to Maha'ulepu.
    The paved road ends about two miles before the coast and is then replaced by a red dirt moonscape of deep ruts and craters not meant to be negotiated by anything less than a tank.
    Only they don't tell you that in the guide book.
    Anyway, Tom took the terrible landscape veeeery slowly and carefully so that it took 20 minutes to go those two miles from the paved road to the Maha'ulepu coast.
    Tom actually did a heroic job of saving the under carriage of our little rental Focus, and I'm sure he'd tell you that though the short drive from the paved road to Maha'ulepo and back was a traumatic experience, it was totally worth it.
    Not to mention the added benefit that, except for some beach-goers with SUV's, we had the hiking trail almost completely to ourselves.
    After we made it back to the paved road from Mahau'lepu we drove along Poipu Beach until we came to Spouting Horn.

"The Ultimate Kauai Guidebook" says of Spouting Horn:
"This wonderful delight is a small lava shelf where water from waves is thrust through an opening, causing water and air to squirt out a blowhole...causing a loud moaning and gasping sound."
Every time the tide came in, which was every few seconds, the water would spout and the "horn" would play. It was quite mesmerizing.

...As was the view of the coastline from Spouting Horn.

I expect this will go down as one of our more memorable Easters.

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Waimea Canyon

4/7/2015

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Continued from yesterday:

On Saturday morning we drove from Barking Sands missile range (where there's no place that serves breakfast) 7 miles to the closest town, the town of Waimea, for breakfast.

This worked out fine, though, because it was on the way to our planned event for the day, a hike down into the Waimea Canyon.
We found a restaurant in Waimea, a cute little place called Yums.

Waimea

...where we met a nice group of local guys who come there to meet and play cards. They reminded me of my Panera Posse.

Our breakfast at Yum's was in fact quite yummy:

But what I liked best about the place was all the cheery little signs hanging about:

After breakfast we headed for the steep road to Waimea Canyon and drove 18 miles uphill until we reached the Waimea Canyon lookout at 3400 feet above sea level (sea level was where we were when we started out at the bottom of the road).

Views of Waimea Canyon, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific, from the lookout:

See the waterfall in the background.

And, of course:

    From the canyon lookout we drove a few miles to the beginning of the Canyon Trail to the Waipo'o Falls.
    This trail descended about 450 feet into the canyon, was 6 miles round trip and took us about 4 hours to complete.
    The trail was labeled "moderately strenuous" and was a bit tricky in spots:

But it offered some breath-taking vistas:

The little white object hovering about an inch above Tom's head is a helicopter. Helicopter tours of the Waimea Canyon are a very popular tourist attraction.

At the bottom of the trail was a beautiful little waterfall spilling into a clear pool,

...which bore an uncanny resemblance to a waterfall we saw at the Grand Hyatt Kauai Hotel at Poipu Beach (see post from 4/5/2015):

We stayed at the falls for a little while and had a snack, then headed back up the trail to the top of the canyon.
We made it back to Barking Sands in time to watch the sun set during dinner at Shenanigans, the all hands club (see post from 4/5/2015):

The view from our table.

After dinner we headed over to the base theater,

which consists of a screen and some benches set up in a field,

...to watch that night's movie, "Jurassic Park".
What a great movie. The only thing better than watching "Jurassic Park" is watching it under the stars on the island where it was filmed.

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Chickens, Nenes, and federally protected night-flying sea birds

4/6/2015

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Continued from yesterday:
Kauai is called The Garden Island because of its lush vegetation and natural beauty.

It's also called The Land of 10,000 Chickens.

These little critters are all over the island, everywhere you go. Literally.

    A bunch of them have a convention in my yard everyday. All day.
    I've heard two explanations for why there are so many chickens in Kauai:
        First Explanation: Back when there were many sugar plantations on the Hawaiian islands the rats from the ships coming into port escaped onto the islands and were getting into the sugar crops. So the plantation owners imported mongeese to the islands to eat the rats. Turned out, though, that the mongeese didn't like rat meat but loved chicken. So the rats continued to nosh on the sugar cane while the mongeese ate up all the chickens. Except on Kauai, to where, for some reason, the mongeese were not brought, allowing the chicken population to proliferate here.
        Second Explanation: Back in 1991 there was a terrible hurricane that blew down all the chicken coops on the island so all the chickens go loose and have been on the loose ever since.
    I think I like the second story better.
    There are about the same number of chickens on Kauai as there are signs that read "Do not feed the Nene".
    The the equally copious plethora of signs and chickens led me to conclude that "nene" is the Hawaiian word for chicken.
    But that turns out not to be the case..
    A local explained to me that the nene is the Hawaiian goose and the state bird of Hawaii. The nenes are well-loved, revered, and protected by the islanders, who subsequently do not want the birds harmed, disturbed or bothered in any way. Or fed the wrong thing.
    The Kauaians obviously don't feel the same about the chickens, as I haven't seen a single "Do Not Feed The Moa" (the Hawaiian word for chicken) signs.
    As for me, I have not fed any nenes, nor could I even if I wanted to as, except for a photo shown to me by the manager of the gift shop at the visitors' center at Koke'e State Park, I have not seen a single nene, though I have seen a few of these pretty white birds of the kind pictured below, which I think the gift shop manager told me was some kind of egret. Or something.

    Anyway, I do not know where all these nenes that we're not supposed to feed are.
    Maybe they all starved because nobody fed them.

    And then there's the federally protected night-flying sea bird.
    I've never seen one of these, either,

except for this photo of one on the laminated sheet of paper stuck to our cottage refrigerator advising us of the U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility rule that after dark if we turn on lights we must have the blinds shut and the shades drawn to prevent light from the cottages from disorienting the navigation system of these birds.

     We have been strictly obeying the rules and keeping the lights off or windows covered at night.
    Subsequently we haven't seen the birds nor have the birds seen us.
    And that's how it's meant to be.

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Kauai

4/5/2015

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    Continued from Friday:
     Friday morning at 7:20 am we took a 45-minute inter-island flight from Oahu to Kauai, where we're planning on spending the next 4 days hiking around the island.
    Kauai, called "The Garden Island," is another world from busy, urban Honolulu. The island's west coast, where we're staying, is especially remote and isolated.
     Below is a shot of Major's Bay, near where we're staying.

    Which I guess begs the question: why are we staying there?
    Well, because for $75 a night we were able to get a two-room cottage on the beach at Barking Sands U.S. Navy Pacific Missile Range Facility, another perk of Tom being retired military. Provided you don't mind staying on a working missile range facility during your vacation.
    The cottages at Barking Sands aren't exactly the luxurious Hale Koa (see post from 4/2/2015); but they're quite nice.
       Our cottage is on the left, below.

The decor is cute and cozy and functional:

Our bedroom has an air-conditioner. Hey, don't laugh, it works great!

We have a lanai, which is what they call a patio or deck in Hawaii.

Views from our lanai:

        But though our end of the island is at the opposite end of the island from Kauai's only shopping center, we are close the Waimea Canyon, also known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific. The Waimea Canyon supposedly has many wonderful hiking trails, a few of which we hope to discover over the next four days.
    This is actually my second trip to Kauai, as I came here a few years ago with my sister Romaine.
    That time we stayed at Poipu Beach, which is the slightly more commercial resort area on the southern end of the island.
    And so since I know the Poipu area a little we decided to swing by there our way out to the west coast from the airport, which is located in the town of Lihue on the east coast.

The road from Lihue to Poipu Beach.

Our first stop at Poipu was at the Poipu Tropical Burger for breakfast.
I longed to return to the Poipu Tropical Burger because during my first visit with Romaine

I fell in love with crushed-pineapple-macadamia-coconut-filled papaya boat they serve here.

Tom and I split the papaya boat and he also ordered strawberry french toast,

...while I ordered eggs, hash browns and toast, which they brought out a la cart. 8D!

After breakfast our next stop at Poipu Beach was the Grand Hyatt Kauai.
It's actually worth a look-see.

Its facade looks like that of a palace:

View from the lobby:

Views of the grounds:

    The rooms at the Grand Hyatt Kauai range from $440 per night for a single to $5,240 per night for a 2,463 sq. ft. suite.
    But anybody can walk around the grounds for free.
    There's a walking path leading from the Hyatt grounds to a cliff above the sea called Makahuena Point. The path offers some wonderful views of the beach and the blue, blue sea below:

After our tour of the Hyatt we drove a few miles inland to visit Koloa, a historic old sugar mill town,

...where we stopped for a shave ice, a must-eat while in Hawaii.

After our visit to Koloa we drove for about 40 minutes until we reached the west coast and the Pacific Missile Range Facility.

...and where we also saw a cute little lizard.

Then we checked into our cottage.

Each cottage has a name. The name of our place is Hale Malu. Note the chicken in our front yard. There are chickens wandering freely everywhere in Kauai.

We met our nice neighbors who are renting the cottage across the street behind us. Jimmy (sitting) and Billy (standing) come here for a two-week vacation every year. They were very helpful in telling us about the hiking venues on the island.

After we were settled we started thinking about dinner so we headed for Shenanigans, which is the name of the base all hands club.
An all hands club is an eating facility that's open to all ranks. Back when I worked on a U.S. Army post in Germany - and it still might be that way today - the officers, non-commissioned officers and enlisted personnel each had their own restaurants where only members of their rank could go.

Shenanigans is right on the beach with a nice ocean view.

After dinner we returned to our cottage to sit on our lanai and watch the sunset.

About half a dozen other people came to our yard to watch the sunset. Apparently ours is the yard to come to to watch the sunset.

And then our day, which had started at 4 am in Honolulu, was done.

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Two Days In Honolulu

4/3/2015

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    See the last two days' posts.
    So, then, we arrived in Honolulu late Tuesday evening.
    We had to wake up early on Wednesday morning - but not as early as we ended up waking up on our own anyway, Tom and I being both so double jet-lagged first from the Columbus to L.A. flight, then a couple days later from the late-in-the-day L.A. to Honolulu flight.
    Anyway, we needed to be ready early for an all-day tour of Pearl Harbor.

...with E'noa tours.

There were 26 people taking the tour, and during the ride from Waikiki out to Pearl Harbor our tour guide, a super-nice guy named Warren, gave us a detailed and interesting lecture on the history of Hawaii as well as the history of Pearl Harbor.

Pearl Harbor is quite a massive operation, with over 5,000 people visiting everyday.

At the visitors' center we visited the museums and saw a film on the history and bombing of Pearl Harbor. Then we took the ferry out to the memorial of the battleship Arizona, constructed over the sunken remains of the Arizona.

Views from the ferry to the Arizona memorial:

After our visit to the Arizona we returned to the visitor's center to grab a quick lunch

...of a turkey sandwich and a diet coke, which I have, by the way, sworn off swearing off (see post from 6/11/2015), though I have managed to cut back from my Diet Coke heyday.

After lunch we drove out to visit the battleship Missouri.

Completed in 1944, The "Mighty Mo" was the last American battleship ever built. But it hasn't been used for that purpose for many decades and is now strictly a museum piece.

We were given a tour of the ship by a very knowledgeable and enthusiastic guide.

In the plaza in front of the ship was a statue of the famous kiss between a sailor and a nurse upon the announcement of the end of World War II.

Tom and I tried to recreate the famous moment, but we didn't quite have the composition down. Still, it was a pretty good kiss.

During the tour Tom and I hit it off with another couple, Joe and Janet. Joe is a retired state worker and Janet a retired teacher. They're from suburban Philadelphia and it turns out that Janet grew up in Northeast Philadelphia not far from where I grew up.They have six children, so between the subject of their kids and ours, Janet and I found endless topics to cover. They were really nice folks.

After the Pearl Harbor tour Warren drove us around Honolulu, showing us the Iolani Punchbowl, a military cemetery set in the crater of a volcano, and the famous statue of King Kamehameha.

    Then our tour was over and Warren dropped all us tourists off at our respective hotels.
    Tom and I finished the day with dinner at the Koko Cafe and a walk along the beach (see post from 4/2/2015).

    Yesterday, Thursday, morning, our last day in Honolulu, we decided to venture off post for breakfast. A few blocks from our hotel we found a great little hole-in-the-wall place called The Seaside Grill.

Tom had the $4.99 pancakes, eggs, and bacon special, but I went all Hawaiian and had the coconut pancakes with coconut syrup platter. The food was soooo good.

And the staff was really friendly, too.

After breakfast Tom visited a military museum next to the hotel while I returned to the lobby of the Kale Hoa to lounge about for a while.
In the afternoon we decided to attempt to hike up to the top of the extinct volcano Diamond Head,

visible here in the background from Waikiki Beach.

We took the city bus out to Diamond Head State Park.

It was a 'way steep hike, but we made it to the top.

View of Waikiki from Diamond Head.

...and back down again.
On our way back down we saw a sight we'd never seen before:

A blue stop sign.

After we returned to Hale Koa it was time for dinner so we went back to the Koko Cafe for the out-of-this world buffet.

This time I went with the meat-stuffed eggplant parmesean, boeuf bourginnone, tri-color potatoes, cauliflower a la polonaise and honey butter glazed carrots with macadamia nuts.
Don't ask how good it was.
Tom and I have decided the Koko Cafe has the best food we've ever eaten. And we've eaten a lot of food.

After dinner we of course hit the dessert and ice cream sundae bars again.

I washed it all down with a couple of ice teas with lemon and pineapple

After dinner, though we were tired-out from our hike up to Diamond Head and pigged-out from the feast we'd just consumed, Tom and I decided to waddle out to the beach just so that we could say we spent at least a few minutes on Waikiki Beach.

We figured we must be the only people in the world who come to Honolulu and spend no real time on the beach.

    But then, of course, we had only two days to spend in Honolulu. Next time, we told each other, we'll spend more time on the beach.
    In truth we hope there will be a next time. Because in just two days we've come to love Honolulu the place and especially the kind, friendly people.
    But now it's 4:45am on Friday morning and we are sitting for the last time on this trip in the beautiful lobby of the beautiful Hale Koa Hotel on the most beautiful army post in the world waiting for our Speedi Shuttle to pick us up and take us to the airport where we'll catch an inter-island flight.
    Next stop, Kauai.

Honolulu.

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The hale Koa

4/2/2015

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Our hotel, the Hale Koa, is actually part of an American military installation called Fort Derussy.

There's an armed soldier guarding the front gate which nobody can get past without a military ID.

    The hotel was built on Waikiki Beach as a recreation center for members of the active duty and retired military, which was how we're able to stay here, Tom having 20 years of military service.
    The hotel rooms are located in two twelve-story buildings called called Maile Tower and Elima        Tower.
    We're on the sixth floor of Maile Tower.

Our room is fairly basic, and we were told that it would be inspected each morning to make sure that we haven't left it overly messy. I'm not sure what happens if your room is messy. Maybe you have to march around the hotel, or something.

Oh, and our room card keys are blank. Which I guess is OK so long as you don't forget your room number. There's probably some kind of disciplinary action for that, too.

But anyway, our room has a lovely terrace called a lanai overlooking palm trees and a bit of the ocean on one side,

...and downtown Honolulu on the other.

And though the rooms may be a bit on the Spartan side (or, at least ours is), the rest of the hotel is absolutely gorgeous.
The lobby is a wide veranda open on two sides.

There are a number of upscale shops off the lobby and on the hotel's lower level, including a beauty salon, a flower shop,

and a really nice PX (military post exchange),

..where I found something I'd never before seen or even conceived of: vanilla frosting-filled Combos! I bought a bag. Just one. I hope this PX is the only place these vanilla frosting-filled Combos exist. I could see me developing an addiction if these little bad boys ever crossed over to the mainland.

There's also a work-out room off the lobby.

On the lower level there are two pools, one of them right on the beach:

A botanical garden:

There's a playground for the soldiers' children, which there are many here,

...as well as tennis courts in the park across the street from the hotel, which is also military property.

And, of course, there are places to eat.
The Hale Koa has several restaurants, coffee bars and snack shops to choose from. So far we've tried the Koko Cafe where we ate twice yesterday. The Koko Cafe is a buffet restaurant with an ocean view and the most awesomely delicious food.

For breakfast I tried the eggs benedict and tricolor potatoes, a plate of papayas, grapefruit and pineapples, then I went back and tried the eggs florentine and the strawberry cream cheese blintzes.

Tom also tried a little of everything.
Breakfast for the two of us came to $28.

We returned to the Koko Cafe again last night for the dinner buffet, which was $28 per person.

I started with the duck a l'orange in Grand Manier sauce,the roast pork, asparagus and potatoes,

...then at Tom's suggestion went back for the Asian Ratatouille and the braised short ribs with sauteed vegetables, which Tom swore was the very best roast beef he'd ever eaten. I can't dispute him.

Then we hit the dessert and ice cream sundae bars.

As you can imagine, our dinner conversation consisted mostly of , "Ummmmm!"

After dinner we stepped off-post onto Waikiki Beach,

...passing on our way The Happy Shack, one of the post restaurants, located right on the beach.

    Not only is the Hale Koa a nice place but, the staff is lovely, everyone we've dealt with has been among the nicest, friendliest hotel staff we've ever met.
    And of course the hotel guests are all very friendly and sociable and helpful to each other, as military people tend to be.
    Anyway, I guess all of this begs the question:
    Who'd of thought it would be possible to have a great vacation without leaving an army post?

But what an army post!

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Sleepless In Honoluu

4/1/2015

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Hale Koa Hotel, Honolulu, 5:45 am.

    It's 5:45 am in Honolulu. I've been wide-awake for an hour and finally decided to get up and go down to the lobby where I expected I'd find myself esconced in tranquil solitude.
    No way. Apparently everybody's up before sunrise around here.
    Anyway, we left Los Angeles yesterday late in the day, which seemed like a good idea at the time, as it gave us some time, after Maria, Justin, and crew had left for the day, to do a little straightening-up around the house for them

and for me to make them a batch of chicken soup from the left-over bones from the batch of chicken I made for Makaila's birthday part (see post from 3/30/2015).

    So then we boarded our plane at 4:45 pm and 2300 miles, six hours and three time zones later - or rather, earlier - we arrived in Honolulu, 7:45pm local time but 10:45pm in our brains as well as by the appearance of the pitch-black night that has already descended on this part of the planet by 7:45 pm.
    We'd decided that instead of taking a cab to our hotel we wanted to try taking the Speedi Shuttle, which we'd heard was half the price of a cab, from the airport to downtown Waikiki from whence we figured we could find our way to our hotel.
    Only we hadn't figured how dark and late it was going to feel by 7:45 pm.
    We exited the terminal and crossed to the traffic island where the taxi and hotel shuttle stands were located and began wandering around looking for the Speedi Shuttle.
    We'd wandered almost to the end of the island when a security guard pulled up next to us and asked, "Hey, you want to take the shuttle?"
    "Yes!" we cried, me wondering if Hawaiians were somehow possessed of the double gifts of helpfulness and clairvoyance.
    "You see that girl sitting across the street at the bench? You go see her, she runs the shuttles."

So we crossed the street and approached the girl at the bench,

a very friendly young lady named Donna who informed us that the helpful security guard often directed people to her shuttle.

    When the shuttle pulled up the driver grabbed our bags and cheerfully informed us that he'd be glad to drop us off at our hotel, no problem.
    During our ride from the airport it was too dark to get much of an impression of the city of Honolulu, but not to form an impression of the people.
    So far I definitely like the people of Honolulu.
    I'll tell you what I think of the city once the sun comes up.

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