Turtle Tales: Day 23 - Pineapples to Beaches

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Today we started out by visiting the Dole Plantation, located near Wahiawa Town. The Dole Plantation located on this island is the original plantation that was founded by James Dole on July 28, 1900. It started out as a small 60 acre pineapple farm, and grew to be the largest pineapple producer in the world today! There are many production areas world-wide, in fact if you remember from a earlier blog, we passed many Dole farms when we were in California. They don't just produce pineapple here, they also produce chocolate and coffee crops and other fruits such as papaya and mango.

We took the combo tour which included the Garden Tour and the Pineapple Express Train Ride. The Gardens are beautiful and it was educational to finally learn about the plants and flowers of the island that we have been seeing along the roadside in our explorations!  The Pineapple are cultivated by hand. An experienced farm worker can plant up to 10,000 pineapple plants a day, which covers approximately 1/2 acre! There were acres and acres of pineapple fields and coffee groves as far as the eye could see. The Dole Plantation is a working plantation, but it is also your classic tourist trap! Although the tickets for the Garden and the Pineapple Express were reasonable, the cost of retail sale items were high! ($6 for a pineapple refrigerator magnet! Really?!?)  There is also a hedge maze here which is the second largest maze in the world (the largest maze in the world is located in Ireland). We chose not to get lost in the maze!

In the afternoon, we went to visit a now defunct sugar mill in Waialua (pronounced Y-A-Lou-A). The town is adjacent to Hale-iwa which is where we are staying. The sugar mill ceased operation in 1999, due to depressed sugar prices and high production costs. The sugar mill buildings are now being utilized by various retail vendors selling everything from soap to coffee and knick-knacks.

Driving past Waialua, we passed many large and beautiful estates. ($$$$$$$) We also saw some gorgeous flowering bushes and plumeria (the State flower). We stopped at the beach to catch some waves and found some rare red pieces of sea glass! An unexpected treasure to say the least! Further on, we passed Dillingham Air Field and Glider Port and were fortunate enough to see a glider landing! It was so graceful to watch! Across the street at Mokuleia beach park, we found a gentleman driving a 1947 Chevy Woody with his surfboards on the roof. We stopped to take a picture and the owner graciously offered to take a picture of both of us in front of the car! Another unexpected treasure!

Driving further, we finally reached roads end, named Kaena. Across the street was Camp Erdman a huge YMCA camp, located on the beach side of the road! How nice is that!

From roads end to Kaena Point is about a four mile hike uphill (we didn't do it!) even tho there is a lighthouse on the Point :( Kaena Point is Oahu's western most point. In addition to the lighthouse, there is a place called Leina-a-ko-'uhane, which translated means "Leaping place for souls". It is believed that no matter where on the island you die, you are not truly dead until your soul jumps off into the ocean at this spot! Kaena Point's other claim to fame is that it had the highest surf ever recorded off Oahu with waves in excess of fifty feet!

Later in the afternoon, we drove back to Schofield Barracks and picked up Jeremy when he got off work and went to dinner. It is always good to visit with Jeremy as he always has an interesting story to tell about his Army experience! Tomorrow Jeremy will join us at the rental house and we will BBQ and enjoy each others company once again.......Sunday the three of us plan to go snorkeling - that should prove to be an experience in and of itself! Stay tuned! LOL

Hope you are not over-whelmed by the pictures today - but it was an interesting day with a lot of picture opportunities......

Aloha!