Turtle Tales: Day 29 - Sand, Surf and Pizza!

Today was fairly uneventful. We made a trip to Sand Island to go sea glass hunting. We did find some nice pieces today, but nothing really BIG to brag about. We have noticed that the glass on this shore is flatter and smoother and rounder in shape than the sea glass we have found in other areas on the island. We did find one piece that appears to be a merging of a green and brown piece of glass. Interesting....

To get to Sand Island, we had to travel the streets that pass through the Port of Honolulu and it was amazing to see all the container ships being loaded and unloaded. Shipping is the primary way (air freight secondary) that items are received and delivered from the mainland and other countries here in Hawaii.

After hunting for sea glass for about an hour and a half, we decided we would head into downtown Honolulu for lunch at the Aloha Towers Marketplace. Nice thought, however, we could not find a parking spot within a 1/2 mile radius of the Marketplace! Busy, busy, busy! I did take some pictures of a HUGE cruise ship that was docked next to the Marketplace, as well as a few pictures of downtown Honolulu. The pictures were taken on the fly again, so they aren't the best, but maybe they will give you an idea of what downtown Honolulu looks like. Last time we visited, we stayed on Wakiki Beach and we were pretty much in the center of town. That makes it nice when you don't have to worry about parking and can walk a short distance to the places you want or need to go! We chose to stay at the North Shore this visit so that we would be closer to Jeremy's duty station. As it turns out, we really like it here, and although the traffic is crazy on the weekends, it isn't bad during the week, and it is very peaceful at our rental house.

We headed back to Haleiwa and stopped at Pizza Bob's for a late lunch. The restaurant was not crowded and the food was AWESOME! We had a pepporoni/bacon pizza and some liquid aloha! It was a perfect ending to a perfect day in Paradise!

Our plans are to go Sand Island again tomorrow and hunt for more sea glass - hopefully bigger pieces! We found out after doing some research when we returned from our hunt today, that we were in the wrong part of the beach for "good" sea glass pieces. We may also try to snorkel while we are there as the surf was not too bad today!

BTW - Remember the Tent City that I wrote about in a previous blog? Well the State stepped in yesterday and tore down all the camps and cleaned up the beach. According to the news report, there were over 200 people living in Tent City and the sanitation conditions had gotten so bad the state determined it was a health risk. (You think?) We have been told that this happens periodically and that the people that were living on the beach will find another beach to build a new "City" on and the process will repeat itself many times. Today when we were at Sand Island, we noted that there were a lot of homeless people living in the park in their cars. I think they are only day campers (the park has restrooms and showers which I think they were utilizing) as the park closes at 7:00 P.M..

Aloha!

Scenes from Sand Island