Busy Day on Oahu's North Shore

Best shave ice in the world, they say.

As soon as Annie took the roof section off the jeep, the clouds opened up, and the rains came.  The top went back on the jeep for the rest of the day. 

Turtle watching

This nice young man from Colombia gave me two cents to round off my payment for a pretty, pink gift at the botanical gift shop.

"Joy to the World," we're getting some shave ice.  That will be strawberry cream/banana, please.

We're "walking in a winter wonderland" while sampling broiled chicken from a roadside food truck---roadside chicken made famous by its proprietor names Mike and by the TV food favorite "Diners, Drive-in's and Dives."  

We sit at a picnic under a tent, while little hungry birds with blue faces crowd around our feet.

The lone egret dances from one spot to the next but stays away as "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" continues to serenade all at the chicken feed.  

It's almost Christmas in Hawaii and the carols are playing everywhere, it seems.  To folks from North Idaho, this all seems a little odd without icicles hanging from the eaves and a blanket of snow.

That will come soon enough, maybe, as we hear all that snow is still pretty liquid back home, and that's okay with us.  No worries about the plowing out that needs to be done, and total enjoyment of all we've seen, heard, felt, smelled and tasted since arriving on Oahu two days ago.

Yesterday was a full one, topped off by the thrill that we could, indeed, watch the ZAGS win another game once we returned to our condo and took a quick snorkeling dip in the ocean just down the block.
  
Shave ice, macadamia nut sampling and broiled chicken kept the tastebuds happy while sights and sounds around the ocean shore led us to many stops along one highway that took us almost to the westernmost point of the United States and another that ran alongside the north shore. 

Surf competition had been postponed for the day, but the turtles were swimming up toward shore and, on our morning walk, the monk seals had come up for a night of snoozing.  

Bill found a few geocaches, and we all took photos or videos with our cameras while watching huge ocean waves roll up and slap against the shore. 

Of course, some of the photos I took on our 3-mile morning walk disintegrated the minute they were snapped because that memory card sitting back in the computer from the night before could have saved those images.

I did remember last night to put it back in the camera after transferring my pictures to the computer.  

Why don't memory cards include an added feature----once photos are transferred, a recording yells out, "Put that damn card back in the camera, stupid!"

Oh well, I did have my cell phone, so all the beauty we saw along our walk was not completely lost.  Take that big sun up there at the top, for example. 

Today will more than likely be more sobering---at least for a while---as we visit Pearl Harbor.  Bill's wish would be that he could sleep in a submarine over night, but we not sure if the military would go for that. 

Anyway, it should be another image-filled, action-packed experience as we'll also try to catch some surfers catching those waves.

Happy Thursday.