Photos from Hawaii

A number of people have asked to see pictures from our honeymoon to Hawaii. They're a month late, but at least they're here.

I'll try to be as selective as I can in what I include, but give you enough to get a sense of what we were able to experience.

Day 1 - Kauai

We had a pretty sweet backdrop for our first breakfast on the cruise ship off the island of Kauai.

And we got to rent some pretty sweet wheels in Kauai!

Mark Twain called Waimea Canyon "The Grand Canyon of the Pacific." We agreed.

Near Waimea Canyon, this view shows part of the Na Pali Coast. You'll see more pictures from the ocean later.

The volcanic rock that forms the islands dominates much of the coastline.

Wailua Falls was featured in the opening credits of the TV show Fantasy Island.

The Wailua River, just downstream from the falls.

Probably the best sunset of the trip, off the north shore of Kauai.

Day 2 - Kauai

The Na Pali Coast. Pictures don't do it justice. We also got to see migrating humpback whales all along the coast surfacing and jumping out of the water.

Day 3 - Big Island (Hawaii), Volcanoes National Park

This is the scenery for much of Volcanoes National Park, though a rainforest does provide a nice lush change from the black lava fields and craters.

The lava along the coast is 20-30 years old. It's a 60-80 foot drop into the ocean.

Red hot lava. If you want to hear the story of the effort it took to get to this point, ask my wife or me.

More red hot lava. You can see red lava in three places: the top, bottom, and right portions of the picture. Notice also the silver lava that hasn't yet hardened.

We would have loved to have kept driving, but the road...well...

The rainforest. Volcanoes National Park isn't all black lava.

The Thurston Lava Tube, which was right in the middle of the rainforest portion of the park.

Day 4 - Big Island (Hawaii), Kona - OUR FAVORITE DAY!!

Our ship, the Pride of Aloha.

We rented some snorkel gear and took a $10 shuttle to a beach.

We got to swim with endangered green sea turtles (just like the ones in Finding Nemo).

We decided to have some fun and bought an underwater camera, knowing that the rate of success is pretty low with them. All in all, despite the fact that the clarity wasn't that great, the pictures could definitely have been worse.

We really felt like we were swimming with the entire cast of Finding Nemo.

The striped fish were more yellow than this picture indicates and the bigger fish were much more red.

You could stand in most of the area in which we snorkeled (though with the sharp and fragile coral, it wasn't recommended in many areas).

(That's my wife!!)

The green sea turtles were sunning themselves all over the place.

Day 5 - Maui

We found this fun little park just south of Hana.

This state park just north of Hana features one of Hawaii's few black sand beaches.

Behind us you can see the infamous Road to Hana, which features nothing but sharp turns, mostly 15 MPH speed limits, and numerous one-lane portions of road where you're simply expected to yield if you see an oncoming car.

The Iao Needle in Iao Valley is behind us.

Day 6 - Maui, Haleakala National Park

We purchased just one excursion through the cruiseline on our trip. It was a sunrise bike ride down from the top of Haleakala Crater, which is over 10,000 feet tall. We were supposed to meet our group at 3:15 AM to depart the ship. Neither of us slept well since we were afraid we'd miss the alarm.

We missed the alarm. At 3:54 I woke up and we threw clothes on and rushed out of our cabin and off the ship. The only option left was a shuttle ride that simply went to the top fo the crater and back. It was pretty much the same thing we were going to do, except without the bike ride. We decided to take it (and in the end were glad we missed the bike ride).

Neither of us was dressed for the adventure. The blanket in this picture was loaned to Jamie by some guy up at the top. We arrived an hour before sunrise and froze while we waited for the sun to rise.

While the sunrise was definitely pretty, we both decided that the crater would have looked just as pretty at noon as it did at 6:00 AM.

Off in the distance behind Jamie you can see the two 15,000-foot mountains of Big Island.

From the top, you could see a total of four other islands.

This shot across Haleakala Crater might be my favorite mountain shot of the trip.

One of the numerous cinder cones in Haleakala Crater.

Don't we look happy? Don't let the sunlight and the fact that we were in Hawaii fool you. They occasionally get snow on top of this mountain, and at this hour, it was in the forties.

We had the pleasure of being the joke of the bus. We were the youngest people by at least 20 years, showed up frazzled without the correct tickets for this shuttle, and were totally unprepared. It was pretty funny and gave us some great memories.

Day 7 - Oahu

The USS Arizona Memorial from on board the USS Missouri. Considering that one of us was a history major and the other is a WWII history buff, this trip was a major highlight for us!

This is the actual Instrument of Surrender signed aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay that ended WWII in the Pacific.

General Douglas MacArthur's signature on the Instrument of Surrender.

The spot on the USS Missouri where it all went down.

Jamie just couldn't resist the urge to pretend fly along the deck of the USS Bowfin, a submarine we toured.

Part of what remains of the USS Arizona.

The packed Arizona Memorial.

Leaving the USS Arizona Memorial.

Our current wallpaper background on our computer. (Along the north shore of Oahu.)

Waikiki Beach!

One last shot along Waikiki Beach. I was glad we got to go to Bugs Bunny's favorite beach, but have no real desire to go back. It's littered with stores like Rolex and Gucci and just all-around cramps our style, if you catch my drift.

That's our trip in a nutshell. We've already booked our next trip to Yosemite National Park in California, where I worked for a summer. We'll be gone June 5 - June 12 hiking in the Sierra Nevada.

As spectacular as Hawaii was, I'm not sure anything could beat Yosemite for me. But then, we haven't gone back to Hawaii yet....