Please note that yesterday's post has been edited. The very last paragraph didn't post for some reason and I put it back in. The only new stuff is right after the last picture.
Another fun day in paradise.
We started off the morning attending a briefing on the wellness center’s activities for the week. If we were just staying around at the resort the whole time, we’d be doing yoga and tai chi overlooking the beach. Alas, the sessions this week are during times we’ll be off on fun adventures. We went because they had a free continental breakfast. Fresh pineapple (they pretty much serve it with every meal here), scones and some breads and juices: guava and pineapple.
Right after that (and meeting some more Mormons we had seen at church the day before) we headed up for the timeshare presentation. If you’ve never stayed at a timeshare, the always have a presentation to promote and sell the property, and they always offer free gifts if you attend. We almost always attend the presentation for the free gifts. This place has awesome gifts. Including: tickets to the Polynesian Cultural Center, Surfing Lessons, Gift Cards for the Gift Shop, the Restaurants, and the Spa, Tickets to the Stargazing Show, Dinner Cruises, Golfing, Luau Tickets and that sort of thing. The gift we chose? Tickets for two on a catamaran boat ride to snorkel with the dolphins and sea turtles AND whale migration season is starting, so we might see some whales, too! It includes lunch and was something we had thought about doing, but the $110 per person price tag decided for us. In our opinion, totally worth sitting through a 90 minute presentation on how wonderful this place is.
So, anyway, we went to the presentation, which was promoted as no high-pressure. And it actually was one of the best ones we’ve attended. Our guide, Jorge, was a pretty nice guy, even after we told him we couldn’t afford to pay a whole stinkin’ lot of money for a one week mountain view two bedroom unit (the ocean view units are a whole stinkin boatload lot of money which he didn’t even give us a price for). And they didn’t send a manager to put more pressure on us after we told him no. The manager who came in for “quality assurance” to supposedly have us rate Jorge, did try to sell us a week’s vacation for some time in the future. We had more pressure in 3 minutes from her than 90 minutes from Jorge.
While on the tour, we thought the views from the model rooms were the best ones, so we took pictures. The models are about 7 floors higher than our room, so you can see down onto the pools and onto the lagoon. We’re on the 9th floor, which isn’t as high as you’d think with tall palm trees in the way.
Here’s a picture of the lagoon from the 14th floor of the building next to ours.
Here’s one of the “family pool”, which has a cave with a waterfall over it, a waterslide and a hot tub for kids (all the hot tubs have age ranges, some are adults only, one is kids 10+ and the family one is all ages).
That building in the corner there is our building. This shows some of the waterfalls from above.
After the presentation we ate lunch, made our surfing lesson reservations(!), and went to finish our military history visits from yesterday. I can’t begin to share all that we learned and I encourage you to learn more about the events, people and places surrounding the attack on Pearl Harbor. It is important to remember these things and to keep the memories alive, as those who were there pass on.
First, we visited the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park. The USS Bowfin is a submarine, called the “Pearl Harbor Avenger”, because it was launched on December 7, 1942, exactly one year after the Pearl Harbor attack. The ship was very active during WWII, and was in the Sea of Japan navigating an underwater minefield when the crew learned that the peace treaty had been negotiated. According to the audio tour narration, the crew was very unhappy about having to go back through the minefield to get out and head home. The tour includes the audio tour and that was very interesting and informative, as they had anecdotes from actual sailors who had served on the Bowfin during the war.
Here he is on deck.
And here he is manning the gun. He kind of looks like he's getting an eye exam.
These are the torpedo tubes. There are four, two on top and two on bottom. The top one on the left has a torpedo in it. On the right you can see the end of a torpedo with the brass cap on it. On the tails of the torpedoes there are little tags certifying that they contain only inert materials.
When we finished touring the submarine the tour continued inside the museum. This is a really comprehensive museum. They had a lot of submarine information, from the history of submarines (from stories about Alexander the Great going under water in a glass box to the modern nuclear subs), to artifacts and uniforms and the flags each ship had indicating how many ships or planes they had taken down. They even had an actual Poseidon Missile in the museum! That thing is HUGE! Along the walls they had plaques from almost all of the submarines that had been in service. We found the plaques for both of John’s submarines, the Rickover and the Pintado, and we also found a patch for the Pintado in one of the display cases.
Here's the plaque for the USS Rickover. It was kind of high up on the wall and hard to get a picture of.
And here's the plaque for the USS Pintado, John's first submarine, and the one he sailed out of Pearl Harbor in.
We also had tickets for the Pacific Aviation Museum, which is focused on the planes from Pearl Harbor and Midway. They have a Japanese Zero plane, which was made by Mitsibishi in there. There’s a very interesting story called the “Ni’ihau Zero Incident”, which is longer than I can recount here, but I suggest you read about it because it’s interesting. They have the remains of the plane from that story at the museum. Ni’ihau, if you don’t know, is the little remote Hawaiian island which is privately owned by a family named Robinson, who bought the island from King Kamehameha IV in 1864. The same family still owns the island. Here’s an article from the Smithsonian Air & Space website about the incident. http://www.airspacemag.com/history-of-flight/Zero.html
This is a B-25 Bomber, used in the first strike on the Japanese mainland.
This is a Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk U.S. Army Air Corps Land Based Fighter. Two of these were flown from the North Shore in response to the attack on Pearl Harbor.
The aviation museum is located on Ford Island, which is located inside the active naval base, and you need a pass to get in, so you have to take a shuttle from the museum in, you can’t take pictures while you’re getting there, and you are subject to search at any time. On the way back to the sub museum, we stopped by the USS Oklahoma memorial. It’s located just outside the entrance to the USS Missouri’s dock, but since the Missouri is in drydock and it’s closed, you can’t get out and see the Oklahoma’s memorial. The bus did stop in front of it, and the Navy has given special permission for pictures to be taken from the bus just of the memorial. The black granite walls suggest the once formidable hull of the ship and the perfectly straight marble standards of the memorial are lined up in perfect formation in the shape of the bow of the ship and are meant to symbolize the sailors who stand on deck in full dress whites in formation “manning the rails” to show honor and respect. They represent the 429 Sailors and Marines who are now “manning the rails” forever. John’s crew stood on the deck of his submarine “manning the rails” to show respect to the USS Arizona when they sailed out of Pearl Harbor.
We caught one of the last shuttles back to the sub museum and hopped in the car and tried to rush back to the resort to catch the symbolic torch lighting ceremony (guests who are staying a week arrive on Fri, Sat or Sun, so Monday is the big welcome) and a prize drawing. Unfortunately a little thing called “Honolulu Rush Hour Traffic” got in the way. We did catch a very nice rainbow. It was so big, I couldn’t get the whole thing in a picture.
While we did make it back for the prize drawing, we missed the torch lighting and I didn’t win a massage. Again. I did, however, catch a rather nice sunset! There were clouds blocking it from going all the way to the horizon, but it sure was pretty before it hit the clouds. I took a lot of pictures, but this was one of the best. It's also a nice way to end this post.
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