Ogii's friend Ariunaa and her two daughters came from Chicago to visit us.
Ogii made them pancakes.
Charcoal and ube mochi.
Breakfast on the balcony.
They brought us some Robert Mondavi wine. We had visited that winery in person; the building we saw matches the one on the bottle.
We went to China Walls to watch sunset.
This house had some nice whales on the walls.
A mailbox is in one.
A mural with the name.
Some info on the area.
And a timeline.
A short, steep few steps down.
Many people on the rocks.
Waiting for the sun to set.
Warning about big waves.
The southern side.
People jumping into the water in the middle areas.
The areas in the middle had some lower areas you could climb back up out of the water easily.
At the northern side, a few surfers were catching the waves.
The sun is almost down.
A large mural at the top.
A woman with mountains at this side.
One love license plate.
One problem with living in Honolulu is how loud it can be, especially on Friday and Saturday nights. Usually we hear people racing their cars, but tonight it was police sirens.
The US Geological Survery has a volcano notification service.
You can pick all of the volcanoes in a certain region.
Or individual volcanoes. Then, when activity starts or stops, they will email you.
Ogii got a new Wordscapes animal last night, her first epic.
The giraffe, which gets a lot of hearts.
Friends.
Neat sunset and rainbow mural.
We had rented an SUV as we were shipping the RAV4 to Big Island. We had reserved a normal SUV for the first few days and then a Suburban for when a few more of Ogii's friends came. However, they didn't come, we decided to keep the smaller SUV the entire time since it would be easier to drive and park. It took a couple of back and forths between the return people and the front desk to figure out how to do that. It would have been faster to simply return the smaller SUV and pick up the Suburban as we had originally reserved.
They have different colored "hats" they put on the returned cars indicating what type of maintenance they need.
An Element with the same license plate.
At the Halona blowhole.
And cove.
A mural on the southeast part of the island.
Another one.
Moutains.
And ocean.
We stopped at a little park for a bit.
At 12:28 was Lahaina Noon, when there are no shadows as the sun is directly overhead.
Although there were still plenty of shadows, they were simply directly underneath everything. The only things that didn't have shadows were simple poles.
We stopped at the food truck park on the northeast side for lunch.
This one is already out of everything.
It's Memorial Day weekend, so there were a lot of people.
Huge line at this central truck.
Shorter lines over here.
And some picnic tables under shade.
We got some BBQ.
And yogurt.
They got some seafood.
We kept driving counterclockwise around the island until we got to Three Tables.
Ogii and Ariunaa snorkeling.
Some guy walking on one of the tables.
A simple mailbox stand: a big rock.
We went to the Ala Moana Center that evening.
And went to Foodland for poke for dinner.
Many options.
They also have a bar.
And pizza.
They have many leis, too.
Eating.
Then we walked to Ala Moana Beach, which was packed.
With people for the lantern floating festival.
A large stage.
With dancers.
Blowing on a conch to open the ceremonies.
Drummers.
Boats taking out the first lanterns.
Then they let the people on the beach put their lanterns in the water.
A video of all of the people.
Wading into the water to get a closer view.
Pushing a few more out.
A woman with hers.
There were many lanterns.
Back at the mall and the women shopping for sunglasses.
There were long lines of cars trying to get out of the parking lot.
This line was barely moving, it seemed like only one car per traffic light cycle way at the end, so I went to a different exit to see if it would be faster.
But everything was backed up there, too.
I think this was even slower.
It took us nearly an hour just to get out of the parking lot.
Some people with drones got aerial views of the festival.
Including some close ups.