Hawaii Trip on our 25th Anniversary

June 7-14, 1987

Kauai June 11 You may click on any of the four destination islands at left to go to them.

We had looked forward to reaching Kauai since that is where I spent most of my time back in 1959. Flying to Kauai, we rented a car and drove to the Plantation Hale where we were to stay for three days.

We had some difficulty finding our hotel, but were pacified when we found t hat if was because of a very stringent sign ordinance to maintain the natural beauty of the location. After experiencing the apalling ugliness of most U.S. streets because of the commercial signage, we were very appreciative of the restrictions. We stopped by the Lihue Baptist Church, shown at left, where Rod spent two weeks working with Vacation Bible School during the summer of 1959.

Stopping by Lihue Baptist Church brought one of the most extraordinary stories of the trip. I was showing Brenda the church and we were walking across the back grounds of the church when we met a Japanese woman coming through the hedge who looked familiar to me. She was in fact one of the youth in the vacation bible school I had worked with 28 years earlier, and after speaking with her I clearly remembered her as a teenage girl. What made the story more amazing was that when I shared with her that it was the first time I had been back to Lihue, she shared that it was the first time she had been back in 25 years since she had married and moved to Japan!! We attended Sunday School and church on Sunday and she was there. She is at far left in the pictures above. She is also far left on the back row of the picture below, taken in the summer of 1959.

We headed out for a drive in the morning and didn't have to go far to see a rainbow, one of the memorable things about Kauai from my previous experience.

We only stopped briefly at Hanalei on this trip because we were anxious to get to the beach. We just drove along humming "Puff, the magic dragon, lives by the sea; and wanders in the moring mist in a place called Hanalei"

Brenda wades at a magical place called Lumahai Beach. We also snorkeled there and saw different colorful fish than those we saw at Hanauma.

Lumahai Beach was a place Rod visited more than once during his summer of 1959 here. It was notable at that time because a significant part of the movie South Pacific had been filmed here, and there were remnants of structures used in the movie. We dived and swam from a dock near here which had been part of the movie.

Rod hiked up the trail a bit to see this view of the rugged NaPali Coast. It was definitely worth the hike and caused us to dream about going back there to do more hiking. Brenda had stayed behind to get some beach time on Kee Beach and is in the center of the beach picture below.

We were on the windward side of the mountains with essentially rainforest conditions up on the mountains. It was intriquing to see the long streams and waterfalls on the mountainsides. This view is near the Hanalei Valley.

Up on the misty mountains were an amazing number of water falls, some seeming to fall straight down for hundreds of feet.

On our return trip we again stopped by the picturesque Hanalei Valley and took a little more time to take it all in. It seems to look exactly like it did thirty years ago, with the valley accented beautifully by the smoothly flowing stream.

With two images patched together you could just about get a panoramic view of this remarkable valley.