25th Anniversary Vacation – O’ahu: pt 2

(continued from here)
When we were making our Hawaii plans, one of the things we’d kicked around was touring the movie sites on O’ahu as a way of seeing some more of the island. We had our eye on KOS Tours, and found ourselves down in the hotel lobby early in the morning for our pickup time; we had no problem identifying our ride: a large gray Hummer.

Besides Mo and I, we had the pleasure of riding with a young couple from Melbourne, Australia. On our way to the north side of the island, Jeff, our driver, pointed out several film locations, including one from The Descendants that Mo recognized right away. The majority of the film sites though were located in the picturesque valley of Kualoa Ranch.

a view of the ocean and Kaʻaʻawa Valley

There were many vistas that we recognized from LOST, as well as Jurassic Park and others.

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25th Anniversary Vacation – O’ahu: pt 1

For our 25^th anniversary, Mo and I began laying the groundwork for a vacation in Hawaii — finding flights to use up our American miles (they were TWA miles when I got them, and I fly Southwest now) and hotels for our Hilton points, plus identifying different sites our tours we wanted to take in while there. When all was said and done, we ended up with ten nights on two different islands.

We arrived at the Waikiki Embassy Suites after our long day’s worth of flying there (via Dallas), with warm, sometimes misty weather greeting us. Mo hadn’t been to Hawaii for ~30 years, and while she knew the area around Ft. DeRussy pretty well, she was quick to point out how much things had changed.

There’s a rainbow on the Hawaii license plate, and on the drive to our hotel it was easy to see why — we saw plenty. The winner was the double rainbow outside our hotel room that went all the way to the ground.

the end of the rainbow? Ft. DeRussy Armed Forces Recreation Center

We had reserved a time on our first day for seeing the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, and we packed up a small picnic and took the bus over, eating our meal and walking the grounds there. We wandered through a few of the exhibits there before watching the tour movie and catching the boat ride to the Arizona. I was sure to snap a few photos of our state’s namesake, the U.S.S. Missouri as well.