To the North Shore!

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After Pearl Harbor, we set off for the north shore, which during the winter months, has some of the best surfing in the world. You've heard that song "Pipeline" by the Chantays? Well, I'm pretty sure this is what they were playing about. The Banzai Pipeline is up on the north shore.

On the way there, we stopped at the Dole Plantation. Apparently, you have to stop at the Dole Plantation. They've got this big maze (we didn't go), and a tour (also didn't go), and a big store and snack bar (we went there). By this time, we were all kind of hungry, so we had some lunch. Laura Grace and I had hot dogs, Barb had a pineapple chili dog and Cheryl opted a bowl of pineapple chili. We also all had pineapple whips, which is just a fancy name for creamy pineapple sherbet. We looked at some pineapple plants and then headed north again.

Our first stop on the north shore was Pupukea, and I'm pretty sure we ended up taking photos at a spot called "Shark's Cove". This time I had the 5d and the 70-300mm f/2.8L with me, on a monopod. This was an interesting spot. There was some beach, but where we ended up parking was next to some really rocky shore, which was pretty cool looking. We spent a while there, and then headed up the road, where we stopped at Sunset Beach.

Sunset Beach had lots of activity. There were people trying to surf, and tons of folks on the beach itself. The sand was different from the sand on "our" beach, with lots more shells ground up into it. We all took our shoes off and wandered out onto the sand and took more photos. I didn't get very many good ones from this stop. It turns out that 200mm is pretty short when it comes to photographing surfers, so my photos are kind of uninteresting. (I'm posting them here anyway, but I'd really like a do-over with a 400mm lens.) We stayed a while and then my feet got tired again. See, walking and standing in sand, barefoot, is work. I ended up using muscles I didn't even know I had.

So, we all piled back in the trusty Ford Freestar and took off down the road some more. As we got nearer to Turtle Bay Resort (think golf courses near the beach), we started seeing signs in peoples' yards. These signs gave the overall impression that Turtle Bay is not universally loved. Apparently, the resort is going to expand again soon, and some folks are disgruntled. One sign read "Infrastructure before expansion; Got traffic?". Given that the only road up there is a fairly narrow two lane road, I can see their point. I would imagine that during the high season, the traffic up there comes to a standstill.

Turtle Bay has a couple of really really nice golf courses which we got to look at as we drove by. They look difficult. Lots of bunkers, and the greens are pretty undulated. I can see why Arnold Palmer's name is on one of the courses.

We didn't stop again; it got dark on us again, so we went straight back to the beach house, where I cooked us up some ribeyes and some stir-fry veggies, all of which was pretty tasty.

The trip is winding down; Saturday is alarmingly close. I hate the part of vacation where you start counting down the hours until you have to leave and trying to fit as much of the stuff you missed into those final hours.

As usual, for more photos, see my Hawai'i 2006 Flickr set.

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