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Published: April 15th 2008
Pearl Harbor
The USS Arizona Memorial Visitor's Center -- where we waited before the tourI'm nearly nodding off as I type this, so I'm going to keep the entry brief tonight. 😊
We left Ewalani mid-morning to see the USS Arizona Memorial, thinking we'd arrive early enough to beat the crowds, but the site was completely packed by 10:00 AM. The ranger at the visitor center entrance gave us each a ticket, advised us of the expected wait time (about an hour) and sent us on our way, so we toured the museum and the book store on site while we waited
The memorial is run by the National Park Service in conjunction with the Navy and they move people through the tour like clockwork, in an almost military fashion. After we got inside everything went very smoothly. Two tours run simultaneously, with each tour group watching a 30 minute documentary film about Pearl Harbor before being ferried out to the USS Arizona for 20 minutes. The site itself is very somber and a little spooky. More than 900 bodies were never recovered from the battleship so it's essentially a graveyard at sea. Our tour guide mentioned that when she sank, the USS Arizona had more than a million gallons of fuel aboard
Pearl Harbor
USS Arizona Memorial and the fuel seeps up from below at a slow rate, a few quarts a day. I was able to see the oil droplets floating up and dispersing on the surface and they look very much like black tears, which is what they're called.
I was really feeling done for the day after Pearl Harbor, but we ended up going to Waikiki late in the afternoon. We propped Grandma up with her view of the surf, then drove back to Honolulu to visit Waikiki Beach. Massive hotels are clustered all along the little crescent of coastline by Waikiki and we saw at least two new hotels being built. Of course nearly all of the parking in the area is reserved for hotel guests -- it took about 30 minutes to drive to the beach and another 30 to find a place to park. By the time we got settled on the beach with our towels it was nearing dusk, so not much sun was to be had, but I did get some good sunset photographs out of the trip.
I wore an extremely outlandish pair of bright orange and yellow board shorts and an aloha shirt to the
Pearl Harbor
Grandma Rose, USS Arizona Memorial beach. With an
enormous camera slung about my neck, I'm sure I looked like the worst kind of tourist! The nice thing about being the photographer though is that most of the time you have an excellent excuse for not being photographed, so, alas, no pictures of me wearing this getup currently exist.
Tomorrow will be a day of rest (I hope) and we'll be enjoying a traditional Hawaiian luau in the evening.
Good night!
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Dawn
non-member comment
Wow Marie, this blog is great!! Sounds like a great time, I have always wanted to see Pearl Harbor, however if I do get to go to the Islands it will have to be Kaui(daughter lives there) But I am afraid of flying! So this is as close as I get, thanks for sharing!