Thursday we spent the day at Cheryl's family home, just relaxing, and making a few arrangements by phone for things we'll do later during our stay. We had heard that the surf was particularly high on the North Shore of Oahu, though, so Friday we decided to drive up there and see for ourselves.
Unfortunately Mark's digital camera only has a moderately-wide-angle lens, so we can't show you the couple of dozen surfers out there in much detail; they are the specks you may see in the upper left of the photo, where eight- to twelve-foot waves were breaking. This is about half the size of the waves reported the previous day, but was still plenty impressive! It was clear that most of the surfers were "local" enough to be familiar with the wave patterns; they were all clustered in an area maybe several dozen by a few hundred feet, where presumably they knew they had the best chance to catch a big wave. That made it kind of crowded, and we saw a couple of near collisions, as well as a spectacular "wipeout" or two as the waves flung a surfer's board spinning into the air!
The photo above is at Sunset Beach, almost diametrically opposite Cheryl's hometown of Kaneohe across the island; we traveled on Interstate Highways H3, H1, and H2 most of the way there. Yes, "Interstate" on an island sounds odd, but we saw the same "Eisenhower Interstate System" signs that Mark noted in the eastern part of the continental U.S.
The scenery was, as you might expect, varied and beautiful; there were dense forests up through the mountains as we headed along the H3, changing to flatter, drier terrain (though we did get some sprinkles of rain) towards the north. The photo above was taken as we drove through the pineapple fields in the north; note the region's characteristic brick-red earth, an even deeper red than that in Oklahoma and north Texas around the Red River.
Before heading back, we stopped in Haleiwa at Matsumoto's Grocery Store for some "shave ice." This is a local treat, made of ice like fine snow that is literally shaved off a block by a milling machine (rather than the coarser crushed ice in a typical snow-cone). The mound of shaved ice is built atop a paper cone that can contain ice cream and/or the sweet red beans you sometimes find in the desserts at Japanese or Chinese restaurants, and is then flavored (and colored!) with syrups. There are other shave-ice places, whether down the street from Matsumoto's or a few blocks away from where Mark is staying; however, Matsumoto's is the place to go on Oahu for "the real thing"! (Mark's St.-Louis-area family can think of Ted Drewes' Frozen Custard for an analogous example...) It was well worth the trip, and judging by the line, a lot of other people thought so too.
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to Photo Albumnew 23 December 2000, revised 24 December 2000