Pearl Harbor USS Arizona Memorial

If you want to visit Pearl Harbor, I highly suggest you get there before it opens.  We arrived just under an hour before they opened and we were able to get tickets to the first USS Arizona tour of the day.  They take you to view a short movie and then you take a boat over to the memorial.  I was amazed at how much oil is still leaking out of that ship after over 70 years.  It was cool to look in the water and see how the fish and sea plants have made the wreck their home.  Going to see the Arizona and then looking around at all of the free exhibits was good enough for us.  We didn't feel the need to go to any of the things you need to pay for.  It is really cool to get to see such a powerful piece of history and to take a moment to remember those who have and will give their lives for our country.  

Bishop Museum

We had a great time at the Bishop Museum.  You can view their website here for prices and open times/dates: http://www.bishopmuseum.org/.  We enjoyed the science museum the most because they have fun interactive exhibits, live fish, and even hot lava that you can see.  There was a cool dinosaur exhibit that I really enjoyed as well.  The planetarium had the worst dome show I have ever seen in my life.  All they did was talk about how cool they thought their non-digital light thingy was.  So I'd suggest skipping that unless they come up with something actually not-lame in the future.  The Hawaiian part of the exhibits was interesting.  The building it was in was very cool and I loved the suspended sea creatures.  We learned a little bit more about Hawaiian history and overall had a nice experience.  The one thing about this museum is that it is quite expensive, but if you are planning on going to any museum in Hawaii, this is the one to go to.

Lava!

Gross...

Awesome glow-in-the-dark tunnel

This creeps me out...

Murder at the train station

Love my puffs

Kamananui Trail

The Kamananui Trail is a fantastic hike.  It is a decent length but it never gets too steep.  It starts at the Moanalua Valley Park.  The best part is all of the cool things you find along the way.  There are remnants of an old homestead as well as hieroglyphs on a rock that you can look at.  The side trail for the homestead is on the left side pretty early on during the hike.  There is a sign that talks about it, which is how you will know where to turn off.  When you see the sign for the hieroglyphs, walk up the trail past it a bit until you see a little side trail off to the right.  This will lead you to the other side of the river right up to the rock with the carvings on it.  The whole trail is beautiful, with lots of greenery and cool bridges with pools underneath.  The trail ends when you reach a big clearing and see a sign that has something to do with owls.  Past that point it becomes a different hike, and we didn't go past that point.  This is a great trail to pick if you want to see a little history on a relatively easy hike.

I added my logo to these by mistake.  Whoops sorry!