The Long Road Home — August 9-15, 2007
Hawaii



One of the best parts of being on tour for a year -- you store up a ton of hotel points! In our case, Hilton -- which owns Hampton Inn, Embassy Suites, etc. -- coughed up an entire week at their Hilton Hawaiian Village's Rainbow Tower, right on Waikiki Beach. Here's a shot from our room, the night we arrived --

-- and the following morning.

For this trip, we were joined by Winter's friend, the hyperkinetic Nadia.

Winter conquers Diamondhead! (We're especially proud, since she wasn't feeling great that day).

While Sky visited The Big Island with Shara's family who just happened to be in Hawaii at the same time(!), we took Nadia out for some water adventures to celebrate her birthday. Here we are on a submarine ride.

Rainbow!!

When Sky rejoined us, we all took a day-long tour of Oahu. Here's our charming host Rocky holding forth at Pearl Harbor.

Fires on the North Coast.

It was a running joke that disasters were following us with such frequency, you'd think we'd stolen the bejeweled eye of some local God as if we were all in some old episode of the Brady Bunch. While on the island, we experienced an earthquake, Sky hit the Big Island just as the Volcano was acting up, there was a Tsunami warning and we even had a full-fledged hurricane headed our way (luckily veering off at the last minute).

Coolest natural phenomenon was the incredibly intense wind of that pass I can never remember the name of. Here, Nadia and Sky try out a new style or two.

The Crowd gathers for the Honolulu Academy of Arts lecture. Thanks to Steve Mobley for putting it all together for us.

Hawaii was the only state in the U.S. that we did not visit by car, since we just assumed there was no road to get there.

If the "Interstate" on the sign is any indication though, there must be a tunnel somewhere!


NEXT: San Francisco and Silicon Valley!