Day 5, Tuesday, February 12, Dole Plantation and North Shore
Carmen and I spent the day driving around by ourselves.
Like many urban areas, the roads are unable to handle the growth in rush-hour traffic commuting into Honolulu. They have a device that moves the concrete "Jersey" barriers to increase the number of lanes into the city in the morning and the number of lanes going out in the afternoon - it is quite a machine to see. Fortunately, we were traveling after rush hour so it wasn't a problem.
The Dole Plantation is a huge tourist attraction with tour buses bringing people in from Honolulu. We took the "Pineapple Express" train, a mini-train that runs through the pineapple fields and a narrator who gave a history of Dole which was quite interesting. James Dole came here in 1899 after graduating from Harvard with a degree in agriculture and recognized that pineapple was one of the few crops that would grow well in the iron-rich volcanic soil. His original 60 acres has grown to 6000 acres. There is also a garden showing many of the Hawaiian native plants. We had a cup of "pineapple whip", pineapple soft-serve ice cream topped with pineapple chunks and coconut flakes - very tasty.
The north shore area is largely agricultural, with coffee, cacao, papaya and other crops growing there. The coffee must be very special as the Dole store was selling 7oz for $36, over $80/lb.
Our first stop on the shore was the historic town of Hale'iwa where we watched surfers from the county beach park. It is hard to tell how high the waves were but they looked impressive - as far as the eye could see from left to right, large waves were cresting and crashing down.
Driving along the coast we stopped at the Turtle Bay Resort for lunch at a restaurant right above the beach where people were snorkeling in a protected area and further out, people were surfing.
Much of the road along the north shore is very close to the water and not far above it so it is easy to see that it would be flooded with any storm as was the case a few days ago.
Like many urban areas, the roads are unable to handle the growth in rush-hour traffic commuting into Honolulu. They have a device that moves the concrete "Jersey" barriers to increase the number of lanes into the city in the morning and the number of lanes going out in the afternoon - it is quite a machine to see. Fortunately, we were traveling after rush hour so it wasn't a problem.
The Dole Plantation is a huge tourist attraction with tour buses bringing people in from Honolulu. We took the "Pineapple Express" train, a mini-train that runs through the pineapple fields and a narrator who gave a history of Dole which was quite interesting. James Dole came here in 1899 after graduating from Harvard with a degree in agriculture and recognized that pineapple was one of the few crops that would grow well in the iron-rich volcanic soil. His original 60 acres has grown to 6000 acres. There is also a garden showing many of the Hawaiian native plants. We had a cup of "pineapple whip", pineapple soft-serve ice cream topped with pineapple chunks and coconut flakes - very tasty.
The north shore area is largely agricultural, with coffee, cacao, papaya and other crops growing there. The coffee must be very special as the Dole store was selling 7oz for $36, over $80/lb.
Our first stop on the shore was the historic town of Hale'iwa where we watched surfers from the county beach park. It is hard to tell how high the waves were but they looked impressive - as far as the eye could see from left to right, large waves were cresting and crashing down.
Driving along the coast we stopped at the Turtle Bay Resort for lunch at a restaurant right above the beach where people were snorkeling in a protected area and further out, people were surfing.
Much of the road along the north shore is very close to the water and not far above it so it is easy to see that it would be flooded with any storm as was the case a few days ago.
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| Today's Route |
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| Pineapple Express |
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| Pineapple - guess that is obvious |
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| North Shore surf at Haleiwa |
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