Skip to main content

Pontooning

Another thing everyone should do while they are in Hawaii:

Rent a pontoon boat and head out to the sandbar in Kaneohe Bay.


The view is just incredible.

Of course, it will rain on you for five or ten minutes. It pretty much does this every day, no matter where you are on the island.

Bring an umbrella.

And don't complain. You're in Hawaii.

But then it clears up quickly and the glorious skies are visible once again.


We had twenty-eight people in our group. The kids all had a blast playing on floats and running around on the sandbar.


Katie swam around with a life jacket that was entirely too big for her.


You have to check the tide charts before you reserve a boat. The sandbar is only exposed when the tide is really low. Some days it is the size of a football field, some days it is a little smaller. If you don't read the charts, you will arrive to find there is no sandbar at all.



This is Coconut Island, although you may know it as "Gilligan's Island". Remember in the opening credits of Gilligan's Island when they showed the USS Minnow beached in a little cove? This is where that scene was filmed. Now it's part of a military base and there's a big, ugly building there. But it's still pretty cool. I saw every episode of Gilligan's Island ever made when I was a kid.

I'll bet my children don't even know who Gilligan was.

Maybe I'll do a unit study on it with them and call it retro-homeschooling day.

It's pretty cool how parts of the sandbar are covered in water that is only ankle deep. It looks like you are just walking out into the ocean.


The teens played ultimate frisbee for quite a while. How many people do you know who can say they played frisbee on a sandbar out in the ocean? I mean, well, I know a lot of people who can say that, but do you?


This is the sandbar!


This is the life!

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)
Post a Comment
Read more

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...
1 comment
Read more

Japanese Fishing Shrine

Here's an interesting little spot we stopped to see. I'd passed this many times before and had never stopped to see what it was. Since GG and Sherry were here, we decided to check it out. There is a shrine of some sort with a statue and a carved rock. There was no information on sight as to what it is that I could find. There were flowers, food and incense left around the base of the shrine. There was a ceramic statue and a rock with a figure carved into it. None of the food was old or rotting (although plenty of it had clearly been pecked by birds) and the flowers were all fresh which made me think it must be cleaned and cared for on a regular basis. After we got home, I did some research and found this article about it from the Hawaii Star Bulletin, our local newspaper (I have edited out some bits, but otherwise the article is unchanged): "Maintenance" of the monument has been assumed by a group of Vietnamese Buddhists - Shingon Shu Hawaii, the Buddhist temple th...
2 comments
Read more