Searching for the Big Waves:

a random beach outing and cruise on east/north 

side of Oahu today....

My big plan for the weekend was to use the snorkeling gear i got for Christmas. This weekend however has been a bit too chilly for my liking. It is in the 70's, not too sunny and very windy today. We also had an extremely high surf over most of the island, defiantly all the places you may like to snorkel. So today, we decided to just cruise the island and check out the monster waves. 

 

 I love to cruise around the island. The scenery is beautiful and

the company is weird. 

Once you are out of the city of Honolulu; this is the view!! Makai (mah-kigh, ocean side)

to one side and Mauka (mow-kah, mountain side) to the other. See why I love this place?

Time for lunch, we stop in at Maui Taco in Kailua. It is a local chain restaurant, cheap Mexican food. It is pretty decent and prices are low. You can get a meal between $5-$10. Nothing too special, but there are a lot of vegetarian and vegan options. I ordered a soy chorizo taco, $2.75, vegan and pretty yummy. 

Next stop on our island cruise up Kamehameha Hwy was Kualoa Regional Park. I needed to pee. I am making note of this beacuse the bathrooms here were really weird; obviously designed for really tall people, like freakishly tall people!! But, you can see a chain of smaller islands from this park very well! This one is called China Man's hat. Pretty neat hu?

The beach park itself is pretty nice. There are showers and full, weird facilities. This would be a great place to have a beach day, party or barbecue. Very beautiful sights any direction you look!! It is a bit crowded on weekends. I plan to spend a day there during the week soon, nice and peaceful, take a swim & read a book.    

As we keep north on Kemehameha, you will pass a Polynesian Cultural Center in a town called Kahuku. It is full of Mormons, but it's a neat area; you could spend all day there. This stretch of the highway is lined with amazing beach parks; and Kahuku has plenty to eat! There are barbecue joints, bakeries and other cafes. The shrimp farms here resulted in stretches of food trucks too, serving up delicious, hot, fresh, local shrimp dishes. If you ever come to Kahuku, save a little time for the antique shop! It is called the Tanaka Gift Shop. Just at the very end of a long row of shrimp farm food trucks is a red and yellow building. I can't recall if there is a sign out front or not, but you will see a lot of antique glass bottles everywhere. This is one of the neatest antique shops I have seen in a long time! There were tons of old post cards and antique photos, cool lamps, weird statues and even a large collection of really old opium pipes and paraphernalia.

Continuing on Kemehameha, we stopped in at the world famous Banzai Pipeline. The pipe is a surf reef break off the shore here at Ehukai Beach Park in Pupukea. This is a notorious surfing spot due to the large number of huge waves which break in shallow water just above the reef, forming large, thick waves that curl over like a tube. And apparently, surfers love that shit. The waves here are truly photograph-able, but today, no getting in the water is allowed. You wouldn't have wanted to anyway, it looked pretty crazy!

The beach was full of wave watchers
today. It may be a bit dreary and chilly,
but I'm glad I came out to the beach just to watch the ocean show off how beautiful and powerful it really is.







Next stop on my cruise up the highway is Kailua Bay Beach Park. The waves here are just as epic. The scenery around the bay is too. This is truly a beautiful beach park that also has picnic area and facilities. It is definitely worth an upcoming beach day outing.

                          

 

The chill in the air and the gnarly waves didn't keep everyone out of the water here at the bay though. There were a few brave souls body surfing close to shore and even a few surfers having a great time!! Check out this guy!!

Wow!! 

Well, today was an awesome day!When the water is calmer and the air is warmer, we will go snorkeling. I pinky promise!! We drive further up Kemehameha Hwy just before heading home and pass the Dole Plantation with fields as far as the eye can see of pineapples. 

There are many other things to go see up here, but we will save that for another visit to the North Shore!! Much mahalo for reading! Love you!

P.S. Gonna leave you with this music video. One thing I love about Hawaii is the local music. We have 4 or 5 radio stations dedicated to local music, be it the old school Hawaiian songs or the new music. Hawaiian music is more than alright. I love this song, heard it on the radio while on my cruise and thought you might like it.

 http://youtu.be/HSdswWq_mZ4