A Day at the North Shore

Today worked best for our jaunt to the North Shore, and for once all of the things we wanted to do we got to do.

Started with a stop at the Dole Plantation. Not a big whoopee for me, but Jan and Karen (my sister) have a great time there. Jan loves the two quilt booths, and bought a pillow slip for our living room--turtles, I think.

We then went into Haliewa and introduced them to Giovanni's Shrimp Shack. For those of you not familiar, it is a side-of-the-street stepvan, that sells shrimp in 3 styles--lemon butter, hot and spicy, and scampi. This is one of two locations, and it has become quite popular without any advertising that I know of. When Jeff is with us, I eat a few of the hot ones, but they are VERY hot and so I got the scampi, which is full of garlic and makes everyone in the car uncomfortable but me. Don't think it was my sister's kind of place--sitting at picnic tables with "icky" spots on them, peeling the shrimp with many napkins at the ready, pepsi out of a can, etc. There are now about 4 other vendors at the same location, most of whom have plenty of time to watch the people eat at Gio's.

We went then to our favorite place to shop, which includes my favorite mexican place in the islands, Cholo's. We actually saw an advertisement for them on TV this year. Might actually miss eating there this year, unless we make another trip north before we leave Sunday. I went instead to the Aloha General Store, which is my spot for shave ice. This year I opted for blue raspberry with blue vanilla, and it was a good choice. Jan also found the wind chimes she was looking for in this store, wooden ones cut and painted with a "turtle" motif. Jay bought Karen some jewelry at the Black Pearl store, which apparently uses up her gift allotment for the rest of the year.

Drove up and stopped at what I think is Sunset Beach, where we hope each year to find sea turtles sunning themselves. We hit the jackpot this year, with one already on the beach and 3 more that crawled up while we were there. There are always a couple of volunteers to spread a rope cordon around the turtles to keep humans away. This rest is very important for the life expectancy of the turtles, so the volunteers make sure they are not disturbed.

Stopped at Dole again on the way home so that Jay could buy some chocolate-coconut-covered macadamia nuts, which he very unselfishly shared with me.

The only downside was my stop at a little golf shop just across from Schofield barracks. With the airlines charging $100 per flight to ship golf clubs, I've decided to buy a simple set and just find a place to leave them in Hawaii since we try to play every year, and would play more were it not for the shipping and/or rental fees. Well, this guy had a used set of irons that were off brand and wanted $700 for them, which is twice what I paid for my Callaway Big Bertha's at Roger Dunn. So I guess I'll find a cheap set on the mainland, pay to have them shipped once and then have a set over here all the time.

Came home and made leftover tacos with some of my favorite salsa--mine! Lakers beat the Suns, so all was well. Then the Dodgers had to go and lose to San Diego, the first time they've lost since we've been here, which means Dodger fans will probably not pay now to keep me here. Bummer.