Hawaii Day 5: Ala Moana, Wailana, Ford Island, Air Museum of the Pacific, & NEX

Gammy loves to take EARLY morning walks when we are in Hawaii. The hikes from the first few days had appeased her, but on this day, even though it was raining, she recruited me to head down to Ala Moana with her. I'm not a morning person so it always takes me a bit to wake up, but I genuinely enjoy just walking and chatting with my mom and honestly you couldn't ask for better views while exercising.

We were done by 8:30 and called the still sleeping/resting fam in the hotel on our way back and told them to meet us at Wailana for pancakes.

From there we moved on to a history packed day! My Dad had not been to see the USS Oklahoma memorial on his previous trips so we ventured to Ford Island for the day. The memorial is a beautiful tribute to the 429 men who lost their lives on the USS Oklahoma in Pearl Harbor.

The memorial is right out the USS Missouri Battleship so we walked in to check it out.  We opted not to take the kids on the actual ship because of how pricey it was and their age.  Gampy filled them in with his bountiful knowledge and also showed them the USS Arizona Memorial.  Cam was pretty excited about the air craft carrier in the harbor on that day.


We ended up waiting around there for a little bit to get the souvenir photo my parents ordered.  In that time three things happened:

1.  We waited in the air conditioned gift shop and took this silly picture before I saw the picture asking that patrons not take pictures with the products.  Whoops.


2.  We moved outside to feed popcorn to the fish and all of a sudden this bigger fish came swooping through.  It caused such a commotion that Gammy accidentally dropped her new pedometer into the water.


3.  TG got a shoe shine.

My parents kept the original shot of us on the ship which turned out great, but this one I got of my them with the kids was pretty cute too.

The Air Museum of the Pacific is on Ford Island as well so we decided to check that out.  Our little fly guy was pretty excited.


He was very into Disney Planes on our trip and could not wait to get a picture with "Skipper".

Riley enjoyed the Amelia Earhart exhibit they had there. Hawaii was a big part of her history of aviation - they had a mini video about her playing and Riley gleaned a lot of new facts. She even surprised us this Christmas by spouting off a few of the things that she remembered from this trip.

Next stop was the USS Utah site where we saw a "Riley of Paradise".

She was much less enthusiastic about posing with the actual Utah (#hangry!).

While we were at the Utah we saw the X Band Radar getting some work done.We had noticed it floating way offshore from the beach in Waikiki earlier in our visit so it was neat to get a closer look. For those of you that have no clue what I'm speaking of, it's basically a huge white ball, on a floating platform. They ended up sending it back out to sea later in the week to avoid damage from Hurricane Iselle.


By this point we had a low blood sugar emergency coming on so Gampy rushed us all over to the NEX for some lunch, browsing, and ZUMBA!  They had a Zumba demonstration going on near the main entrance and Riley jumped right in.  I would have joined too, honestly, but by this point after all the walking during the day my feet were killing me.


What's better for aching feet than the rest of the afternoon and evening by the pool?!?  So that's where Day 5 ended.