Aloha!

Time to resurrect this blog, even though I am not traveling in my RV this year. I’m still living in it full time, but for now it remains parked in Texas. That’s because this year I decided to knock out three national parks that can’t be reached by RV: Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island of Hawaii, Haleakalā National Park in Maui, Hawaii, and American Samoa National Park in the U.S. territory of American Samoa.

Flying to Hawaii is expensive, and flying to American Samoa pretty much requires going through Hawaii, so it made the most sense to do this as all one trip. And this was a good year for it. I just finished my Ph.D. in Organizational Leadership, and my dad just retired from a long career as a computer programmer, so it was time to celebrate! My parents went to Hawaii on their honeymoon in 1973 and hadn’t been back since, so we all decided to go together. We’re staying for the month of July, and my sister Margaret will be joining us for one week.

Hawaii was the last state I hadn’t been to yet, so I was excited to check it off and make my 50-state list complete! And it is a jewel. I commented to someone, “It’s like Jurassic Park without the dinosaurs!” which is literally true, since the original JP movies were filmed in Hawaii.

We came in to Honolulu on the island of Oahu to start our trip, although we plan to spend most of our time on the Big Island. There are no national parks here, but there is the Pearl Harbor Memorial commemorating the infamous December 1941 attack that drew the U.S. into World War II. Part of our plans include going to see that.

For our first day, though, we visited the Sunday service of Kawaiahaʻo Church, the oldest church in Oahu (built in 1842!).

It turns out that they hold their service in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi, the native Hawaiian language, every fourth Sunday, including the day of our visit. All of the music and the sermon were in Hawaiian, but they thoughtfully provided an English translation of the sermon on the screens. (I’m sure they are used to tourist visitors, and I gathered that some of their regular congregants don’t speak Hawaiian, either.)

I’ve always enjoyed seeing what “church” looks like in different parts of the world, and worshipping with people in different languages, like a little piece of heaven.

The service also included a “member reflection” from a woman who had been part of the church for decades. She spoke (in English) about her memories of the history of the church, with some fascinating anecdotes and insights about life in Honolulu.

The visit was extra-special for my parents because they visited this church on their honeymoon, on their first Sunday as a married couple. They brought home a Hawaiian hymnal that they purchaed there as a souvenir, and I remember it sitting on our piano all through my childhood.

The church had invited everyone to a potluck in the basement afterwards, so we “crashed” it even though we hadn’t brought a dish. We sat at a table with a couple of church ladies and learned more about the church’s recent history.

Apparently they had a struggle when they were trying to build a new multipurpose building (with modern bathrooms) to supplement their 184-year-old structure, because it involved disturbing the adjacent graveyard and strongly-held indigenous Hawaiian beliefs about the sanctity of ancestral burial places. But thankfully, they said they were able to work out a solution that satisfied just about everyone, respecting the dead and the living.

After lunch, I for one was eager to get out of the city and see more of the countryside. So we drove up to see the Nuʻuanu Pali Lookout, a site of major geographic and historical significance (and amazing beauty!) for Oahu.

It really is an amazingly steep cliff!

Afterwards we continued along the Pali Highway and then Route 83, around the outer edge of the island, and stopped off at various parks for amazing ocean views.