Day 10: Monday, June 11, 2001
Walking up Diamond Head & flying home

Today we were heading home, how sad. Our flight left at 2:40pm, so we had time for one activity. Walendo hates having to rush to the airport, so we'd talked about leaving at noon to give us plenty of time. Still, we wanted to get up early to have plenty of time to hike up Diamond Head. We got to the parking lot at around 8:30 and already it was nearly full and lots of people were on their way down. Probably people go up for the sunrise. There were vendors selling coolers of water for $2, making a good profit.

'Ants' climbing their way up Diamond Head

The whole walk is .7 miles long, but it's all up, and toward the end there are a lot of stairs. It's paved at the bottom and the path has a railing the whole way up, not exactly rugged. Just before you get to the steeper part, there are a series of switchbacks and you can see people walking along all stages of it, it looked like a bunch of ants busily scurrying up their anthill. Toward the top of the switchbacks the steps begin, about 30 to start. Then you go into a tunnel, and emerge to a set of 99 stairs. It was amusing to hear people's reactions as they saw the steps. "You've got to be kidding!" one woman exclaimed as we got there. I felt fine, but Walendo was sweating nicely. At the top of the steps, you turn into another tunnel that takes you up a very narrow staircase.

Diamond Head crator

At the top is a fort. Beyond that are a few more stairs and you're at the top. You get a very nice view of Waikiki and the island behind it. Not as impressive as I'd expected, but worth the trip. The landing was pretty jam packed with people, which wasn't that comfortable, so we took some pictures and then headed down. (The Elph makes it easy to take and then stitch together multiple shots to make up a panorama, so we took a couple, shown below.) Already it was getting pretty crowded and this time the narrow staircase took a long time to traverse because an older woman in front of us was a little spooked by them. Her daughter and son-in-law went ahead and behind her and encouraged her. Finally we got past them and then cruised down. About half way down, the couple with the mother ran by us, and we wondered if they'd just plain ditched the mother. How odd! In any case, it was a nice jaunt, and good to get some exercise before spending hours on a plane.

View from Diamond Head

Panorama of Diamond Head view with Walendo in foreground

We went back to the hotel, first picking up some scones and juice at the nearby Starbucks. We packed up while eating breakfast. I was surprised that we managed to get everything into the same suitcases even with all the extra stuff we'd bought. I'd figured we'd have to carry on more stuff. We checked out and headed to the airport. It was only 11:30, so we had tons of time. We'd thought about first driving to the airport to check our bags and then returning the car, fearful that Alamo would take forever, but since we had so much time, we decided to go straight there. We weren't sure exactly what street it was on, so I meandered my way using my instincts while Walendo got out the emap. We found it without much trouble and I assured Walendo we couldn't have found it without the emap. As we pulled up they checked us out quickly, which was a nice surprise, and there was a bus getting ready to pull out. It was pretty packed but we got on and it took off right after we sat down.

The line to check bags wasn't too bad, but it moved slowly and we saw the line grow to four times its length just in the time it took us to get to the front. So Walendo felt justified in getting there so early. Then we had about 2.5 hours to kill, so we sat down and started pulling out the material for the book. We'd talked about it a little earlier that morning and started to get excited about organizing Chapter 8, so we did that. It was good, it took some of the pressure off of heading home. Walendo checked in with Russ about plans for picking up Libby and with Dipti about plans for work tomorrow.

Eventually, it was time to head to the gate. After we went through the doors to the gates, we saw a TCBY yogurt place, doh! That would have been nice to know earlier. Anyway, we loaded the plane and discovered that we had two bulkhead seats on the side next to the attendant's station so there was no one next to us. This made Walendo feel better about talking about the book during the flight, so we wouldn't be bothering anyone. We worked on the outline of the chapter, and then he watched the movie while I started writing up this journal. After the movie we did a little more on the book. After taking off on time and making good time, we ended up in a holding pattern over SFO because of weather or something. We landed a half hour late. Then our bags took forever to come off, ours being one of the last ones off (I guess because they were on early). We grabbed a cab ride home, winding up with a wheelchair-equipped van just because it was next in the row. The guy ended up barreling along the freeway, which was great. We got home in no time and for only about $30. It was about 12:30am when we got home, sadly with no dog to greet us. Walendo got up early the next morning (after having lost 3 hours, ugh) to meet Russ and the gang for breakfast and to pick up Libby. They arrived home later that morning while I was on the phone, but then I got my big Libby greeting. Now we were truly home.

Previous   (Pearl Harbor & Oahu)