Hawaii Day 8 (Friday)

Friday morningwe slept in and had a chill morning hanging in our hotel room before heading out for the day. We first stopped for a small detour at the Pali Lookout, which is an area of historical significance in the Hawaii history. It was here that King Kamehameha fought with the natives in order to combine the Hawaiian Islands under one rule. It's a very steep hill and apparently people were falling off the hill like crazy during the fight. Of course, this is all the information I can remember after several months of actually being there and reading about Pali Lookout, so I could be leaving some things out. Either way, this area is always really super crazy windy, as you can tell from my hair below.


We continued our drive up the east side of the island and stopped at Kualoa Ranch. I had passed this ranch many times when I lived in Hawaii years ago, but had never gone there. We took the movie and ranch tour first, where we rode around in these open window buses...


and saw some amazing sites! Kualoa Ranch is a large area of land that is really best known for being a film location. Many movies have been filmed there and continue to be filmed there. I guess the week before we were there, they were taping part of Pirates 4 with Johnny Depp. We were able to see some of the well-known sites from movies. Do you remember the movie Jurassic Park? There's a part where the people see these dinosaurs coming and they run down a hill and hide behind a pile of wood while the dinosaurs run and jump over them. That hill and that pile of wood was at Kualoa Ranch! No more dinosaurs around here though...


Several scenes from Lost, one of our most favorite shows, were filmed here. We were able to see the house that served as the inside of Jacob's hut, the lush forest area where the final scenes of Lost were filmed, and Hurley's golf course! If you don't know what I'm talking about at all, you should watch the show starting from the first season. Seriously awesome.


Godzilla was also filmed here and they left the big footsteps...


After that tour, we came back and immediately started the Jungle Expedition tour given on Kualoa Ranch. This tour was in an army type open vehicle and we drove around the very primitive areas to see the place where monarchy used to live. This tour was neat because our tour guide asked us at some point if we were Mormon. I don't know exactly why he would have thought so, except for the fact that we were young and married and we were dressed modestly. He happened to be a member too and worked in the temple and we were able to chat with him. I love finding random members all over the place. We also hiked up to a certain part to see the amazing view,


and ate some guavas that our tour guide picked off the trails for us.


After our Kualoa Ranch expedition, we drove up to the PCC again. It was fun to go a second time because we were in such a rush to see everything on our first visit. This time we were able to play games at some of the islands, and we weaved little fishes out of leaves, watched an IMAX movie, just walked around to see the sites, got some weaved leaf crowns, and sat on a bench chatting as everyone else was eating dinner and the sun was going down.


After our peaceful outing at the PCC, we drove back to Waikiki and decided to check out the Hard Rock Cafe. I've only been to a Hard Rock a few times, and that's always been on vacations. Mark had never gone before, so we had a lot of fun eating the delicious burgers and checking out the cool rock paraphernalia (is that really how you spell that word) all over the restaurant. Mark was most excited about seeing the Guns 'N Roses guitar and the Pearl Jam guitar (shown below).