Oahu Day 9

Diamond Head Day!   We wake up the monsters early (ish), and we are on the road by 9 am!  Traffic gets bad near the park, and we arrive at 9:55 am!  The park is FULL!!! WTF.  After several curse words, I drop the family off and drive out to park outside and down the hill from the Volcano entrance.   Now I hike up and in!  Sigh.   Oh well, we start our climb along with what seems like 5,000 other tourists!   The air is a sweltering 88 degrees and the going is slow (too many kids and aged tourists!).

Half way up, we are doing well and wanting the trip to go quicker...in fact several keener's run by us. We come to the stairs, very near the end of the hike and we tackle them with renewed vigor!  No complaining from Katie this year!  Once at the top, we scoot under the turret and into sunshine and more importantly...wind!

The top is very crowded, but the view is quite wonderful.  We stand around with everyone else, taking the needed selfies and couple shots.  Then, we lose Cam!  Where can he be?  He was just here, did he head down?  Did he fall or collapse from heat exhaustion?  Katie says she told him we were heading down, so we think he went on ahead....

We find him at the bottom, waiting.  Crisis averted.  Everyone is hungry, so we load into the car and head to Big City Dinner!  Andrew was craving "American Food". He gets the Bigger Burger, and still finishes part of my Club sandwich!  Now that we are full, we search out a beach...thinking Waikiki beach may be kinda cool....it is JAMMED!   There is zero parking, so we elect to head for Ala Moana Regional Park and Beach.  It is much quieter, and we find out why...it is kinda boring.  Due to a huge water break, there are essentially no waves.  That't ok.  We go for a swim, and rest in the sun for a couple of hours.  It is a nice change of pace...for a while.

We stop at Chinatown for one last trinket purchase for Katie, then back to base for dinner.  A fine day after all.