I really loved best to take the bus over to Haleiwa and look for shells. There was one spot where just as the bus rounded the bend you had a beautiful view of the ocean. It was awesome. It passed by sugar cane fields after that.
This is a post card I bought.
They burn the cane fields before a harvest to accomplish two things. First it drives out the poisonous toads and rats that live in there. There are no snakes in Hawaii. At least there weren't at that time.
The other thing it does is probably the most important. It burns off the leafy stuff making it easier to harvest but the main thing is that it seals the sugar sap into the cane. If not for this they would lose a lot just cutting it and trying to haul it to the processor before the sap all ran out.
If you look you will see where Schofield Barracks is situated. We lived in Wahiawa. Where it says Schofield Barracks Reservation, I really never knew what that was unless it was fields where they did exercises. If that's what it is then it may be where I did stuff with the Guards.
If you follow one of the roads out of Wahiawa you will eventually reach Haleiwa. It's pronounced holly eee vah. Wahiawa is pronounced wiiii ah wah. The wiii sounds like you would pronounce the word why. I just didn't how to spell it phonetically.
If you follow that orange line all the way around the edge of the island, that's a bus route. It's called the "Circle Island Tour Route" Any tourist could get on in Ala Moana Center and ride the bus but not get off all the way around the island seeing a lot of the ocean and other highlights this way while only paying fifty cents. It was a good way for them to get ideas on what they really wanted to see and do.
I imagine it costs more to ride now. If you got off anywhere, you would have to wait an hour for the next one going around. I don't think it did a return around the island but it could have.
I spent most of my days wandering around getting to know the place, collecting shells on the beach, visiting the library. I went to the library once and found them having a huge book sale. Somewhere there had been a flood some time before I got there. The books were dried out and weren't stinky so I took a look.
Some weren't worth the bother if pages stuck together or one of them did have a smell or discolored pages but sometimes you lucked out and found good ones. I bought some for a little bit of nothing that seemed to have nothing wrong with them at all.
I asked one of the ladies who was always nice to me why they were selling the ones in good condition. She said that when an "event" like that happened, they would get reimbursement funds from the government to replace the lost books. They couldn't keep books once they had been declared damaged but they could sell them as damaged goods. The government continues to work in mysterious ways.
My next discovery was the Botanical Gardens. There were so many beautiful plants here. The best thing was that it was free to get in and I could wander where I wanted to go. I never saw a guard in there at all. I did see signs sometimes saying "Keep Off" and of course the "Don't Pick" ones.
There was a paper bark tree that really fascinated me. I snuck over to feel of it. It felt like something you would use for packing in a box. It looked like some kind of old wood that had decayed but it wasn't. It was soft to the touch. I couldn't resist picking up a bit of the fluff that lay on the ground around it.
I never picked a flower but I did pick up a seed on the pathway. It was a macadamia nut in a shell. It was perfectly round, very hard and had a dark reddish brown shiny surface. I stuck it in a coffee can with all the shells I probably wasn't supposed to be picking up either.
I took a lot of photos in there. Sometimes people would give me copies of photos they took. I had quite a collection at one time. I only have a few now.
First this is not only not mine but I never got to go there. There was a Waimea beach on the island but if this state park was there, I never saw it. I think it may have been on another island.
I have no idea what that was but I liked it.
I think they were called trumpet flowers or trumpet vine, maybe.