Fridays are the days we take it easy in Hawaii. We call it Aloha Friday, much like what folks on the mainland call TGIF. I post a question, and you comment. That's it, unless you want to ask your own question at An Island Life.
They are anything but subtle. I usually pack special treats for the stake out minutes. The kids can't make much noise with food in their mouths. When I am at my limit I let them roam freely in the van. Hmmm this might have been one of those days!
Then plunge the corer into the center of the fruit, and twist, twist, twist until the corer hits the bottom of the fruit.
Pull the corer straight out of the fruit. The pineapple will sit on the corer in rings, just like inferior canned pineapple. Forget canned. Get the fresh stuff! It is so worth it!
The downside to using the corer is that you will get less edible fruit than by cutting the pineapple into chunks.
The core is left inside the hard shell of the pineapple. The core can be cut into little swizzle sticks for tropical drinks.
Once the core is removed, the shell could make a bowl for fruit, a drink container, or even a dip container.
So what do you prefer? Pineapple chunks or pineapple rings?
They put up signs all over the beach and answer questions about the turtles. They also have honu coloring sheets available for the keiki. In the sand between Son1 and the honu you can see how she pulled herself up the beach and onto the sand. The rule of thumb is to be one bicycle length from the honu. I know it is a she because the volunteer told me. The honus are marked with GPS and also with white numbers on their shells so they can be studied and preserved. They travel 1000 miles round trip to have their babies.
Honus come to Turtle Beach in large numbers for two reasons. The rocks are covered with algae and seaweed (called limu in Hawaiian, lee-moo).
We walked to the rocks. I had high hopes of looking for crabs in rocks with the kids. but we had one little issue. Son2 didn't understand we weren't getting in the water. Try to keep a kid born in Hawaii from the beach. It is an uphill battle. Hubby and I took turns keeping him dry. He had no appreciation for our efforts. Well at least my efforts.
And then Son1 wasn't in a crab hunting mood anymore, and it was "that time."
So we climbed the hill and crossed the highway to our car, just like these strangers. 
I know these two guys, though.
The parking lot looks into this field. This is the "mauka" side of the road (mountain) and the beach was on the "makai" side (ocean). People don't use cardinal directions very much in Hawaii. Everything is either mauka side or makai side.
On the drive home we spotted a rainbow near the Dole Plantation. Son1 said, "I wonder if it will follow me home?"
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He doesn't always complete his skills in isolation during his lesson. He is so ready to swim and show all the pool bystanders he can do it, that he won't blow his bubbles. He is getting better at demonstrating his skills each time. He knows he can't pull one over on his teacher. Now if Hubs or I were teaching him to swim....ay ya yay! Hubs used to teach swim lessons in his college days but Son1 is a kid that does better with a young pretty teacher. That's motivation.
Pineapple crowns are pulled from the fruit when it is picked and then replanted. They grow huge and turn into...
After our train ride on the plantation (which I won't tell you all about...I have done that already on thefarmerfiles) we stopped for the infamous Dole Whip. It is a soft serve frozen dessert. It comes in different flavors, but pineapple is the best! You can also get a Dole Whip at Walt Disney World or at Disneyland. Dole is a long time sponsor of the Tiki Room. Have you ever had a Dole Whip or been to the Tiki Room?
One little guy polished off an entire Dole Whip, which stands several inches out of the bowl.
The other little boy danced in puddles, and deemed the Dole Whip over rated. Do you love how I have the top half of one kid, and the bottom half of the other? Accidental photography.
And me? I found my own sweet treat in our subdivision, driving home.
A view from the east side of the building.
This is the inside hallway of the east wing.
My aunt was a little worried that I didn’t find anything for Mrs. Farmer, but I told her not to worry, I still had a week in Monterey. My aunt found some Jockey underwear for $4.00 on clearance, which came to $3.00 for three pairs of underwear with the additional 25% off. She is going to die when she finds out I posted about her underwear purchase...shhhh...We both left feeling that we got some deals…remember the previous post that “the Farmers never pay full price.”
About ½ way down we saw this garage sale sign off of the coastal scenic drive amongst these million dollar plus houses. Below is an entire beach area where folks stacked rocks up all along the beach...I thought it was so unique and cool I took a few photos.
My aunt, who is an avid yard sale queen, and garage sale mentor gave me the “look” so we doubled back a few yards and went one street up to find the garage sale. It was about 1:30pm on Sunday afternoon, which in Hawaii or in So. CA, all of the good stuff would be gone by 9am Saturday morning. Their sign said Saturday/Sunday 8-4pm. I wasn’t too hopefully we would find anything. The driveway was full of old antique looking items. The cute couple having the sale must have been in their 60s or 70s and they were enjoying meeting everyone who stopped by. The wife was looking up everyone’s place of residence on an atlas. She has no idea where Templeton, CA was. I was hoping my aunt wouldn’t pull one of her classic moves, “Will you take ten cents for it?”. I was walking back to the bike to get my wallet out of the bike pouch because I saw the item for Mrs. Farmer. While walking back to the bike, there were several other folks coming up the drive, some coming in on cars and others on bikes, just like us. Fearful someone else was going to score the item before me, I immediately told my aunt to procure the item and start the negotiation process. She said, “What do you think, $5?” They were asking $9 for it. It was definitely worth $9. However, the Farmers never pay full price. My aunt offered $5, and they countered with $7. We said sure. The nice woman even tossed in free gift wrapping, bubble wrap and all.
We were a little worried that it wouldn’t fit in the bike pouch, but it did. We knew that Mrs. Farmer would truly enjoy the gift, much more than an item from Marshalls. Mrs. Farmer is famous for finding silver plated tea items that are all tarnished and making them shine like new. Since this is a Surprise for Mrs. Farmer via the blog…here it is. 
I hope you enjoy it Mrs. Farmer.
Well, finally, after many hours of peddling, we made it back to Monterey and we still had some time left on the bikes so we headed north to the nearby town of Seaside. For the most part the area has miles and miles of paved bike trails.
The restaurant had very good food and was reasonably priced given the location, wait staff, and view. Their iced tea was excellent and their prime rib was very good. The service was fantastic given that it was completely full of patrons. Once again, I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but here is a photo of the view/sunset in the background. 
Well, this concludes my guest blog post on thefarmerfiles. Now I can see how Mrs. Farmer spends so much time late in the evening writing lengthy posts. Luckily, this one only took about three hours. Below is a photo of the NPS Hall of Fame where I created this entry. Until next time…
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