Day 11 – A Garden of Views

Warning this post is mostly pictures, lots of them and not labeled.

We actually made a plan today to visit an arboretum and some botanical gardens. I thought maybe we would hit three or four. We began our garden tour at Lyon Arboretum in Honolulu.  Let me give you a few details:

1.  Don’t park at the Manoa Falls parking area, go beyond that.
2.  Go to the Welcome Center, sign in and give the donation of $5.00 a person, it is worth it.
3.  Get the trail map, but note some of the side trails do not go through all the way, some are closed and some are hard to follow. Please do explore them
4. Wear bug spray.
5.  Wear hiking shoes, it gets a bit muddy in spots.

Now please enjoy the photos.

We took the main trail to Aihualama Falls, however the trail to them is more like a hiking trail, narrow and muddy.  The falls were a trickle today.

We spent a little over two hours here and we could have spent more time there.  If you love plants, beautiful walks and a peaceful setting this is the place to be.

Realizing our plan of three to four gardens wasn’t realistic, we decided to find lunch and go to one more garden.  Yelp, saved the day. We discovered He’eia Pier General Store and Deli. I can see where parking can be a problem on the pier, but we had no problem.  This is it, nothing grand to look at, but trust me the views around it are amazing and the food even better.

We decided our final garden to visit would be Ho’omaluhia Botanical Garden in Kaneohe.
This was different than the arboretum and you could drive to the different types of gardens here.  We only did a few sections, because we were tired from the first jaunt.  We plan to go back to finish this one off.  If nothing else, go for the views of the Ko’olau Range.

Again enjoy the photos.

At this point it was after 3:30 p.m. time to head home, grab dinner at VJs North Shore Dog and Burger.  I had ahi at lunch, so went with a mahi-mahi sandwich for dinner.  Sorry no pictures, I ate it to fast.

At home, we went for an early evening float, I wrote and then sunset.  Today really was about all the views.