DATE: Sunday, January 1, 2023

Happy New Year! 2022 is in the books, and 2023 started off as great as it could for us. We don’t have a whole lot planned for today since it’s New Year’s Day, and we don’t expect too many tourist spots to be open.

We did get to visit again with the brethren at the Leeward church in Waipahu. It was good to see all of them again and to say our good-byes. Daniel Duvall, their minister, had a good lesson about the goals we should be setting: personally, as a family, and as a church.

After church, we did find a nearby open Walmart to pick up a small amount of groceries for the remainder of our trip. Here, they usually have an employee at the exit checking the receipt and sort of half-heartedly making sure it matches what you bought. This particular lady was wishing everyone a Happy New Year on the way out. Then she looks at Sonya’s receipt, “Oh… Not a happy new year.“

One of the tourist attractions that was not closed today was the Buddhist Byodo-In Temple near Kaneohe on the windward side of the island, so we thought we’d go check it out. It’s a replica temple of the Byodo-In Temple in Uji, Japan, built in the mid-60s and opened in 1968. It was built to commemorate the Japanese immigrants who migrated to Hawaii in the 1850s / 1860s. It’s a beautiful structure. And the surrounding cemetery illustrates how important it is to many Japanese.

From there it was “wing it mode” until the sun set. We hadn’t seen a sunset in Hawaii yet and we thought that nearby world-famous Waikiki Beach would be a good place to see it. We drove to what’s called the “toilet bowl” near Hanauma Bay. We thought that we could access it from the road, but it looks like it’s only accessible from entering the bay park, which is closed today. Sonya found something that said that it may only be accessible by boat at this point. Bummer.

We got some pictures from a couple of nearby lookouts.

We ventured back to the “R&B” to drop off the vehicle and make our way to watch the sunset. It certainly didn’t disappoint. Beautiful radiant colors that this camera just can’t capture as well as in real life.

Tonight was very low-key. We’d been talking about watching the movie Moana just about the whole time here, so we hooked up Zach’s laptop to the TV and streamed it from Disney+. Sonya had picked up some frozen pizzas earlier and, voilà! Our Sunday night tradition: frozen pizzas and a movie. Good night, and Happy New Year, everyone!