In March of 2025, my mom, sister, and I visited Hawaii. It wa a trip more than 5 years in the making. My goal had originally been to visit all 50 states by the time I turned 25. But because I ended up attending school internationally, my dad got sick, and then COVID hit, my timeline was bumped back. Still, I REALLY wanted to try to get the last few in before I turned 30. Last summer, we went to Alaska, state number 49 admitted to the union and state number 49 for the family. And on the last day of February, just 19 days before my 30th birthday, we finally made it to our 50th state, the 50th state admitted to the U.S., Hawaii!
We scheduled the trip over my MSU Spring Break so we could maximize on time, and we ended up having essentially 10 full days. During those 10 days, we visited three islands: Oahu, Maui, and the Big Island of Hawaii. We were able to get to all of our individual priorities (Pearl Harbor for Mom, the Dole Plantation for Becca, and National Parks for Theresa).
Getting there
I woke up bright and early on February 28th, ready to fly to Hawaii. I was coming from East Lansing, so I was able to catch the sunrise on my hour-long drive to Detroit. Luckily, I was able to catch a direct Delta flight from Detroit to Oahu. It was a nine-and-a-half-hour flight, during which I was able to do school work and finalize some travel plans.
I ended up arriving shortly after 3 PM local time, less than an hour after my mom and sister arrived from Chicago. Being from the midwest, I forgot that sometimes warm-weather locales have external walkways in places where we would usually have internal hallways. We were coming off of a typical Michigan February, so the blast of heat that greeted me when I started walking away from my gate was a surprising taste of summer, even though it was Hawaii and I should have been prepared. We decided to stay at the Disney Aulani Resort because we’d really never done any tropical travel before and my mom finds Disney hotels easy to navigate. We arrived, checked out our room, wandered around the resort, grabbed some fruity drinks, and caught the sunset before turning in for the night.
Oahu Day 1
We woke up bright and early on the first full day of our trip. Mom’s priority on the trip was to see Pearl Harbor, so we booked tickets for the first morning. By 8:30, we’d arrived at the national memorial, gotten our tickets, and started wandering around the premisis looking at the various exhibits. At 9 on the dot, we boarded the boat and were driven the ten-minute ride to the USS Arizona Memorial. The USS Arizona was one of the battleships sunk by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. We spent some time wandering around the monument, viewing the wreckage in the water and the wall of names of those lost on the USS Arizona. In total, 1,177 officers and crewmen were killed when the Arizona was hit by bombs and sunk. THis accounts for more than half of the losses in the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the wreckage of the ship now stands as a memorial to the lives lost. We even heard about veterans who had been there during the attack having their ashes lain to rest in the wreckage. It was a sombering but beautiful memorial to veterans and the country.
Afterward, we came back to shore to finish exploring the various exhibits and watching the 23-minute park film.
In addition to the USS Arizona memorial, we bought tickets to see the USS Missouri, another battleship that fought during WWII. It was actually the site of the surrunder of the Japanese empire at the very end of WWII.
The tickets also got us entrance into the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum, with airplanes from WWII, and the Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum, including the submarine the USS Bowfin.
After the day at the Pearl Harbor memorial, we headed back to the hotel for dinner and more fruity drinks (this time in a pineapple for Becca!).
Oahu Day 2
On our second full day in Oahu, we wandered around the resort, took a short drive to walk along the beach, and then made our way to Becca’s priority: the Dole Pineapple Plantation. We spent the morning wandering around the pineapple maze, riding on the pineapple express, and walking through the various gardens. We got some pineapples and some Dole whip before heading out for the afternoon.
We caught a few good views as we drove along the coast, including Diamond Head State Monument, a dormant volcano. We stumbled upon a few volcanic beaches, some lighthouses, and even a University of Hawaii campus with a beautiful botanic garden.
That night, we attended the Mauka Warriors Luau. Ethically, I’d been going back and forth on whether we should attend a luau or not. It is a beautiful celebration and cultural experience, but over the years I’ve become very aware of ethical participation in cultural tourist experiences. As someone who wants to experience “the thing to do” in each place I go to, I really want to have that typical experience. Additionally, I understand the economic impact of tourism on local economies. But I also am aware of how traditionally cultural tourist attractions have sometimes been provided as consumable tourist experiences that take advantage of local populations and cultures. When I saw the option to attend a luau through Mauka Warriors Luau, I thought it was a perfect way to experience a luau in an ethical manner. The luau was run by polynesians, created to fill a hole they saw in “true cultural experiences on the island” with the goal of “honoring and celebrating forgotten Hawaiian/Polynesian history while educating their community”. The ownership by native Hawaiians, the desire to present not just Hawaii’s culture but Polynesian culture as a whole, and the focus on the luau as a way to honr ancestors was what sold me on this experience being an ethical way to participate in this tradition. Afterward, I felt justified with my choice. There were local Hawaiian families attending, graduating high school seniors there for their graduation celebrations, and all of the performers were family and friends of the owners. They even had a Miss Hawaii competitor attending the celebration because the luau we attended was the first of the season!
We were able to see demonstrations of coconut cutting, luau lessons, and braiding palm leafs. We got to try kava, a traditional ceremonial polynesian drink that was brewed at the luau. We saw the pig they roasted for dinner before it was cut up. We then participated in dinner before watching the dancing and fire spinning. Overall, it was a celebration of culture, history, and food that felt like it honored the people we celebrated with rather than being exploitative.
Oahu Day 3
Our third day on Oahu was our last on this end of the trip. We said goodbye to our hotel before heading off to Honolulu for some more scenic drives and stops. We found a nice beach to walk along and all of us stuck our toes in the sand. There were some cool tidal pools.
We stopped at Makapu’u Point Vista Point for a short hike with some scenic views of a lighthouse and the ocean. We continued to stop at various lookout points on the drive north.
We finally made it to our last stop of the day before catching our flight, the Polynesian Cultural Center. It wasn’t one of our priorities, but it had good reviews and we had a bit of extra time to wander around, so we stopped in. It felt like some kind of polynesian Epcot, with scale models of houses from different polynesian cultures and rides. We rode a canoe, saw a scale model of a ship, a fancy canoe that had been made for an English monarch visit (although never sailed)
The Polynesian Cultural Center was created by a Mormon man in the 1960s as part of efforts to preserve cultural knowledge and center education, and was definitely much more morally ambiguous than the luau was, but it seems to have done a log of good things for the cultural knowledge preservation and has gotten several awards from the state of Hawaii for authentic luaus and excellence in service and productivity. Besides the weird morman history and vibes (I think a lot of the students running the rides and shops were there on some mission equivalency), the center was very educational and informative about various polynesian cultures.
I did enjoy that aspect of both the culutral center and the luau. Our time in Hawaii did not feel very “U.S.” or even “Hawaii”. Instead, the people seemed to be more aware of themselves as a larger part of the Polynesian Islands and identified as such.
We left the Polynesian Cultural Center and made our way to the airport, catching the sunset as we waited for our nighttime flight to Maui. The flight itself took less than an hour, but we drove a while after we landed in Maui to get to a Hilton hotel on the beach. We went to bed late, but we were up early the next day and ready for our time in Maui!
WANDERING 