Hawaii JULY 4TH PICNIC

Wednesday, Independence Day is 2 days away; we'll be picnicing again at Ala Moana Park, but we'll be picnicing in our favorite spot for fireworks watching, just down the main road from Magic Island, where the concrete wall ends and the chain wall begins next to where the yachts are moored. Because of the crowd, like 40,000 people coming to watch the fireworks, we park one car overnight the night before, with the picnic stuff to save our spot. You'll see our famous lime green fold up picnic table. We just snooze, read, munch, all day, and hold down the area; everyone else goes and does their thing, returning whenever. JeepChick and Mechanic are coming. I hear Christina is bringing her family, too. Cossybear hasn't said anything about coming to town on July 4th, so I'll hafta ask her. I'll be there by 6:00 AM because of the monumental traffic jam when everyone comes to picnic. Suggest you all come early, and if all the park parking is filled, drop off your stuff and park at the shopping center and walk over. This is the largest annual spectacular fireworks show of the year choreographed to music played on the airwaves by KSSK Radio; fireworks start at 8:30 PM. There's usually a stage show preceding the fireworks over on the ewa end of the shopping center by Sears, but all the trees at Ala Moana Park kinda block some of the fireworks viewing, so we quit going to the stage show about 5 years ago. Yes, we're there all day long, so please bring lotza sunscreen and enough food/beverages for all day. There is a food concession stand, but the lines are usually very long on holidays. Do forget to bring extra TP, even though the maintenance people stock the bathrooms all day, the crowds are too heavy for them to keep up ALL the time, so better to go prepared.

I'll draw another map here. We'll be right on Ala Moana Parkway road in the park, just past the Magic Island parking lot going towards Diamond Head. When the parkway road turns to the left, we're right there at the bend. The concrete wall ends right there at the beginning of the curve, and a white metal chain continues as a fence until it reaches around the corner to the yacht club fence. I'm counting on the fisherman to remove their fishing poles (which they did last year), and since this is only a once a year event, I hope they leave. If they don't leave, we'll park our picnic table opposite the white chain fence; it's a single chain "closing" off the sidewalk and the water below. We bought a stand up green/white canopy yesterday to shade us since there aren't any trees of size to shade us from the sun there. That's why it's the perfect spot for fireworks watching, nothing to block our vision. When the fireworks explode into the sky, it's reflected in the water below and is a double picture. Very beautiful and awesome.

BRING BLANKETS TO SIT ON ON THE WALL BECAUSE IT'S VERY ROUGH TO THE SUNBURNED SKIN.

MAP FOR WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, PICNIC, ALA MOANA PARK DIAMOND HEAD SIDE FROM MAGIC ISLAND PARKING LOT

RED XXXXX MARKS THE SPOT. COME EARLY!!! PARKING LOT FILLS UP BY O900

( ^^MOUNTAINS^^)

ALA MOANA SHOPPING CENTER
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<----(AIRPORT) ALA MOANA BLVD (DIAMOND HEAD) ---->
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ALA MOANA PARK....................A
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...........................................M
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<--POTTY
<--FOOD CONCESSION.
--->-->-->-->-->------------>--
Ala Moana Parkway road
<---<---<----<-------<----

 

RED SQUIGGLE MARKS THE SPOT RIGHT BELOW "DR" IN THE MAP THAT JARVIS IS HOSTING FOR ME; HERE'S THE URL.

http://www.69megs.com/pages/jarvisw/mqmapgend.gif

 

This forum has no edit button, so here's the corrected url site, which Jarvis has gracously given me as a pic, so please click onto the pic for the map.

 

[image=http://www.69megs.com/pages/jarvisw/mqmapgend.gif]

 

(testing for an edit button)

EDIT: Looks like I've got 90 minutes of edit time. If you didn't have one before, you do now.

 

It was a fantastic Independence Day picnic at Ala Moana. All sorts of new folks came by. Cossybear, Jeepchick and Mechanic decided to stay in the boonies; it's 30 miles one way to town, and with all the holiday traffic and parking problems, that really was a no-brainer.

Got our site staked out early in the morning. With 60,000 live bodies in the park, estimated by our morning newspaper, it was crowded. I stayed in our site as folks moved from picnic to picnic, family to friends, all sampling everyone's food. It was billed as the largest fireworks display sponsored by Ala Moana Shopping Center, but there were glitches. There were at least 5 ground level explosions where the fireworks shorted and didn't launch, thereby giving it a ground level explosion, which shorted out the firing wires for the others. The display ended up occurring in 3 separate bursts covering a span of 1 hour 15 minutes. By the time the last burst happened, over 1/2 of the crowd had left. With 60,000 people to disperse, we stayed in our front row seats, and did see the whole display. Unfortunately, this morning's newspaper said not all the fireworks made it to the sky, and would be disposed of properly.

Here's our attendance. Shelly, Marie, William P., Scott, Jerry, Paul, Jesse, Tim, Will K., Chuck, Paul's wife, and her girlfriend. Sorry, can't remember their names at the moment. and at the moment, am still feeling alotta sunburn.

We hope to have another picnic in a few weeks.

 

Mac,

Truely sorry we missed the 4th of July picnic. You aren't kidding, we WERE out in the boonies. We spent most of the afternoon pulling low-riders out of the sand. It was fun but next year JeepChick and I will definitely be on the wall for the front row seating.

See you all again soon! And a big Hazzaaaa!!! For the group on our new official FF Status !!!!!

 

Mac,

Truely sorry we missed the 4th of July picnic. You aren't kidding, we WERE out in the boonies. We spent most of the afternoon pulling low-riders out of the sand. It was fun but next year JeepChick and I will definitely be on the wall for the front row seating.

See you all again soon! And a big Hazzaaaa!!! For the group on our new official FF Status !!!!!

 

I spent 4th of July in Oahu three years ago, it was fabulous! I only wish that vacation could've lasted longer... but I'll be back there someday!

::back to lurking::

 

Star, did you see the fireworks when you were here?

 

I was staying at... oh, hell, I don't remember the name of the hotel. It's at the east end of the Waikiki strip, across the street from the Honolulu Zoo. Anyway... we had a room looking out over Waikiki and beyond, great view. Saw fireworks starting, went down to the beach and watched them go... from a distance, but it was still spectacular....

I want to go back!