Happy New Year to you and a happy new experience for me!
This January my friend Elva and I are heading to Honolulu to volunteer to help refurbish the Mighty Mo. The barnacled battleship is a preserved remembrance of the "date which will live in infamy." Lying off Ford's Island in Pearl Harbor, the National Park Service, and I am sure in conjunction with the U.S. Navy, maintains and protects the famous USS Missouri. It was the last battleship commissioned by the US government and is most remembered for being the ship whose decks served as the site for the signing of the surrender of Japan on September 2, 1945. The flag flying from the mast that day was oddly the 31 star emblem of America. It was the flag carried ashore at Tokyo Bay, by Commodore Perry in 1853, when Japan was forced to open it's doors to foreign trade.
I have been to Hawaii three times before. Going once is the dream of a lifetime and each of my visits was a blessing I was amazed to receive. This time, under the auspices of Road Scholar, we will spend a week working at service tasks that we will be assigned. I may be polishing the brass, cleaning crew quarters, or working on research and reference filing. I am excited to know what this next week holds. We also will be spending a day working in the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, lovingly called Punchbowl. Again a day of unknown adventure.
I am sure though, that if you know me at all, you know there will be a cruise involved along the way. You would not be wrong. In 2015 my family and I sailed on the Pride of America and Elva and I will be doing that as well. It will be a new trip for her, and although it breaks my rule of needing each trip to visit some new places, it is a cruise I do not mind repeating at all. We needed to add an interim day in Waikiki to make it all work. Tough duty!
I will try to update you at least occasionally and provide some photos, especially of the Mighty Mo. It would not be exciting to my son-in-law but I am very much looking forward to the night we sleep in crew quarters on the great ship. Pretty sure it will in no way compare to any cruise I have been on, and the food won't be as good even though the "Navy gets the gravy..."
For now, Aloha!
