Dole Plantation

Wednesday we headed back up to the North Shore to visit the Dole Plantation.  It's always fun to go here and smell the pineapple sweetness!  We started in the ginormous gift shop where I thought Toni was going to buy the whole place.  The guys both picked out Hawaiian shirts for the Luau we would be attending the next night.  We finally made out of the store after about 30 minutes.  Then we hit up the Pineapple Express Train for a little tour around the pineapple fields.  There are speakers that give you a history of the Dole Plantation which is fun for those who have never heard it before.  Hadley and Harry both got to experience their first train ride.  Both of them were angels on the train. 

During the middle of our train ride Riley decided to start swinging her feet around and kicked one of her crocs off the train.  "Oh no," Riley yelled.  My response, "oh no is right."  I was annoyed that she kicked her shoe off, but even more annoyed that it had to be her $30 crocs.  She couldn't have been wearing a pair of $5 flip flops.  When the train ride ended Trey went to ask if someone could retrieve Riley's shoe.  Luckily there was an employee sitting on the back of the train that saw her shoe fly off and had already sent someone to retrieve her shoe.  Thank the Lord!  Riley was devastated about her croc.  She has an obsession with shoes and was thrilled when she got her croc back!  The day could continue in peace now.

We all decided to tackle the Pineapple Garden Maze next.  This maze was the World's Largest Maze in 2008, so I knew it would be fun!  As we were paying to enter we found out that there were 8 stations you had to locate and you had to get your game card stamped at each spot.  They tell you that the maze normally takes about an hour.  BJ & Toni teamed up against me & Trey.  Let the games begin.  Trey is pretty awesome with direction so I was letting him lead the way.  But then he wasn't doing so hot so we decided to split up.  I found probably half of the stations and he found the other half.  We were still looking for the last two stations when we run into BJ & Toni who have finished their game card.  Trey decides he's finished with the maze and doesn't want to do it anymore.  We were all hot and sweaty and it was time for Hadley to eat.  So as I'm feeding Hadley, Trey went and got us some well deserved pineapple ice cream.  Ahhh, just what the doctor ordered.  I didn't want to quit the maze, but I wasn't going to keep playing by myself.  We found out that Toni & BJ had a map of the maze that showed where the stations were located.  No wonder they finished before us.  We were going through the maze blind!  Trey & I became confident, once again, that we would kick their ass in Amazing Race.  Of course I told Trey he wouldn't be allowed to give up on any of our missions or detours!  Here is Hadley after we exited the maze.

We tried for a family photo, but we can't ever get the kids to both look at the camera!