Aloha!

Talk about lucky! My major professional conference was held in Kona, Hawaii this year. In mid-June, my colleague, her family and I traveled to Kona for the National Agricultural Alumni and Development Association conference. It was an excellent conference and a great opportunity to meet other people who do the same things I do at other land grant universities. It was also a great opportunity to see a new place.

This is the hotel the conference was at, the Sheraton in Kona, Hawaii. It is one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed at. You could sit in the hot tub and look at the ocean. I would love to go back there some day for a nice relaxing vacation.



There are so many beautiful flowers in Hawaii. Of course, I didn't recognize many of them. But, they were so fragrant and so colorful!



On the day before the conference started, I went with my friend Heidi and her co-workers to see Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. This is me with one of the craters. This particular crater just went off in March and was submitting a lot of sulphur gas. We just hope it wasn't too harmful.



As part of the conference, I went on an Ag Tour of the island. We visited a farm that grows and ships flowers. Below, one of the owners is demonstrating how they package the flowers for shipment.


We also got to see the nation's largest banana plantation! The owner was much more interested in talking about his hydroponic tomato plants, but I was pretty excited to see the bananas.

It was so good to see my friend Heidi in Hawaii! She and I worked together at the Mizzou Alumni Association for a year and left on the same day to pursue different things. She is a development officer there now and they're lucky to have her!

After the conference, my co-worker and I ventured to Honolulu to see a few things there. Honolulu wasn't nearly as pretty and peaceful as the Big Island and Kona. But, we did find a few things there we enjoyed. Below is a picture of me at the Dole Pineapple Plantation sipping on my pineapple float (pineapple soft serve ice cream with pineapple juice). So delicious!

We watched the sun set on the North Shore of Oahu that evening. Whoever lives by these two chairs has a perfect view every evening!

The next morning we went to the USS Arizona Memorial. When we showed up, every tour bus on the island must have been there. There had to have been hundreds of people there. It was really difficult to see the exhibits for all of the people. They have a great audio set you can purchase though. It was really good. And, they're beginning construction on an expanded visitors center later this summer (which they are desperately in need of!).

This is one of my favorite pictures from our visit to the Memorial.

After the Memorial, we went snorkeling in Haunama Bay on the southeastern portion of the island. It is a state park and full of coral and beautiful fish. Definitely a high point in my visit to Oahu!

Unfortunately, Chad didn't get to come with me to Hawaii. Maybe we can go again some day. Our next trip is to an even better location though ... Oklahoma!