The Groves

Fun fact: Danny and I LOVE Pineapples. We love to put them on our pizza, stack them on our burgers, mix them into stir-fries, and good ol’ chop them up into spears and eat them with our hands.

So of course, we couldn’t come to Hawaii without taking a day trip to visit the Dole Pineapple Plantation!

Any good day trip has to start off with a delicious breakfast. In this case, French toast stuffed with bananas and blueberries at Sweet E’s Café. Ya’ll. This was hands down the BEST French toast we have ever had. Ever. We also got some bottomless iced coffee and some POG juice, which is a common Hawaiian juice blend consisting of Passion fruit, Orange and Guava juices. We will definitely be going here again!

After a scenic hour and a half drive up toward the North Shore, we reached our destination. Now, I am not sure if the average person knows how pineapples grow, but we certainly didn’t before we arrived. In fact, one of Danny’s co-workers suggested that if we did not already know how they grew, to wait to find out until we could actually see it for ourselves. So that’s what we did. As soon as we pulled up to the front of the plantation country store, I caught a glimpse of a growing pineapple. My immediate internal reaction: ‘It’s so weird!!!’ However, as Danny didn’t seem to notice it yet, I decided not to say anything out loud until he discovered it for himself (waiting to see my hubby react to something exciting is way too fun to pass up!)

We parked, sprayed on an absurd amount of sun screen (reminding ourselves that as convenient as directly spraying yourself in the face with sun screen may seem, it is never worth it), and walked off to the storefront. We walked around the country store for a little while and looked at all of the pineapple gifts and products they had, then proceeded to the ticket booth where we got tickets for the Plantation Garden Tour and The Pineapple Express Train Tour. We opted out of the Pineapple Garden Maze this time around, as it was a pretty hot day and we didn’t quite feel up to the task of taking on the world’s largest maze!

With tickets in hand, there was one thing we absolutely had to do before starting the tours. It is the one thing we were looking forward to the most. The ultimate reason for visiting the Dole Pineapple Plantation.

DOLE WHIPS.

These delectable Dole Whip Floats, with their pineapple flavored frozen soft serve floating in fresh pineapple juice, are like heaven in a plastic pineapple cup. We have had these sweet frozen treats at Disneyland before, but we could not pass up getting them directly from the Dole Plantation!

Dole Whips in hand, we set off toward the garden tour entrance. We sat down on a bench for a moment to get out our tickets and setup the tour app on Danny’s phone before we began.

What I was expecting on a garden tour: to see plants.

What I was not expecting on a garden tour: to see creatures living in said plants so up close and personal.

Here I am, sitting on this bench minding my own business and taking a few bites of my Dole Whip, when I see a flash of green and feel something rapidly crawling up my bare leg. I don’t even look to see what it is before I instantly smack it off with a scream and jump up from the bench. At first I thought maybe it had been an enormous bug, to which I cringed, but then I looked down at the ground where it had landed. A pair of blue rimmed eyes shot me a look as if offended, and a bright green lizard scurried off into some bushes. We later found out it was a Gold Dust Day Gecko, which so happens to be the mascot of Geico. I think I may have just assaulted our insurance agent…

After that I did not feel like sitting down again, so we took it as a good cue to start the garden tour! We saw a variety of interesting and vibrant plant life, and took pictures of some of the beautiful flora the garden had to offer.

At this point, Danny had still not noticed any growing pineapples. So, before we boarded the Pineapple Express, we walked over to a miniature pineapple grove first to see them up close. After staring at the plants in the grove for a moment and finally seeing the pineapples, he just says, “Weird!” and we proceeded to take lots of pictures of all of the cute baby pineapples.

Having resisted the urge to pick an adorable baby pineapple as it was against the rules, it soon came time for our ride on the Pineapple Express. Apparently before boarding this train you are handed a pineapple, told to smile, and like three people try to get your attention as they take your picture. I was sad when they wouldn’t let me keep the pineapple and I had to give it back. Once we heard the “All Aboard”, from there it was groves, gardens, and glorious scenery galore!

Stepping off the train we stopped at the side of a koi pond and watched people feed the fish for a little while. Suddenly wanting sushi, we trekked over to the store courtyard where we found a sushi bar and decided to try some hand rolls. Yummy and convenient! We liked them so much I started making them at home a week later!

During lunch, I also met another chicken! I named this one, Kylo Hen.

Post-lunch, we walked around the store some more, snuck over to the parking lot median to get a closer picture of a more fully grown pineapple, and then noticed that it looked like there was another plantation right next to Dole. It was sort of strange and creepy looking, so we didn’t bother going in, but we did manage to get this sweet photo opp!

Leaving the pineapple plantation, we remembered driving by what looked like a small coffee plantation on our way there, so we decided to check that out on our way home. Just a short drive south we found ourselves at Green World Coffee Farm. Danny got to buy some locally grown coffee to take home, we got to walk around their coffee bean grove, and to my delight I met even more chicken friends! I am pretty sure we found Danny’s happy place.

Look at all them chickens.