Click on the images to see them full size.

Hurricane Dora did indeed impact our flight today. Johnston Island was evacuated due to Dora and so was not available as a refueling stop. Instead, we were routed from Honolulu to Midway Island for refueling. That meant that our route immediately out of Honolulu was slightly north of due west and so I got one more good look at Kauai on the way by. The break in the clouds shows off Waimea Canyon pretty well.

The rest of the trip was over open ocean from one tiny island to the next. Our stops were at Midway Island, Majuro Island and Kwajalein Island. Those three islands probably don't add up to much more than a dozen square miles total. It is amazing to realize how important these tiny pieces of land have been during world conflict.

I was surprised to learn that Midway Island had become a National Wildlife Refuge in 1997. During nesting season, over a million albatrosses nest on Midway Island. The birds are so thick that planes can only land at night when the birds won't fly in the path of the plane. The surrounding waters reveal the pale blue of good snorkeling water! There is now a hotel on the island and they are trying to become a destination for ecotourism. I think I would enjoy going there sometime soon before very many people find out about it

Midway Island is an individual island (well actually three pieces of land) but Majuro and Kwajalein are each part of an atoll, or ring of islands. As you can see from this picture taken at low tide, the connections between the islands are very shallow. Sometimes it is possible to wade completely around an atoll.

Here finally is our destination. That runway is about two miles long. We were given a 20-minute driving tour of the island and I think that we saw the entire island in that time. There are two deep passages that allow very large ships to come inside the circle of islands or into the lagoon portion of the atoll. The rest of the atoll which is more than 100 islands could be waded without ever going underwater!

One last comment about the date for this message. We left Honolulu on the 17th of August. It was still the 17th in Midway. But just a few miles west of Midway Island, it became the 18th when we crossed the international date line. So I lost one complete day today. Not to worry. I'll get to live September 13th twice on the way back!

Alan Nelson