Dole Plantation Tour

As you drive from Honolulu towards the North Shore you pass acres of pineapple fields that belong to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. It is a minor tourist trap, but nonetheless we felt like we needed to go and check it out. I (Sarah) LOVE pineapple and have been known to eat an entire pineapple in one sitting.
We are all waking up with the sunrise around 6:15am each day since our apartment is open air and has no curtains, so we were up and out of the house early.
I have to say, for a bit of a tourist trap, the Dole Plantation was super cute and very fun. They had a huge gift shop that sold every pineapple item known to man - pineapple flavored Hawaiian coffee, chocolate covered pineapples, pineapple flavored caramel popcorn, pineapple calendars, any type of hat/shirt/shorts/sweatshirt with a Dole pineapple logo on it, jewelry with silver and gold pineapple silhouettes, etc.
We bought tickets for their train tour and it was so cute. We boarded a tiny, toy-like train that played good, non-cheesy Hawaiian music and took us through the pineapple fields while giving us EVERY single piece of information you would ever want to know about pineapples. Their growth cycle, how Jim Dole moved to Hawaii in 1850 after graduating with a horticulture degree from Harvard with $1500 and bought 12 acres on the North Shore to grow pineapples, Hawaii has the absolute perfect growing conditions for pineapples and at one point the Dole plantation on the North Shore provided 75% of the worlds pineapples. They also grew a bunch of other cool fruits like rambutan, cacao, breadfruit, star fruit and lychee.
Very fun morning! Any pineapple questions, I guarantee we can answer them now!


We have a family rule to never pass by photo booths without taking a picture.

 

Fish pond with a freakish amount of koi fish. There were literally millions of koi in this pond and they looked like they were gonna sprout legs and get up and run after us if we didn't feed them.

Acres and acres of pineapple fields.

Piper looks scared here, but she really wasn't.

This was the neatest tree. Check out the multi-colored bark.

We got a Dole Whip, some "world famous" dessert at the plantation.

It was so good, but guess who didn't like it...

Yes, Piper.