Honoring National Hawaii Day

View of the Mokulua Islands "The Mokes" at Lanakai Beach

I was looking up inspiration for my day 5 post of the Ultimate Blog Challenge and saw that today (July 5, 2025) is National Hawaii Day. It is not the official day that Hawaii became a state (that was August 21,1959). National Hawaii Day was created by National Day Calendar in 2017, to recognize Hawaii's unique heritage and achievements.

Since I was a kid, I have always had a fascination with Hawaii and Alaska and hoped to visit them one day. I have lived in NY Sate my whole life and had traveled across the country to many other states. Hawaii and Alaska felt far and exotic.

While we were experiencing lockdown in 2020, I found myself watching different travel videos and daydreaming about visiting other places (I think a lot of us were doing that back then). One day a video of Lanakai Beach caught my attention and I binged a lot of Hawaii videos. This then turned into research. If we could ever go to Hawaii one day, where would we go? What island would be a good place for us to visit first? I eventually had it all mapped out in my head. If we ever had the opportunity to go to Hawaii, the first Island we would visit would be O'ahu.

On February 24, 2025, my husband and I flew to O'ahu to celebrate our 10 year wedding anniversary. We had a simple wedding and no honeymoon when we got married. Our kids were younger at the time and funds were more limited. Now we are empty nesters and even though funds are still limited, we found a way to make it happen. It was an amazing trip!!!

I share more about our O'ahu adventure in this video here. Check it out if you want to learn more about what we did.

Some interesting facts about Hawaii:

1. Hawaii is the only U.S. state that grows coffee commercially. Kona coffee, grown on the Big Island. The volcanic soil and tropical climate create the perfect growing conditions.

   
   

2. Hawaii has its own time zone — and doesn’t do daylight savings. Hawaii Standard Time (HST) is always the same. No springing forward or falling back.

   
   

3. It’s illegal to have a snake as a pet in Hawaii. Hawaii has strict rules about bringing in non-native species. It helps preserve the islands’ rare birds and plants.

   
   

4. Hawaii is the most isolated population center on Earth. It's about 2,400 miles from California, 3,800 miles from Japan, and over 5,000 miles from Australia. Despite that, it's a vibrant melting pot of cultures and traditions.

   
   

5. All major forms of gambling are prohibited. This includes casinos, lottery, and sports betting.

   
   

6. Hawaii was once governed by a monarchy. I had no idea bout this until we started planning for our trip. You can learn more about this here and more about the history of Hawaii here.

Hawaii also has a lot of amazing food and vegan options! Here are some of my favorite places we went to in Honolulu:

Earth Aloha Eats: We ate here three times! Our hotel was a 5 minute walk to the food truck location. The food was fresh and delicious! My non-vegan husband enjoyed it too.

Tane Vegan Izakaya: This place makes vegan sushi that is delicious and presented beautifully! It's definitely a great place to celebrate a special occasion!

Holy Grail Donuts: These plant-based donuts were an experience I highly recommend trying! They are freshly made with quality ingredients. Important note: Some donuts have honey in them. You can see which ones on their donut menu.

You can see what we ate at these places in my O'ahu adventure video.

If you would like to learn how to make Hawaiian inspired recipes that are also vegan, then I highly recommend checking out the cookbook "Tasting Hawaii Vegan Style" by Lillian Cumic. I ordered this book when we returned home and it is loaded with delicious looking recipes. So far I have made the poke dressing recipe and made a delicious poke bowl using butternut squash. You can watch how I made it here in an episode I did of Cooking With The Confident Vegan.

Have you visited Hawaii before? If so, what islands and what did you enjoy most there? I would love to hear about it in the comments.