Apollo crew spent time in Hawaii after mission

Unsure of what to expect from the lunar landscape, astronauts including Neil Armstrong spent time training at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park and in the area of Mauna Kea now known as Apollo Valley.

Hawaii was also the astronauts’ home away from home when they returned from the moon.

The Apollo 11 re-entry capsule carrying Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins landed 920 miles southwest of Hawaii on July 24, 1969, and was recovered by the USS Hornet, which transported the astronauts to Hawaii for quarantine.

The astronauts, restricted to a mobile quarantine facility and biological containment suits, were feted at a July 27 ceremony at Pearl Harbor. They were then transported back to Houston for an additional three weeks of quarantine, but not before they filled out a just-for-fun customs declaration, affirming a flight from Cape Kennedy to Honolulu via the moon and dutifully declaring moon rocks, moon dust and other samples.

Carleton Rehr, a Makaha resident who applied for the Teacher in Space program, met Armstrong in 1988 at the Wings Club, a prominent aviation organization in New York City, where they shared a table at lunch.

"He was very approachable, very easy to converse with — especially after we discovered we were both soaring (glider) pilots," she recalled Saturday.