This year we didn’t take our annual anniversary trip in May. Both Angie and I were in school and I was teaching during our anniversary and we could not get away without missing too much work/school. So this year, we decided to take a Summer vacation instead. Because we are celebrating our 20th anniversary, we decided to go back to our honeymoon spot. We plan to see some of the same sites we saw 20 years ago and see how two hurricanes and a tsunami have impacted the island. In addition to seeing the same sites, we will see a lot of things we missed the first time around.
Packing for a 13 day trip is not always easy. It is right on the border of the amount of time for a trip that you have to decide, do I pack light and do laundry or do I take enough clothes for the entire trip? I decided to take enough clothing for the trip. I really don’t like doing laundry when on vacation. I made a trip to REI to check out their lightweight clothing. This clothing has a triple benefit:
- Lightweight
- SPF 30+ sunblock
- Wash and wear as it dries in about 15 minutes.
I found two new shirts and a pair of hiking shorts. The packing part of the trip was the easy part. I was able to lay out all the clothes and pack in about an hour. The hardest part for me was which electronics to take. I settled on the following:
- Macbook Air with EVDO card
(for last minute reservations, photo management and blogging) - ViPhone (although it’s only for call emergencies)
- iPod Touch (primary music)
- Kindle
- Garmin Edge 305 GPS (for tracking our hiking and bike trips)
- Garmin Nuvi 660 GPS (for the rental car)
- Garmin VistaCX GPS (just in case we go geocaching)
- Cannon Xsi SLR
- Olympus (waterproof) camera
- Various headphones, cables, batteries and chargers
Yes, it does seem like a lot of electronics, but trust me, I will use each and everyone on the trip. After everything was packed, I had to weigh our one carry-on bag. The home scale claimed it was about 60 pounds so it was time to adjust some clothes between my carry-on and checked. Fortunately, my roller bag had plenty of room in it so it was not a problem.
Our shuttle drive arrived a few minutes late because of traffic. We had to use a different company as our regular driver was on vacation. He was nice but was a little overly cautious on the freeways. He never went above 55 mph. Fortunately we had plenty of time to get to the airport.
We checked in at the airport, no lines or crowds (we flew out of the commuter terminal). Going through security was quite interesting as they only had one lane open and the people there were in the process of a shift change. As I went through the body scanner, they made me turn 90 degrees and put my hand up (I expected them to say “Reach for the sky, partner”). I could only lift my right arm about the height of my shoulder because I tweaked it sleeping last night. They TSA person insisted I raise my hands higher. I looked at him and stated “I can’t, bad shoulder”. He had me go back around through the normal X-ray machine. I guess I know the secret now.
We grabbed a sandwich and drinks and waited for our flight to board. We were flying on a mini-jet so the flight to LAX was only about 25 minutes. Although we had to wait almost 30 minutes on the taxi-way because the gate had a plane in it when we arrived, and then I had to wait for my ramp check luggage. This gave me very little time to make it to the connecting flight. Fortunately, we made it with a few minutes to spare. I just hoped my luggage made the flight.
The plane we flew on was a Boeing 757-200. Not a model I have flown before. It’s 3×3 configuration and seems to have very little leg-room. It was about a 6 hour flight, although we left 10 minutes late we arrived 20 minutes early. One of the advantages of being the last person to transfer to your connecting flight was that our luggage was the 1st to come off. We received a lei greeting then picked up our luggage and took the quick 2 minute shuttle ride to the rental car agency. They had a convertible mustang waiting for us.
We drove about 2 miles to our hotel and checked in. It took longer to go from the parking lot to the hotel than from the airport 😀 We unpacked and took a walk along the beach to see what was around for dinner.
We went to JJ’s Broiler and ordered drinks and dinner. Angie had a mango martini and chicken pesto, I had a garlic ribeye and a lava-flow. We ate and watched the sun go down. After dinner we walked back along the beach to the hotel and our room.
Tags: anniversary, hawaii, kauai