We left Denver sometime around noon and arrived in Hawaii sometime that evening local time. While at the Denver airport, we saw several members of Wendy’s family that was there to fly back home. It was a surprise to see them.
The flight had two stops. One in Salt Lake and the other in Portland. A friend of mine who worked for the Boy Scouts in Hawaii once told me that it was worth it to spend the extra money on 1st Class when you fly to Hawaii from the main land. Wendy made sure to book 1st Class. Let me tell you, it was much nicer, especially for my long legs for the amount of time I was sitting in that chair. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a power supply for me to plug my laptop into. I had hoped to play games, but not to be.
When we arrived in Honolulu, it was warm and humid. Humidity isn’t something we had experienced in a while, but we had lived with it growing up, Wendy from San Antonio, TX and me from Jackson, MS. The Enterprise folks gave us a black Dodge Charger. It was an OK car, but it sure wasn’t as fast as I thought it would be.
Wendy had directions to get us to our place to stay. All of the cabins we found were on vrbo.com. We didn’t want to stay in hotels. We wanted to get away from people. The cabin was on the NE side of Oahu near the town of Hau’ula.
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Apparently, there was some bad weather in the region causing high winds. One of the first things I noticed about where we were staying was how windy it was. Part of it is that we were on the windward side of the island. We weren’t aware of the difference, but thankful that we were on the side of the island where the wind blows in off the sea. It made for pleasant temperatures with the nice breeze. The cabin we stayed at opened up right onto the ocean.
It was a nice way to wake up in the morning, just walk out onto the beach. The breeze kept the cabin comfortable most of the time. There was a small window unit a/c in the bedroom that we turned on at night.
We went to a grocery store the first night and bought food for us to eat in the cabin. Mainly stuff for breakfast.
Our first day, we drove up the coast of the North Shore stopping along the way at beaches. We stopped at a Giovanni’s Shrimp Shack. The woman at the Enterprise rental center recommended it to us. I’m not normally a fan of shrimp, but Hawaii has changed my opinion of it. (Coconut battered shrimp got elevated to a new place in my favorite foods). The food here was really good. It was run out of a truck with some tents set up to eat under, but it was really good.
After lunch, we continued driving up the coast. Along the way, there was a fire engine coming the other way with lights on driving really slow. They were announcing over the PA that there was a tsunami watch in effect. There was a large earthquake that had happened near American Samoa. A tsunami had hit America Samoa and there was a chance that one would also hit Oahu. Somewhere along the way we saw a fire station that I’m sure is the dream assignment. It is literally, on the beach. It has two bay doors that open up onto the beach.