The Big Island - Travel day 1

May 26th 202 - I've been looking forward to this Hawaii trip for a while now and all of a sudden it's here!  I'm so excited.  We're doing this trip for the Hawaii (honu) 70.3 Triathlon and are going to extend a little before and a little after to make it a nice vacation.  Since my memory is terrible and I like to remember what we did on the vacation and where we ate I plan to blog about each day. So here goes...

I'm calling this travel day 1 since a lot of it is in a plane.  Our plan left Ontario at 6:30 AM which is crazy early for me.  So that meant we had to be leaving the house by 5 AM to make sure we got there.  Thank goodness my mom is staying with us to watch the dogs and agreed to drive us to the airport.  That makes it much easier than finding parking and hauling our luggage through the parking lot.  So I got up with time to eat and get all situated before we rolled out at 5 after 5.  The airport was pretty darn busy for a Saturday morning but I guess since it was Memorial Day weekend that would explain it.  It really didn't take us that long to get through the security line even though it looked REALLY long.  Flight 1 from Ontario to Seattle is a blur.  I pretty much slept the whole way which is good.  The guy next to me (I was in the middle) tried to converse a couple times but I'm terrible at airplane small talk.  Truth is I'd really rather not talk to anyone during the flight.  Once we got to Seattle we pretty much walked straight to our next flight where it was boarding.  So I quickly grabbed 2 coffee's and a sandwich for us from Starbucks before we got on.  This flight was I believe 5.5 hours so totally boring!  I ate (too much) and slept and read and listened to my iPod.

Landing in Hawaii is always pretty cool because it just looks so pretty.  The water on our descent was gorgeous and really really blue.  This is the first time we've been to the Big Island so I was trying to take it all in.  Now I know why they call it the Big Island... it really is huge from the air compared to the others.

Once we got off the plane I could immediately feel the heat from the sun.  Our rental car was upgraded to a pickup (with a big cab) because we had to wait a while at the counter so they hooked us up.  So we loaded up and got on the road to head to Volcano Village on the other side of the island from the airport.  We stopped at a fruit stand on the way to get smoothies and a little treat for the road.  YUM.  The smoothies were all real fruit and yummy!  We stopped at a black sand beach to check it out on the way also and got to see some turtles resting on the beach.  <<>>

It was windy out and I do not have care free windy beach hair.  This is what I looked like <<>> not your sexy beach babe :)

Total driving time is probably about 3-3.5 hours to get from the airport to Volcano Village.  So by the time we got there I was tired.  We checked in and relaxed before heading to dinner at the Kiluea Lodge and Restaurant.  The chef is German and so a lot of the dishes have German influence.  I got the Hossenpheffer and Dave got meat loaf.  Both were really good.  Of course we split dessert - bread pudding.  I also got a lilikoi margarita.  YUM.

bed time