Ai yi yi! It's been a while.We've been home from Hawaii for a few weeks but it seems like we haven't really been home. Here a few days, gone for a few, here, then gone. Mom is ready to settle back in at home for a bit, Dad wouldn't mind still enjoying some time away, and I don't know where I stand yet. How about I review our vacation to Hawaii for you? It might take me a few posts, but I'll try to share with you all the nitty-gritty details.
Before I talk about Hawaii, I guess I should touch on our drive down to California and our flight over. Before leaving, we had a quick geography lesson explaining where Hawaii was located compared to where we were. Don't look too hard at our appearance since we had just woken up and hadn't gotten ready for the day!
We headed out on the road late Monday morning and drove all the way to Northern California, stopped and slept a few hours at a Motel 6, then jumped back on the road and drove to Travis AFB. We managed to snag ourselves the last room left in the huge lodging facility, bedded down for an afternoon nap, then went for a tour of the Jelly Belly Factory.
As you can see we were saps and bought the jelly bean shaped pizza and the jelly bean shaped burger. The pizza was worth it, the burger not so much. After a good night sleep, we headed to the airport bright and early Wednesday morning. It's a good thing we got there early too, because Dad didn't realize that you couldn't fly on a military plane with open toe/open heel shoes and all he brought were sandals. Since we had already parked our car in long term parking he ended up jogging over to the BX, waiting for them to open up, buying the cheapest pair of shoes he could find, and then high-tailing it back to the terminal to be ready for roll call. They are beauties, aren't they? I believe he pretty much sat in one seat the entire time waiting for roll call because he felt too conspicuous in his black leather high-tops to walk around.
We actually made it on the first flight we tried for so that was a huge relief. Some retirees had been waiting for 7 and 8 days to catch a flight out so we were excited to have made it on the first available since arriving at Travis.
The photo above has to be one of the best from this set of the trip! $0.00 to fly to Hawaii! The only downfall was that our plane was delayed in getting to Travis. Then after sitting in the terminal for a few hours we were finally taken to our gate where we sat and waited a bit longer. We were bussed out to the plane on the tarmac, told to wait because they were having problems with the nitrogen levels and the aft door (common on C5's), bussed back to the gate to wait for another hour, then finally bussed back out to the plane and allowed to board. Our plane ended up leaving at about 4:30pm instead of 10:00am like we originally thought, but it left and we were on it!
I watched a movie and a half on Dad's ipod then finally racked out for the rest of the flight. We arrived in Hawaii about 9:30pm Hawaii time and then proceeded to call Grandma and wake her up with a 12:45am phone call. Oops!
Until next time . . .
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