Hawaii Adventure - Day 2 (Flight & Arrival) - 18 August 2012

5:30-7:30 am – Showers, breakfast and prep for the day.

7:40 am – We took the hotel shuttle to the airport.  It was so nice to get dropped off right at the curb-side check-in for Delta.  The shuttle driver got a good tip for helping us with all our bags.  The sky caps took care of everything and I gave him a good tip too.  Because we have first class tickets, our luggage has priority.  We also have three free bags and special lines for security check-in.

8:30 am – We went through security without a problem and arrived at our gate.  The airport was as busy as usual, but we only had to go one stop on the airport tram to the A Concourse.  We started boarding about 9:20 and were among the first to get on.  The first class tickets already feel like they are worth their price.  First class seats have a lot of room under the seats and up above in the luggage compartments.  So, we were able to have room for our legs too.

9:50 am – The flight was on time.  Once we got in the air, the ride was a little bumpy for the first hour or so.  Still, the flight attendants got our meals going quickly so we were able to eat before they had to sit for some rough spots.  We had a chicken, feta cheese, olive pizza with a salad and a yummy peanut butter brownie from ‘Running Deer Bakery’ in Boston.  It really was tasty for airline food.




12:00 (Eastern) – I decided to watch The Avengers movie on the little individual screens on the seat backs.  I started falling asleep during the first part of the movie—not a lot of action there.  So, I paused it and took a short nap.  I resumed it after about 20 minutes. It was a fun movie and easy to watch (and hear) with the noise canceling headphones that we have.  Fawn did not watch a movie, but put her phones on and loved them too.  They take away almost all of the plane noise.  The flight attendants took good care of us as usual.  We got one of those hot towels just before the meal and before landing in LA.

11:18 (Pacific) – We landed and taxied into Terminal 5—the Delta terminal.  That means we will leave again from the same terminal at 2:23 this afternoon.  That’s a very good thing in LAX.  It’s not always easy to go from one terminal to the next. While we waited, we got Haggen Daas ice cream as a snack.  We had built in enough time for delays and other incidents, but nothing like that happened. 

Fawn (with her fancy black & white bag) waiting in LAX

2:30 pm (Pacific) – We took off right on time and left the mainland and all indications of where we are in the air—just clouds and ocean for 5 hours.  I read a book and watched “Back to the Future” on my iPad.  Fawn read a book on her iPad.  We used our noise canceling headphones again, but after a couple of hours, they make our head sore around our ears.  So, we didn’t keep them on all the time.  The last hour was pretty boring, so we started looking at family photos on my iPad.  We saw all the grandchildren when they were small, some photos from Ben & Alice’s wedding, photos of our Thanksgiving get together a few years back and more.  It was a fun and we finished just in time to hear the announcement that we would be landing soon.

5 pm (Hawaii) – We arrived without incident, flying over some impressive lava fields right before we landed.  (Later, we took some photos of the area around the airport because it was such a surreal experience coming in over such desolation.  That is not the first thing that came to our mind as we thought about Hawaii.)

Kona Airport

Aiport Lava Fields

Almost all the terminals and waiting areas in the airport are outside.  Here is a photo of the area just inside our gate:

6 pm – All of our luggage arrived—hooray! We put it on a cart and got the shuttle to National Car rental place.  That part of our arrival was a bit stressful, but the shuttle took us to get our car—a Ford Explorer—petty quickly.  We were fortunate that we got there at that time, or we would have had a smaller car without room for our luggage.  Plus we wanted the bigger car just in case we go on some rougher roads.  We set up Lisa (our navigation system) and travelled to the Kona Coast Resort.  It was about a 20 minute ride from the airport.  We passed several shopping centers along the way, including a Wal-Mart.