The Great Hawaii Adventure 2006

Hello again everyone,




I promised to get the ball rolling pretty quickly so I thought I’d start with my first real vacation, meaning the first BIG Travel Vacation. I’d done the trips home for years but as I mentioned in the first post, I really didn’t “travel”.



Even back in 2006 when I took this vacation I referred to it as “The Great Hawaiian Adventure.”



Hawaii was picked as the first destination because my mom once said that if she was rich she would take “us girls” to Hawaii. So I called my sister and mother and said …Want to go to Hawaii? When they came to visit me we opened the timeshare book and looked at the various locations, they all looked so beautiful . I couldn’t choose. My mom didn’t want to make the choice either so I told my sister to just pick a resort and that’s where we’d go.



She thought that Sea Mountain on the Big Island of Hawaii was the prettiest so I booked a week and the planning got underway.



We traveled in October 2006 from Albany New York to Chicago-O’Hare and then on to Honolulu but from there we still had to get to the Big Island so changed planes and flew from Honolulu to Hilo. American Airlines all the way.



At the car rental counter we were told that we still had a 60 mile drive to get to the condo. They also told us everything in that area closes by 7pm. They suggested that if we needed any supplies that we get them in Hilo. We agreed and asked where was the best place to shop. That’s how the first place we visited on the Big Island was (drum roll please) WALMART! We soon learned that Hawaiians love Walmart!



So fully provisioned and armed with maps and directions we started on our way. By this time it was going on 8pm Hawaiian time. We had left Albany at 5:55am Eastern time. Needless to say, we were getting a bit tired and still had an hour drive. Plus in October it was starting to get dark.



Not too far out of Hilo it began to rain and got really foggy. I was doing the driving and kept asking my sister which mile marker we had just passed. Anything to give some idea how much farther we had to go in this dense fog. Eventually we saw the turn to Punalu’u. From there we were at the Timeshare in just a matter of minutes.



Since we got there so late the office was closed but I had instructions to call a number on a phone by the office. Kind of James Bond-ish because the call gave me a number to open a lock box. Once I opened the box I found a key and a map. We followed the map to our condo and the key fit...Hooray!



We were all so tired we didn’t pay much attention to anything except getting to bed. During the night I thought a storm came through but once morning came we discovered that what I had heard in my “half-sleep” state was the ocean! We had a wonderful condo not far from the ocean at all. What I heard and mistook for rain were the waves breaking on the shore.



We also found out ,when I went to the office to complete the registration that morning, that the fog and rain we drove through was Volcanic Vog. We were driving around the base of Kilauea, the most active Volcano in the world. We were told that the volcano makes it’s own weather!



All checked in, we headed out to explore our surroundings. But I’ll save that for my next posting.