Hawaii Day 1 – Boston to Kauai!

June 11, 2021 – Today was a big travel day. Yesterday Teryn graduated 8th grade and we were all up late celebrating and of course some last minute packing.

Sleep was attempted by all and perhaps accomplished by some, but in limited amounts.

Kevin and Jenney were up by 2:15 am, and we all hit the road for Boston around 3:30 am. Our friend Jason was a rock star and he drove us to the airport in Boston so we didn’t have to deal with parking. We arrived in record time (which is often typical of Jason’s driving 🙂 During the trip down, everyone tried to grab some additional sleep in the van.

Once at Boston’s ‘Logan’ airport we saw signs everywhere encouraging us and Logan, to keep moving forward!

Check in and security were both fast and efficient but things are still a little strange in the airport because of COVID. Even though we have all been vaccinated masking is still required and there were a few hoops we needed to jump through to satisfy Hawaii’s Safe Travel regulations. We tried to travel light… but we did check two large bags each weighting close to 50 lbs. In addition, we each carried our day packs and a personal item (a small or smaller backpack).

The flight from Boston to Honolulu was long, just over 10 hours! But the Hawaiian Airlines crew was great and the seats were comfortable and we appreciated a good deal of food and snacks on the flight. Our seats also had small TV’s that provided opportunities for entertainment – we all tended to switch between sleeping, eating, watching movies/shows.

We arrived in Honolulu around 1:45 pm local time… this would be 7:45 pm Vermont time… and did we mention we have been up since 2:15 am? But it was exciting to feel the warm Hawaii air and to begin to see the cool vegetation in the airport gardens.

Although we had some time to wait before our flight to Kauai (a 3-4 hour layover) we didn’t think we had enough time to leave the airport, especially with some of the tricky COVID requirement around travel – so we settled in to wait for boarding.

The flight to Kauai was one of the shortest flights we have even been on. The plane took off, climbing into the air and cruised for a few minutes before heading back down to the land, about 30 mins. We were afforded some amazing views as we rose above the clouds and then descended again to Kauai.

After landing in Kauai we got slightly delayed leaving the airport due to some confusion related to the Hawaii Safe Travel portal system and the fact that we had two flights and only upload test results to one of the flights – the portal was a bit unclear about this step. However, the members of Hawaii’s National Guard supporting this process were friendly and eventually got everything sorted out for us so we didn’t have to quarantine for 10 days!

Once safely cleared at the airport we picked up our transportation for the week – a silver Jeep Wrangler and started the 40 min drive to our rental home. At this point everyone was tired and a little hungry. So we pulled out or short list must visit eateries/restaurants and decided to check one off the list. We stopped at Hamura Saimin – “Opened in 1952, the Kauai landmark housed in a converted Army barracks painted a distinct periwinkle has been serving what many say is the best saimin in the Islands. Saimin, for the uninitiated, is a local-style soup dish that uses curly egg noodles, as opposed to the flat noodles in ramen, in a hot broth garnished with fish cake, green onions and char siu (sweet roasted pork). Its origin traces back to the plantation era, when immigrant workers cooked these noodles with whatever they had on hand. It’s been a popular Hawaii comfort food ever since.” (source – https://www.hawaiimagazine.com/kauais-classic-hamura-saimin-stand-is-noodle-nirvana/ )

Although it was around 8 pm, Hamura Saimin was very busy, mostly with locals. We order one regular saimin meat dish for Logan and Kevin to share and one vegetarian dish for Teryn and Jenney. We also ordered a full Lilikoi Chiffon Pie.

With food acquired we headed to our rental home in Kekaha, the drive felt like the longest leg of the trip yet, and since it was dark we couldn’t even see what the island looked like in this area. We had been traveling for about 24 hours at this point. We arrived after 9 pm, unloaded the Jeep, dumped all our travel snacks on the counter, and retired for some much needed sleep by 10 pm.