It has been a long wait to get back to Hawaii because of the pandemic. Our last trip was in January 2020 just before the pandemic was declared. We stayed on Kauai for a month and couldn't wait to come back. We booked a condo for 2021 but ended up cancelling our Big Island trip due to the pandemic and the extreme travel restrictions on Hawaii at the time.
We have been to Hawaii many times over the years and were property owners for 30 years before selling our vacant lot back in 2003. In our early trips, we usually island hopped taking in three islands on each trip. It is extremely easy to move from one island to another because the flights are short, frequent, and inexpensive until recently. Our more recent trips have focused on one island and now that we are retired, we can stay for as long as we want. In our case, that has been a month.
We love all the islands, but the Big Island is probably our favorite. We like the small town feel of the cities, the diversity of the geography and climate, the smaller numbers of tourists compared to other islands, and the laid back personality of the island. It just feels more like genuine Hawaii than the other islands.
So, the subject of this post and a number of others to follow will be our trip to the Big Island that covers January 4th through February 3rd, 2023. We stayed at condos in two locations on the west side of the island. For the first two weeks, we were joined in the visit by two other family members on their first trip to the Big Island. After their return, we moved to a smaller condo. The first condo was on the northwestern coast of the island at Waikoloa Village Resort. The second condo was in south Kona and was just feet from the beach.
Our first day was primarily travel. We started the day around 4:00 am with a pickup time of 5:00 am for our limo service. It is an hour drive from our home to the KC airport. We boarded our Delta flight in Kansas City just before the 8:00 am departure to Seattle. It is about 3 1/2 hours to Seattle. We had a 5 hour layover before taking off to Kona on a 5 hour flight.
It was dark when we arrived and we were exhausted. The Budget rental office wasn't too busy so they quickly got us into our car which turned out to be a real junker. It was a 30 minute drive up the cost to the resort. It was hell finding our condo in the dark on the resort. We walked through the door at 10:00 pm. This was 3:00 am KC time so it was nearly a 24 hour day for us. We weren't enjoying Hawaii yet.
The first post is of some of the beautifully scenery from the window of the plane as we passed over the Washington State Cascade Mountain Range before landing in Seattle. Following post will be on days where we had photos of our adventure.
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The next post will be the first morning in the resort condo.
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