It was the Fourth of July, but for us the fireworks were over. Departure day was upon us, so youll have to pardon us if we werent in a celebratory mood. We spent most of our final morning on Maui drinking coffee, enjoying the view from my aunts deck, and packing up all of our crap. Looking back on this experience, I still cant believe we managed to do this with just 2 checked bags. Its a testament to how good Julie is at packing that we pulled that off. Of course, this just means she needs a new challenge, so now she gets to plan a western road trip with assorted baby paraphernalia.
Once we had everything packed, we had some time to kill. The rental car was due back at the airport around 4:30 p.m. or so, and then our flight didnt depart until the evening. Im not sure who the idiot is who plans that stuff, but clearly he could have done a better job there. Still, you know what they say: the best Fourth of July is the one you celebrate from within an airport terminal.
Ok, nobody says that. Because its stupid.
Anyway, we decided to drive back down to the town of Paia on the northern coast because Sarah had seen a t-shirt she liked there. Naturally, we drove into town and found that the one store that had that t-shirt was closed for the holiday. Fortunately, wandering the stores for an hour or so produced a replacement t-shirt that was deemed acceptable. This saved me from having to break into the other place, which I really hate to do without having a couple of weeks to case the joint and acquire a getaway vehicle.
There was a brick-oven pizza joint nearby with its doors open and the smell of warm, fresh-baked dough wafting out into the street. Sounded good to us! So we strolled in and were promptly informed that they were closed for the holiday. Um
ok.
Moving along, we drove up the mountain and into the town of Makawao, with no real plan other than to browse and find a spot for lunch. As we were looking at menus, a passer-by pointed us down the road to
Pollis Mexican Restaurant and said it was a good spot. Since you can always trust strangers to do things for you with the best of intentions, we decided that was the place for us. I will admit to being swayed by the slogan posted over the door.
Wed rate the food here as a solid B+. I cant remember what everybody ordered, but I seem to recall Julie getting fajitas or an enchilada while I got a BBQ pulled-pork sandwich.
Afterwards, we wandered the town a bit more and found ourselves in a glass blowers studio, which is always a fascinating diversion. We hung out and watched the guy for a few minutes, admiring the collection of art we couldnt possibly afford or transport safely back to the mainland.
From there, we moseyed back on up to my aunts house. We walked down the street to see my cousins house and gardensshed been spending a lot of time trying to re-claim the yard, and we could see the fruit of all that blood, sweat and tears. After spending some time shooting the breeze with her, she asked us to help carry some fireworks back up the hill to my aunts house for their celebration later. David seemed happy to help out.
and then Scotty happened.
In retrospect, its probably a good thing we were leaving.
The final order of business was family pictures on the deck. We took the opportunity to don our latest in Hawaiian fashion. Sarah and Scotty opted for t-shirts (Scottys shows off the state fish, or humuhumunukunukuapuaa), Julie is wearing a dress she found on Kauai, and Dave and I went for the standard obnoxious Hawaiian shirts. We took turns posing with my cousin and aunt on the familiar deck overlooking the west side of Maui.
And then it was time to go. We returned the rental car at the airport and then made our way to our gate. The whole place was practically deserted, so we had to work to kill time. How do you kill hours in an airport? Well, for big-time family fun, its hard to top the moving walkway.
Or you could make a pit stop.
Pick up a onesie for future Baby Drew:
Or even bypass the expensive airport Burger King for a pineapple hot dog at the faux hot dog truck:
Eventually, the gate filled up as we got closer to our flight. This is where it got interesting. Id checked in the night before and received our seat assignments. Once again, the United standard practice seemed to be to ignore any seat requests youd made on your reservation and just randomly throw your family somewhere on the plane. In this case, we had 4 of us sitting in a group, and then David was assigned a seat by himself several rows behind us. Obviously, that wasnt going to work. But I had to wait for a gate agent to show up before I could do anything about it. By the time the gate agent got there, it was only 30 minutes before the flight and there were at least 30 other people waiting to do the same thing. The poor agent took everyones name and seat assignments and then asked us to step back and give her a minute while she played Tetris.
Eventually she called my name and said she could put us in a row of 3 and then a row of 2 a few rows back. Fine, well take it. But cmon, United, theres got to be a better system than putting all of this stress on a gate agent. I recommend doing something radical, like allowing my seat selections to actually mean something when I make the reservation.
Anyway, that evening we were wheels-up and flying away from Maui once and for all. Id hoped we might be able to see some 4th of July fireworks from the plane, but
well, you know all about my luck with aerial views on this trip. We settled in for the 5-hour redeye flight to L.A.
Im a light sleeper, and I dont do well sleeping in cars or on planes. I like to be lying down in darkness and silence when I sleep. My wife, on the other hand, has a gift: she can sleep anywhere, anytime. She sleeps in planes, in the passenger seat of our van on road trips, even on the couch with the TV sound blasting. Julie has not seen the last hour of any movie weve rented since 2005.
Anyway, I knew Id be in for a long night. It was an older plane, so they didnt have the fancy TVs at your seat where you can choose from dozens of movies. Instead, they had drop-down screens from the ceiling showing exactly one movie: a laugh-free comedy called The Incredible Burt Wonderstone. It was terrible, in case you were wondering. All in all, Id say I got about an hour of sleep on the flight.
The kids? Roughly the same.
We had about an hour-and-a-half layover at LAX, which was enough time to get an overpriced breakfast at the airport. Then it was onto another plane, and another 5-hour flight back to Dulles. This one had the cool movie screens at each seat, so everyone was pretty happy to play with that for the duration.
I have to say, Im pretty proud of the way the kids held up. We knew the flights both to and from Hawaii would be brutal on their body clocks (not to mention ours), but they really handled it like champs on both ends. Traveling east always feels a lot harder than traveling west as far as jet lag goes. But the kids did great, handling the lack of sleep and long flights with a minimum of whining or fighting. It wasnt until we were about 10 minutes down the road from Dulles that we looked back and saw this:
Rest up, kids. It wont be long before were ready for the next adventure.
Coming Up Next: Final thoughts on Hawaii and the plans for that next adventure thing we were just talking about.
