Hawaii Day 1 - Bumped in D.C.

I was invited to speak to BYU-Hawaii's travel and tourism students and we decided the whole family should head to Hawaii. It was an AMAZING trip. We enjoyed being together and Hawaii was breathtaking.

My sweet friend Yasmin Baltzegar took us to the airport at 4:30 in the morning! It is so wonderful to have friends that are basically family. The kids are used to going with the flow and they entertained themselves playing cards.

It started out smoothly as we made our flight to Chicago without any trouble.

Jalen was surprised to learn that many of his classmates had never been on a plane so he asked me to take pictures from the sky for them.

Chicago

Once we got to Chicago, things went south. This wonky sign from Delta was kind of symbolic, although it was American that messed everything up.

Our flight to Hawaii had been wide open, but American cancelled a flight and put passengers on United and we got bumped. We then tried to go through LA, but got bumped several times. After 14 hours, we knew we wouldn't make it to Hawaii that day and we needed an alternate plan.

As always, the kids were great sports about it.

Not gonna lie, I was kind of glad we didn't end up on this plane. I've never seen one look as banged up as this one.

I looked at our options and decided our best bet was to fly to Washington, D.C. and then fly to Honolulu the next day. It was kind of a scary move because there was only one flight out of DC and several out of LA, but it seemed like the best option.

We flew into Washington National airport and would need to fly out of Dulles the next morning.

So essentially, our luggage flew CAE-ORD-HNL while we flew CAE-ORD-DCA. So ironic that we ended up close to where we started.

It was semi-late when we got to DC. There was a fox at the airport!

We booked a room at the Residence Inn. Everyone else fell asleep while I went to work updating our Hawaii COVID paperwork so we wouldn't have trouble the next day.

The next morning, we needed to get from DCA to IAD. It would require us taking a shuttle, a subway, and a bus. And we needed to do it all in time to clear security and make our flight. We were a little nervous about it.

The subways in DC are pretty cool.

The shuttle and metro went smoothly, but when we got ready to board the bus, we found out that the passes we bought didn't have enough money on them to also get on the bus. We had been misadvised by the lady that helped us at the subway station.

I got ready to pay our $24 fare with $40, but the driver was really nice and said for me to just pay $20 so I wouldn't waste money. Then the meter wouldn't work so she said it was our lucky day and let us ride for free! Wahoo!

We got through security and got to our gate shortly before boarding. The flight was so open that we already had seat assignments! We weren't in first class, but we were all together. I was relieved to see that had we kept trying for Los Angeles, we would have missed our flights so we had made the right choice.

It was the longest flight the kids had ever been on - almost 11 hours! They were excited to see all the movies they could watch. Because of COVID, the FAA requires masks in all airports and on all flights. 

We were so happy to finally make it to Hawaii! We were greeted by this rooster, which reminded us of Cocky, the USC mascot back home. We soon learned that there are roosters and chickens all over the island of Oahu.

Jeff Christensen - my friend and the professor at BYU-H that invited me to speak - and his son Jonah picked us up at the airport. From the beginning, we were blown away by the beauty of Oahu. It's essentially a giant volcanic crater - high lava rock mountains covered in green vegetation and surrounded by the ocean. 

That evening we saw the Laie temple. Jeff's family lives within walking distance. It is so pretty.

Jeff then drove us around temple. It was a little surreal to see a flyer for my presentation 

It was a great first day in Hawai'i.