The Hawaii 2012 Adventure Begins

The morning started with a panic attack as the cab that I had ordered to pick me up in the ER patient parking lot at Mercy was nowhere to be found 10 minutes after it was scheduled to be there.  The driver called and asked where I was and I told him the medical center and he said dispatch gave him the wrong address – the one for the Sisters of Mercy Convent on Geyer.  I tell him I will go through the hospital to get to the front entrance to make life easier.  Dispatch calls while I am on my way to tell me that my driver is there but can’t find me.  When I reach the front entrance he is still not there.  Turns out dispatch still had no idea what they were doing.  Driver finally made it and by the time I met Ryan and the kids at the airport they had boarding passes printed and the bags checked.  Left Lambert at 730 after eating some airport food.  I was post-call so I slept with my head nodding and bobbing for ¾ of the first leg of our flight to Phoenix – roughly a 4-hour flight.  In Phoenix we grabbed some pizza, even though it was only 1045 local time, which we ate on the next flight.  The kids begged me to sit next to them so I watched a movie with Drew and then dozed off again to be intermittently woken up to change the movie or get an I-touch or break up an argument. 

 Look at that enormous backpack!

Arrive in Kona at 230 (730 our time) with some very hungry kids and a plan to drive the 2 hours to Volcano with a stop at a grocery store along the way.   The airport in Kona is like a bunch of tiki huts connected with walkways and you descend the plane right onto the ground – no jet bridge.  The kids thought this was pretty cool.

Have been having regret over planning to stay all three nights in Volcano since it is a 2 hour drive back to Kona and our original plan was to drive back to Kona on Saturday for an afternoon snorkel trip and an evening Manta Ray snorkel and then drive back to Volcano to spend the night.  While we were leaving the airport we decided to eat the $148 we are paying for the house in Volcano and booked a Marriott in Kailua-Kona and called to change our snorkel tours to Sunday.  Adding to the pain of the day is the fact that GPS had us go North on 11 instead of South so we drove all the way around the island the long way!  It turned the 2 hours trip into a 2 ½ hour trip!  We showed up to Artist’s House in Volcano Village and it is a cute little retreat.  The caretaker is a very granola dude with long grey hair pulled back in a ponytail and wearing burgundy velour sweats and flip flops.  We were with him for about 10-15 minutes and he managed to work in the word “brah” like 4 times carefully explaining that many people think it means “bro” but actually means “dude”.  He is originally from Michigan.  He showed us around a little (although we deferred the grand tour of the 3 acres and gardens) and when we told him what our plans were he acted like we were crazy for doing the tourist thing in Kona.  He has all these great little snorkel spots on the North Side by Hilo that he recommends (and they do sound really cool) but we’ve already booked our two snorkel things in Kona and they can’t be canceled. 

 Got Thai take-out for dinner and then drove to the Jagger Museum to see the glow from the new eruption at Halema’uma’u.  Amazing that this huge glowing crater was not here in 2005 when we were.  It started with an explosion on March 19, 2008.  Trevor is of course very intrigued with the whole volcano thing and I am looking forward to learning more with him tomorrow.  It is a little after 900 here.  I got the kids tucked in to bed at 845 and Ryan went to bed around the same time.

Check out that glow from the crater!