The Vacation Begins

So here I am. Eagerly anticipating the arrival of the still, mystery aircraft that I'll be travelling on. The least 3 planes I saw got progressively smaller... first a 50 seat...then 40, then 20. I'm getting scared. I don't want to fly to maui on a paper airplane. It's currently 8:15, so I still have about an hour or so before the plane starts boarding. The flight check-in was interesting. I'm so accustomed to being asked the normal barrage of questions regarding my baggage..then they take my checked baggage and I proceed to the security screening checkpoint. This time however was a bit different. First, they never asked me a single question except: "can you sign here please" (regarding my credit card transaction for my checked bag". THEN she said: "ok, now take this bag with you to security and they'll take it from there. Another first. I've never had to carry my own checked bag before. There were two lines... the first one, you just hand your bag over and then you head to the other line and go through normal procedures. The best part was that these were the most courteous TSA employees i've ever met. They smile, they say please and thank you. When I passed through the metal detector, the guy said "thank you so much, have a wonderful trip"... MIND BLOWN! Aside from the absence of any sort of food or beverage in this tiny little terminal, my airport experience here has by far been the best I've ever had.

I'm so excited to finally get to Maui. My rental car is reserved (a chevy aveo, or similar vehicle) and my Hotel is confirmed. 4 nights at the Maui Seaside Hotel in Kahului. On my agenda for this trip is a fantastic 8-line ZipLine tour in Lahaina and I'll be spending a couple of days exploring the Haleakala Crater and surrounding areas. Eventually I hope to make a complete exploration all the way around the island. There's just so much to see and not enough time to see and do it all. I'm possibly going to go check out the Sugar Cane Train, a steam engine train that has a 6 mile route. It takes around 70 minutes round trip, so I figure it'll be something fun to do. I still have a bunch of research to do on fine dining and tourist attractions. But of course, anybody who knows me knows that I hate being looked at as a tourist, so i'll try to blend in as much as possible.

Rain is forecast for today and a bit tomorrow, but I'm hoping that tomorrow can start my exploration of the crater. up at the summit the weather is bound to be different. They warn that it is much colder up there, which is why i brought jeans and a hoodie. There's ever rumor of snow, so we'll see. I'd love to see snow, just so I can tell people that I built a true snowman in Hawai'i.

For the moment, I'm gonna call it a day on this blog. I'm at about 40% battery remaining and I want to save a bit for later. I'll try to keep up the blog on all my vacation destinations. :-)

Wish me safe travels everyone!!! :-)

Stephen