June 14–travel day!

We were up early, before 5, so we could swoop through our Airbnb and do any final packing.  We had an uneventful drive to the airport and returned the rental easily.  Andrew does this weekly so his routine and point status allows him to just stop, get out, and walk off!! Sort of nice, really! 

We caught the shuttle to the airport and, since the islands are small enough, they were “expecting” us! Our names were on a list! I guess that makes sense as then they only send drivers to the airport to collect those renting from them as they need to instead of always taking loops!

It was early enough that even the airport was just opening up and not a lot of people to go through security or pass through X-rays a second time before boarding.  They do this as a second layer of protection to look for any fruits, vegetables, and plants that may be hidden in a bag.  The agriculture and economy of both Hawaii and California depend on not transporting things like diseases and such!  

We boarded our super quick flight  to Oahu (Honolulu) and then our nearly 5 hour flight to Oakland. 

We hopped into a rental—twice now with a Chevy Cruze—nice, small, and bright red! We stopped at a UPS store to mail some things home we no longer need and then arranged to meet Daniel.  We had our train tickets for Tokyo  shipped to him and we wanted to see him as well! For those that don’t know, he is our nephew that moved to the area about a year ago from Phoenix to work for Google. We ate at a Blue Line Pizza, a “zoodle” salad and Italian combo pizza, both very tasty!  The weather here is nearly always perfect—on the cool side!! Apparently though last week it hit 100!!   It always smells so lovely—eucalyptus!

We chatted and chatted and caught up and had some gelato for dessert before dropping Daniel back off at his apartment and heading to our hotel for the night.  

Here are some  random thoughts we may not have mentioned in the blog.

1) Hawaii street lights are yellow or yellow/orange!  Apparently they are a LOT more energy efficient and doesn’t have the light pollution impact of traditional and even white LED street lights.  

2) We had to stop or slow down for cows to cross the road, goats, nenes (Hawaiian geese), and yes, even chickens!!

3) It is interesting how lava is just part of everything.  Even some newer housing developments are tucked into lava fields!

4) Sea turtles are so cool!

5) Fresh pineapple is tasty! 

6) Watching waves is so very relaxing! As is standing in them! 

7) Almost if not every restaurant we ate didn’t use plastic straws; they were cardboard-like! The coffee stir sticks weren’t plastic either but wooden! 

8) We had adorable bright green lizards climbing the wall outside of our last Airbnb! 

9) I really like taking selfies—trying to capture just what you need to capture the moment. 

10) I notice the oddest things! :) most notable are grammar mistakes, and people NOT following the common courtesy of being nice and NOT following the rules, especially when it has to do with safety and our precious environment! 

11)  Our USA is so incredibly diverse!

12) The little squirrel-like lizards are mongooses (mongeese?) and they are everywhere.  Hawaii actually doesn’t have squirrels of any kind but imported mongoose to help control the rat populations!  They are really weird to watch as they really do resemble hairy lizards!! And they are now considered invasive as they not only take care of rats not also birds and birds’ eggs, which is a problem! 

I do attempt to reread, but sometimes autocorrect does me in!! Please excuse any typos or weirdly placed, out of context words!!