We left on Friday morning in the middle of a good old winter snowstorm. We LOVE leaving when we’re in the middle of winter weather event. It makes the going away that much better (LOL)! One time when we left in a snow storm the door on the airplane froze OPEN while boarding passengers. Our departure was then delayed until they could thaw the door (LOL). NOT a very pleasant feeling.

This time they closed the airport due to the amount of snow that had fallen. We were delayed an hour while they plowed the runway. They had to deice the plane a few times which was fine with me. I kept praying the whole time that they deiced it enough! We were an hour late departing, but we had plenty of time to spare since we had a 3 hour layover in SLC.

We arrived in Honolulu with 2 hours to spare before our next flight from Oahu to Kauai on Island Air. Have you ever heard anyone said anything about “Hawaii time.” We’ve heard a similiar expression when we were in the FL Keys… everything happens at one speed – SLOW! And, boy are they slow here and quite relaxed and casual about things as well.

When we arrived in Honolulu there is quite a maze of buildings to meander through to get to the Island Air terminal including a ride on the Wiki Wiki!! That sounds a lot more exciting than taking a ride on the bus or trolley. When we arrived at the Island Air area there was a sign there that said an agent would be coming around to take us to the boarding area. It said to wait there unless you had less than a 1/2 hour until your departure flight inwhich case you should leave the secure area, go out to the ticketing area, and go back through security. At 45 minutes to spare, we started to get a little worried and were just getting ready to walk out of the secure area when the agent came along. I should back up and say the reason we were getting worried was because we didn’t actually have any boarding passes for this flight.

The agent took us to the area, said there wasn’t any problem that we didn’t have boarding passes, and that our flight would leave but probably not “for awhile.” EVERY SINGLE flight out to another island had the word DELAYED beside it (LOL). We quickly found out that no one gets too excited about anything and time doesn’t really mean anything either (LOL). So.. the kids did what any kids would do – see picture below (LOL).

We were prepared with iPods, laptop, and game boys. Eventually, our flight took off. It was a little puddle jumper plane and we’ve now rethought our plan to hop to any other islands while we’re here (LOL). For one thing, we don’t really want to take the time especially if you might end up sitting around an airport for a couple of hours just waiting for the flight. We’d rather be sitting on the beach somewhere. I think we’re going to just stay on Kauai and plan another trip back some other time and go to another island. Anyway… the little puddle jumper plane was REALLY ROUGH!

We’re here and since this is a much more relaxed vacation than we normally take I’m going to try to blog for the next couple weeks. Perhaps I’ll get back into the routine enough to continue even when we get back home.

Speaking of puddle jumper planes. I don’t know why anyone in their right mind would want to jump out of a perfectly good airplane, but that’s what Amanda will be doing tomorrow morning! You may want to say a few prayers for her (and us – I think it’ll be a bit scary to be on the ground watching!) I’ll post pics tomorrow.