The travelogues have returned! I have plans for at least two more personal vacations within the next year and two school related field trips in the upcoming school year as well. That being said, all of this travel depends on how the pandemic changes and how various governments plan to respond to the Delta variant. These travelogues as well as all of the future ones will also include comments on how the pandemic has influenced travel.
So, let’s start with Hawaii, this year’s spring break trip.
Months ago, I knew I wanted to do something for Spring Break that involved getting out of my house. I had just recovered from Covid, a time period when I had to stay within the four walls of my house, isolated from others. That’s enough for anyone, including someone like myself, usually completely content to stay at home, to become restless.
One Saturday night as I drifted off to sleep, the idea of Hawaii slipped into my mind. I could travel far away and experience something new within the pandemic-induced travel restrictions. That next morning as soon as I woke up, I hopped on the computer to start planning the trip. I also texted Mom to see if shew anted to go with me. Obviously, I caught her completely off-guard. She checked with Ellis and then checked her calendar before saying yes and then getting really excited with me about this trip.
The title alludes to planning for this trip. With only a couple weeks, literally, before Spring Break, I did not spend nearly as much time planning out this trip as I have on others. This trip, along with the New York turned Washington DC trip, has shown me that I don’t need to spend excessive amounts of time planing a trip to have a wonderful experience on said trip.
Leading up to this trip, I had to plan a handful fo things such as which island we would stay on. I ended up picking the Big Island of Hawaii for access to Volcanos National Park, the only site I put on my must see list. At the conclusion of the trip, I know that I made the right decision. On that first day of planning I booked the flights and reserved our airbnb before spending a lot of time reading up on the Covid travel protocols to figure out what we needed to do prior to departure.
All travelers from the mainland had to create an account on a platform managed by the state government. On this account we needed to log the exact details fo the trip including flight data and location where you would stay. You also needed to upload a negative Covid test result from a test taken within 72 hours of the flight leaving the continent. Since our flight had two legs, we needed to use the departure time of our flight out of LAX> Everything fell into place quickly and easily save for this test which we had no choice but to wait to take. I had a little bit of nervousness regarding this test since I read that some people record ed false positives when taking a PCR test within 90 days or so of recovering from the virus. I knew I did not have the virus and I had received the first dose of the vaccine. Still, because that possibility existed, I scheduled an e-visit with my doctor so I could get an official note from her which I then uploaded to the aforementioned account.
After that first day of planning, I set aside trip planning until I remembered that Pearl Harbor is in Hawaii. Big “naw duh” moment. I remember that as I taught WWII to my 6th graders. Obviously, I had to work that into the trip. How could I, a self-proclaimed history nerd, go all the way to Hawaii and not visit Pearl Harbor?
Since I chose to stay on the Big Island, that meant that I needed to arrange an interisland flight to Oahu. Initially, I contemplated arranging this on my own but the more I investigated, the more I realized that booking a guided tour would be the better option. I booked a day trip from the Big Island which included round trip flights from the Big Island to Oahu and back, entry to the National Memorial and a rental car so we could explore on our own. When I called later to confirm, I learned that the rental car shortage meant that we would need to take the guided small group tour instead. We also needed to take yet another Covid test so that we could re-enter the Big Island. I wondered a bit at that but later learned that the only island in the archipelago that has hospitals capable of performing surgeries is Oahu with the capital city of Honolulu. The outlying islands have small hospitals or clinics with limited numbers of ICU beds. We ended up surpassing the hurdle of an additional test by using our sizable layover in LAX to visit the onsite testing available outside security.
As the days approached, both Mom and I became even more excited. We went together Saturday morning before our Monday flight to CVS to get our tests. Both of us got increasingly nervous and excited when the results came back negative. We knew that the chances of positive tests for either of us was minuscule but still, we felt such excited relief when we opened our results.
That brings us to Sunday afternoon after opening our results. We packed and then got a ride with Timothy to the Charlotte airport first thing Monday morning.
Unlike the trip that came a few months later, we had no travel issues whatsoever on either of our flights, even with having to go through security twice, once in Charlotte and once in LAX after we got our second Covid test.
The long day ended after waiting in line at the most unique airport I have ever passed through – completely outdoors – to get a third test, a rapid test administered upon arrival. We also needed to pick up our rental car, a convertible.
Stay tuned for the next installment of the travelogues, the one with the volcanoes.