Trip Journal entry for Sunday, February 15th.

Travelling to Maui from Chicago is always an all-day, long, and draining event.

This year was no exception.

The Flights

Normally, we take a direct flight straight to Maui in the thought of getting there as soon as possible. Yet, those long 9 1/2 hour flights aren’t always so fun, so this year we decided add a connection along the way to break things up. It seemed like a good idea. The flight we ended up booking had an 1 1/2 hour stay in San Francisco between flights, so we were hoping to just grab something to eat, walk around and stretch our legs.  Oops.

We arrived at O’Hare in plenty of time, and since we did the online check-in, we used the curbside check-in for our bags and went straight to security. There was all of 2 people in front of us in the security line, so we just breezed through that, too.  It was looking like a pretty nice start to the day.

But about 15 minutes before we were to board our first flight, it was announced that, due to bad weather in SFO, air traffic control had pushed our flight back 30 minutes. Once we were on the plane, there were more delays, and all told, I think we took off about 90 minutes late. And very worried about our connection. The plus side, though, is that since I used United’s online check-in to upgrade our seats to Economy Plus, I was able to pick window seats in the first row behind First Class. That gave us waaaaaay more legroom than we were expecting, which made all that time on the plane a little easier to bear.

The result was a mad dash to our gate at SFO for our connection, but what we discovered upon getting to our gate (winded from running) was the our plane had just landed and was also delayed 30 minutes while it was being cleaned. Phew. Still not enough time to eat anything, but at least we didn’t miss our connection.

The Approach

The second flight, once it took off, was no problem. We scored the same awesome legroom as the first flight, and I was really excited to have my point-and-shoot camera with me this time, as opposed to just the camera phone as in the past. Something about taking a few snapshots of the island as you approach is so exciting. But what we had in store for us was really amazing.  Take a look.

We were lucky enough to do a flyby over the Haleakala Crater prior to our approach to Kahului. From what the pilot explained on board, it was a rare occasion that they’re able to do that. It was a great lead in to our visit to the summit on Monday.

The Rental

There were a few anxious moments waiting for our luggage at baggage claim. With the delays and all, we weren’t sure if our bags switched planes fast enough. But alas, our bags made it and we were off to Hertz.  Err… Dollar Rental Car.  Allow me to explain. Each year, we’ve booked with Hertz through our travel agent, but for some reason, this trip’s rental was with Dollar.  Silly me didn’t realize this until after waiting in line at Hertz and having the gentleman at the counter tell me my reservation number wasn’t one of his. Ugh. He was nice about it though.

After another shuttle and a small hike with our luggage, we made it to Dollar to get our car. The line wasn’t very long there, but as the name might imply, they’re not as a sophisticated an  operation like we normally have. After about 20 minutes and the Dollar rep running to the back room about six times, we left with a Chrystler 300 comped at the price of a normal full-sized car.  Not a bad deal in the end I guess.

The Evening

Added up, the delays with our flights and (my) confusion about the car rental, our evening wasn’t shaping up according to plan. We were scheduled to land at Kahului at 5:15pm and figured we’d be checked in at the resort by 7pm at the latest, head to Whalers Village for a quick bite and an ABC Store run, and in bed by 8:30pm or so. With the time difference, and the fact that we were getting up at 2am to go up to Haleakala the next morning, we figured that’d be fine. 

Those were the plans, anyway. It was about 8:30pm when we finished checking in at the Sheraton and took a guess that things at Whalers were pretty much shut down for the evening. So we headed out to the Lahaina Cannery and stocked up on a few items at the ABC Store there. Mainly things for the Haleakala trip. What we didn’t find there, we grabbed at Safeway and we’re on our way back to the resort.

At the end of the evening, it was getting close to 10:30pm before we finally made it to bed. We tore open our luggage only to get the things we needed for waking up in 3 1/2 hours and that was it. I did spend a few minutes looking out at the stars from our lanai, which was a nice “welcome back” moment. However, that did little to prepare me for the wonderful displays I would soon be witnessing on the summit of Haleakala in the dark skies before dawn.  But more about that in my next entry.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 17th, 2009 at 10:41 am and is filed under Trip 4 Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.