I had trouble in getting to Solla Selew...

...or something to that effect, anyway. There's an excellent Dr. Seuss book by that name (not necessarily by that spelling though), but I'm going to begin with our trip to Honolulu. On December 22, 2008, Grandma Barb and the kids dropped us off in Detroit so we could stay at a hotel the night before our early flight out. It was heartwrenching to leave the kids. Liam is too little to truly understand how long 3 weeks is, but Carrie had a really hard time saying goodbye. We've left her with grandparents while we've done other trips, but never for as long. And I think the most I've ever been away from Liam is probably 2 days. The farewells were rough, that's for sure.

We were flying Delta from Detroit to Atlanta and then straight on through to Honolulu. On the Detroit to Atlanta leg, the oxygen masks deployed. I'm not kidding when I say everyone said, "Oh!" as they dropped down. We were told to put them on, so we did. Most people started taking pictures with their cell phones. The pilot told us he'd keep us at 10,000 feet so we could stay safe. He said we were still closer to Atlanta than any other airport and that we would continue there. He also joked that they'd probably let us land ahead of everyone else. We did land about 10 minutes ahead of schedule, but that was it. Apparently there was a slow outgoing air valve leak that triggered the decompression alert in the cockpit. We did take pictures on my cell phone of us wearing our masks. Scott travels all the time for work and that has never happened to him before!

The flight from Atlanta to Honolulu was hitch-free, thankfully. I'm glad any possible trouble happened over land an on the short flight! It was over 9 hours direct from Atlanta to Honolulu. Never been so glad to get off a plane in my life. And to step into warmth and greenery was the icing on the cake!

We picked up our Hertz rental car- a goldish tan Ford Taurus- and drove straight to the northeast side of the island. We found our camp called Friends of Malaekahana off of the Kamehameha Highway and checked into the office. We met Tony, a 7th grade science teacher from Seattle, who would be camping near us. We finally found our campsite, 3A, and it turned out that Tony was beside us in 3H. The map said there were "hot showers" which did indeed have warm water, but were stalls that were open to the sky. Being right off the ocean, the breezes combining with wet skin led to considerably less than "hot" showers. But at least we got clean!

We pitched our Hubba Hubba tent (yes, that's the real name of our tent. There's also the Hubba tent and the Mutha Hubba tent...) near a grove of trees and were sheltered from most of the wind and even most of the rain that we did have there. However, there were tons of chickens and roosters who like to roost in the trees and wander the campsite. We learned quickly that roosters really don't crow at dawn. They start when the stars are still out in the wee hours of the morning. I threatened to pluck them. It didn't help.