Fourteen hours in a car from New York to the Charlotte area (to switch out for an airport rental car). Three hours in a rental car from Charlotte to Asheville, North Carolina. Insert wedding and reception here. Then, three hours from Asheville back to the Sheraton in Charlotte. A few hours later, we drop off the rental car and then it's three hours from Charlotte Douglas International (CLT) to Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW). Seven hours from Dallas/Fort Worth to the Honolulu International Airport (HNL). And then another twenty minutes from Honolulu to Lihue Airport in Kaua'i (LIH). So, what's that...a little over thirty hours of travel time from when we left New York until our arrival in Kaua'i. That's one crazy trip, and that was just the time it took to get there!
Our first day in Hawai'i (Monday) was pretty much a bust. It was already late in the day (local time), and we were still six hours ahead on East coast time. Tuesday morning, though, we got a jump on things. We visited the Hanalei Bay Resort concierge and booked activities for the rest of the week. We even managed to get in on a last-minute cancellation at the Princeville Ranch that same day. As soon as we left with the concierge, we quickly changed clothes and headed out to the Ranch in our purple PT Cruiser convertible.
Lucy, our guide, assigned each of us, along with the other family in our trail group, a horse according to height and weight. Then, they took us down to the corral for a crash course in Princeville Ranch riding instruction and etiquette. All of their gelding horses were rehabilitated from pharmaceutical farms and other not-so-nice places...they were pretty gentle, and I was glad our money was supporting such a philanthropic organization. We rode for about an hour and a half across working farmland to a clearing, where we dismounted one-by-one.
After that, it was another fifteen minutes or so of "easy" hiking on a well-maintained trail, straight down the side of a steep and forested cliff. At the bottom was a beautiful series of tall waterfalls over hardened lava rock, one of which became our site for lunch. We played in the water a bit while our guide prepared the food, we ate together, and then re-packed for the climb back up. We didn't take the same trail back...the Ranch prepared a "short-cut" which included some rope work across rapidly moving water and some light rock climbing. At the top of the cliff, we re-mounted our horses (mine was "Coffee") and took the long ride back to the stables. Even with three applications of suntan lotion, I was well overcooked after so much time out in the open under the Hawaiian sun.
On Wednesday, we had a "free" day. We sat by the pool, we walked down to the Princeville Resort beach, we had breakfast at the Princeville, and later that day we chased the sunset across one-lane bridges through the jungle roads of Kaua'i. We probably made our sunburns worse, but we got some great photos and video of the island. On Thursday, we did some more random sightseeing. We spent some time in the little village of Hanalei, had a smoothy or two, and visited the shops. We drove the PT to the Kilauea Lighthouse, where folks can watch the whales during the winter months and the birds during the summer. That evening, we walked down to the Princeville Resort for dinner, a show, and some Mai Tai's at the Princeville Luau.
We had reservations Friday morning at Captain Andy's in Port Allen for a catamaran tour of the Na'Pali Coast. It took us an hour and a half just to get there, and we had to check-in at their front desk by sunrise. It was one early morning, even though we had only time-adjusted to about the Central timezone. We headed out in a group of 30-40 folks (mostly honeymooners) to watch sea turtles, flying fish, and lots and lots of dolphins. As we rounded the coast, we could see waterfalls and sea caves adorning the sheer face of the mountainside. That's about the time I started getting seasick, and I pretty much barfed my way through the rest of the trip (there was supposed to be reef snorkeling, too). We were supposed to hit the honeymoon table at Gaylord's restaurant that evening, but I was green for the rest of the day and some on Saturday, too. If it wasn't for four Dramamine, I don't know if I would have made it back through those three back-to-back flights on Saturday.
We finally landed back in Charlotte, in all our sunburned glory, on Sunday around noon (with the time shift, I think we were en route for twenty-two hours). We spent the rest of the day readjusting and recuperating, and we left on Labor Day Monday for the long car ride back to New York. We got home at midnight, Tuesday morning. We went back to work about nine hours later. I don't think that we could have squeezed any more into a one-week span, and unfortunately I'm now in the negative with regards to vacation day accrual. Hopefully, I'll be back in the black by the time Christmas rolls around.