We left Tuesday afternoon and drove up to Detroit in preparation for our 7 am flight on Wednesday.
We met up with our longtime friends, Erika and Fred Heegan for dinner at Mitchell’s Seafood House. We hadn’t seen them in over a year, so it was great to catch up!
After dinner, we returned our 1-way rental car and took the shuttle to DTW and checked into the Airport Westin, which is connected to the ticketing level. Although we planned to wake at 4:45am the next day, we also recognized that Hawai’i is 6 hours behind EST. We also know that Pat doesn’t adjust quickly to new time zones (but Cheryl is the all-time champion). So, we did our best to stay awake until 11pm or so, looking forward to catching some sleep on one or both of our long flights on Wednesday.
We were up and ready to go by 5:15 am. When we arrived at the airport, we realized that Pat didn’t have TSA Precheck on his boarding pass (our first issue)! We had built in a little extra time for “just such an emergency”. I took his electronics and liquids so that he wouldn’t have to pull everything out. Fortunately, he was able to clear TSA fairly quickly and we were at our gate when they started boarding.
We had three flights throughout the day. Detroit to Minneapolis; Minneapolis to Honolulu and Honolulu to the Big Island. In total, our journey was 19 hours. We both slept on and off throughout the day, helping pass the time and adjust to the new time zone.
Upon arrival at HNL, we had to collect our checked bags and make our way from Terminal 2 to Terminal 1 to re-check our bags for a Hawaiian Air flight to Kona. It was about a 10 minute walk, and there were no issues. And on this flight, Pat had PreCheck for TSA Security!
The best flight was to the Big Island, where Cheryl had a window seat. Here are some of the amazing views we had as we took off from Oahu, heading for our final destination.
