Our Vacation

I ranted about vacation issues in my last posting but promised to actually cover the trip with my next effort. Here goes...

Our trip was a long one and was scheduled around my Mom's 90th Birthday Celebration in Walnut Creek, CA. From there, we continued West to spend 2 weeks in Kailua-Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii. On the way home, we stopped for a week in Thousand Oaks, CA and spent Thanksgiving with our Son Grant and family.

When we first looked at options for getting to and from Logan Airport, we decided to rent a car going to the airport and to Uber home. Our flight to San Francisco had an early departure so our plan was to rent the car at Worcester Airport the day before and then make an early trip to the airport. When snow was forecast for that morning, we decided to go early and spend the night at a hotel near the airport. That was such a nice way to do it that we'll probably do it again.

Since I already mentioned our plan to Uber home, I'll finish that part of the story. After our issues with the car going to the airport (see my previous post), Budget gave us a free day of rental. When heavy snow was forecast for the time of our return home, we decided to use that discount to rent a car to get home.

So, we picked up the rental in Worcester on Nov. 7 and spent the night in Winthrop, MA. We left for San Francisco the next morning. We arrive just after noon, picked up our rental and drove to our hotel in Walnut Creek. Our Son Grant was there with his family and my Sisters were there with their families. We all had  great weekend with my Mom.

Saturday, Nov. 9 was Kristen's Birthday. Rather than make it a huge extended family event, the 2 of us had dinner with Grant and family and then returned to my Mom's for cake with the extended group. Sunday, Nov. 10 was Mom's 90th birthday and we celebrated with a luncheon for about 40 people at one of her favorite restaurants (Thanks to my Sister Stacy for making all of the arrangements!).

We didn't take a lot of pictures on this leg of the trip but we did go for a walk in our old neighborhood (of 22 years, 1984-2006) and talk to some of the neighbors. This is our old house.

We spent Monday night near SFO before heading to Kona on Tuesday morning. We've stayed in Kona many times. We spent most of our visits at a place a couple of miles from town so, to get to the restaurants, we had to drive and pay for parking. On our last visit, we stayed in a VRBO that had a great water view but was right in the middle of the restaurant area. It was no longer listed on VRBO but I still had the owner's contact information. The unit was available and he put his Mother-in-law in charge of setting everything up. She was unresponsive and we came to realize that the transaction was a lot riskier without VRBO guaranteeing things. We canceled and went through VRBO to book a nicer unit that was right next door to the first.

Our unit was 3rd in from the left, 3rd down from the top (shades were down on the 2 units above us). Our previous unit was 1 to the right (behind the palm).

View from our lanai. Restaurant with blue roof used to be a Bubba Gump (and was a restaurant that we liked before that). The restaurant to the left used to be a Charthouse. There's a great farmers market just across the street from the blue roof.

Looking the other direction from our porch. There's a whole row of restaurants along the left side of the street (with more restaurants up the hill behind them). One of our favorites, Huggos, is on the ocean side right next to the big hotel.

Our building from out at the big hotel.

Sunset from our lanai

Sunset from our lanai.

On past trips, liners have arrive every day or two. This time, we had two in the first week and then none. The cruise lines must avoid the time around Thanksgiving. This was taken at dawn.

Kristen with the tikis at Hikiau Heiau at Kealakekua Bay. She posed her with Briar and Grant back in December, 2001.

(Yes, that's my finger) This spot, just toward the airport from Kona is a historic site. and was a great snorkeling spot.

Lots of turtles. The ancient Hawaiians built fish traps out in the bay. The traps were walled areas that the fish could swim into and then not find their way out. Lots of fish in there and I fortunately was able to stand up to spot the way back out.

We left Kona on the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and spent a great week with Grant, Melissa and the grandkids.

We finally returned home on Tuesday, December 3. A huge snowstorm that was forecast for Sunday continued on through Tuesday morning. Fortunately, Kristen had the foresight to find someone through Facebook to clear the driveway before we got home.

Some pictures of the snow the next morning:

We had taken the bird feeders down back in early summer after the bears had mangled them (see earlier blog). We finally thought that the bears would be in hibernation and that it would be same to put the feeders back out. The bears struck again within 2 days.

Just to complicate things, we were responsible for cutting, installing and decorating the town tree

and bandstand. The tree was several hundred feet from the road in the deep snow so that was a lot of fun. Before we could even go for the tree, we had to clear a path across the town common to the band stand and clear the snow from the grandstand.

We had had a number of volunteers to help us decorate but the 20 degree temperatures on Saturday helped all but one find reasons to bail. Even so, we were pleased with the result (but they may have to find someone else to do it next year).

-JC-