Hawaiian Vacation Lesson Learned

/

To wrap up the posts about my trip in December to Hawaii – I am noting some lessons learned from the trip --- what did I learn from this trip that I will apply to trips in the future:

Have a contingency for much longer flights than planned. This could include a change of clothes and must-have toiletries in carry-on luggage, medications and refillable water bottle, and healthy snacks. I’ve discovered that peppermint lifesavers help me feel better even when I am very tired. Most of my healthy snacks are pita bread wedges, veggies (celery, carrots, cucumber), fruit (apple, pear), nuts, and protein bars.

Planning a trip to a place you’ve never been before is best done with someone that has been there before…and recently. The Hawaii trip was enhanced by my daughter’s previous trip to some of the same places on a geology field trip. It helped that she was there with us too.

Look at brochures for local attractions. We saw the 2400 Fahrenheit brochure in our vacation rental; it was about a mile away! Sometimes the unplanned is icing on top for a vacation.

Seek out local food. The foods with purple sweet potato were the theme for this trip for me: pie and pastries. And I enjoyed eating at the Kona Brewing company twice! I followed my daughter’s suggestion and tried the Black Sand Island Porter.

Maximize variety. There were so many ‘high points’ for this vacation: water falls, helicopter, telescopes, volcanos, tropical forest, unusual sand, geology…..overall the variety and ‘first time’ aspect of so much of that variety is what made the trip to Hawaii so spectacular.

Avoid overeating. We feel better when we eat out less and we eat less when we prepare it ourselves! In Hawaii we ate the majority of our meals at the vacation rental (that had a full kitchen) or as picnics that we prepared and took with us for our meal at mid-day. Over the past few years, we’ve done this more frequently and now we have made it our ‘normal.’

Don’t leave valuables in the car. We didn’t have anything stolen but some fellow tourists did at one of the state parks. That kind of thing can ruin a vacation. Sometimes it is hard to not have valuables in the car. On the day we left we had to pack the car and leave our vacation rental by 11 AM and we didn’t need to be at the airport for many hours….so everything was in the car. Most of the places we went were places where there were more people around – where someone breaking into a car would be noticeable…maybe.

Take time to savor the place – while you are there and when you get back. I tried to review my pictures each evening while I was in Hawaii and then writing the blog posts was a good way to enjoy what we did all over again.

Previous Hawaii Posts: