May 7, Final Hours in Kaua’i, Headed Home

As always, Patrise woke up early, about 6:40am. I slept until 7:10, but it took me about 20 minutes to get myself going. For the final morning’s breakfast, we ate scrambled eggs, grits, biscuits, and bacon – HOMEMADE biscuits, mind you.

For reasons we have not yet determined, both of us were feeling sleepy (Patrise) or woozy (me), despite having had a good night’s sleep. Fortunately, we had plenty of time to get to the airport, so we took our time completing the packing and cleaning up the rental. Most of this had been done yesterday, but there were some final items to put in the clothes washer, the dishwasher, and in the suitcases. I had carried two suitcases down to the car before breakfast. While I was laying down gathering myself after breakfast, Patrise took the other two suitcases down. Then she came to roust me from the bed, so we could make our way to the airport.

We said goodbye to the Lanikai Resort that had been our home base for the past five days. Then, we drove to the airport, to the rental car return. We turned in the car quickly and easily, then boarded the rental car shuttle for our departure gate. We were in line to drop off our luggage when the Hawaiian Airlines rep asked us if we’d like to take an earlier flight. (We were due to fly out at 12 and arrive in Honolulu at 12:40; now she was informing us that there was an 11am flight and it had first class seats available. We already had first-class seats, so this was not a trade-up, but at least we did not have to trade down in order to take advantage of the earlier flight time.)

We took advantage of the offer and went to the gate for the earlier boarding. The plane boarded smoothly enough, but then it had to wait – first at the gate and then on the runway. Apparently, the runway in Honolulu was backed up. One of their runways was out of commission for repairs, and so, depending on the flights in from other islands, the system can get backed up. The pilot was finally given clearance at 11:40 to take off. Patrise and I were mostly sleeping through all of this. About the time the plane got into the air, it was time to begin descending.

The plane landed, we deplaned, then eventually got our luggage. It took a while to get offloaded. Once we had the luggage, we found out we had to walk to another terminal, and the very end of the second terminal, in order to get to Delta ticketing. Thank goodness, we decided to get a luggage cart; that made it easier to move four pieces of luggage and two carry-on bags from Terminal 1 to Terminal 2 (Gate 8 of 8). We checked in for our flight home – no more bags to move around, yeah!!! – then found a place to get some lunch. We split a hummus and pita plate and shared a basic Caesar salad. I had a Margerita flatbread, but removed the mozzarella cheese, since I did not have any lactaid tablets with me. After the lunch, we walked to our departure gate and waited for boarding to begin in three hours.