Trip Report - Day 9 & Home

Day 9 - June 9th


Today is our last full day...

As usual I got up about 7:30 and had breakfast. I went out and sat on the lanai and watched the surfers for a while. I spotted some turtles in the waves with the surfers. They are so cool to watch and I love it when they poke their heads up.  Today we are going horseback riding, but we don't have to be there until 1:30. The girls & I decide to head over to Poipu Shopping Village for some last minute souvenir shopping. They get cleaned up and we head off. DH is happy to be left on his own for some peace and quiet. We find a few things at Poipu, but since we still have time we head over to Kukui'ula and browse through their stores. It is very quiet and there aren't many people shopping. I asked one of the sales girls if it has been really slow and she said the mornings and evenings are kind of busy, but the afternoons have been real quiet. She was hoping in the next couple of weeks things would start to pick up. After our shopping we went back to the house to eat lunch. We are trying to get through all of the food we still have left.

After lunch we head over to CJM stables for our horseback riding. Both of the girls love horses and are very much looking forward to this. We got there right at 1:30, there were probably about 14 other people there. The door to the office was closed so everybody just sat around and waited, and waited, and waited. Finally about 2:00 someone came and opened the door and started the safety video and then disappeared. He finally came back and they started checking people in. I guess the guy checking people in doesn't normally do it and it was painstakingly slow. They finally got the first group of about 9 people on horses and they left. We were the last people checked in, but we finally got our horses. By now it's almost 2:30. We can tell right away that the 1st guide would have been better, he was very funny and more personable. We started off, the scenery was extraordinary. I was taking pictures right & left. The sun was out and it was all blue sky. It was a beautiful ride and going down to the beach was really fun. By the end we were all exhausted, dirty and sore. We had a good time and gave our horses love and headed home.

Once we got home we relaxed a little and cleaned up. By now everybody was hungry so we headed over to Kalapaki Joe's. The food was good, but DH still thought that his hamburger at Grind's cafe was the best so far. After dinner we headed over to Poipu for one last walk on the beach. We saw another turtle and laughed at a lady who thought he looked sad as he laid on the beach. It was getting dark and  we had laundry and packing to do. We headed home and started packing. Time for bed.



Day 10 - Heading home


As much as we enjoyed our time here it is always good to be heading home.

Today I got up at 7:00 and jumped in the shower. There was no lounging today. We had to be out of the house by 10:00am. And for anybody who has read our past days, 10am is a challenge for this family. We had everything mostly packed the night before, so it was mostly just shower stuff and putting the house back together. About 9:30 we were all packed up and ready to go. We headed to the recycling bins by Brenneck's to drop off our recycling and then back to Kalapaki Joe's for breakfast. The girls noticed the banana pancakes the night before and we didn't want to hunt for someplace for breakfast so this was good enough. The girls both had banana pancakes which were enormous and very yummy. After breakfast we were off to the airport.

We dropped off the rental car with no problem, it even came out $4.00 cheaper, woohoo! Luckily at the last minute I saw the line for sending your bags through the agriculture line before we got in the check in line. DH & the girls stood in the agriculture line while I waited in the check in line. The line for United wasn't very long and we got up to the counter and entered all of our information into the computer. The 1st suitcase we put up was 54lbs., great...we put the others up there and they were fine. All of the other suitcases were under the limit but were pretty well stuffed with no room to put anything else. We stashed some stuff into our carry on and tried again. 48lbs, good enough. Then we dragged our suitcases to the TSA line. We left our suitcases with them and went through security. For some reason they pulled DH aside and took his 2 bins of stuff over to a side table. By the time I got through the line and went over he was putting his watch on and getting his stuff, they looked at the stuff in his bins and his cell phone and asked him a couple of questions but that was it. Any airport you go through, the check in and going through security is exhausting. We plopped ourselves in front of the souvenir shop and hit the restrooms and the girls went to Starbucks. I went into the store to grab a couple of items that I was missing and we headed to our gate. We only sat there about a 1/2 hour before they started boarding. LAX here we come.

Our flight was fine, they had a movie on the tv's that are mounted in the center aisle. It is a good way to pass a couple of hours. We landed about 20 minutes ahead of schedule. I found it really funny that our gate in Kauai was number 8 and LAX it was 87. Once we found our gate, we were off to find food. We ate and made our way back to the gate. Our plane was running about 10 min. late, we were scheduled to leave about 11:01 and it was 11:30 when we took off. It is a quick flight to San Diego and we were there in no time. We landed at the commuter terminal and were the only plane there, in fact we were the only people there. We quickly got our luggage and went out front to find our driver. He picked us at 12:30am, and we were home by 1:00. At 1:30am I finally crawled in bed. And our trip was officially over.

Aloha!!