Alright, so I’ve already written 62 blogs on Kauai, about 6 blogs after every trip we’ve made over the past twelve years – invited you along to experience the trip vicariously, if you will. It occurred to me this trip that maybe after 62 blogs I could just let the blogging thing go – go to Kauai, come home and get on with reality and stop with the reminiscing. But don’t you want to go back to Kauai? Let’s go! We fly from Idaho Falls to Salt Lake, to Seattle, then Lihue all in one day. We can do this! Are you packed and ready?
Wednesday, January 16 – Alarms blast off at our house at 4 am and we head to our first flight – leaving Idaho Falls at 6am. Yay! We (David, Megan, me and my brother Eric, who spent the night with us) hop into David’s truck, park at the airport, board on time, arrive in Salt Lake. With a four-hour layover, we have plenty of time to enjoy a leisurely breakfast, get a few extra steps in, before heading to the gate for our flight to Seattle.
Our plane to Seattle is at the gate. Hey, Megan, pose for a photo! (We’re already flagged from lack of sleep.)
We should be boarding now for the 11:15 am flight. Uh, well there is the minor detail of the weather … No worries. We go ahead and board with only a 20-minute delay due to the massive snow collecting on the runways. And luckily we have a 3 1/2 hour layover in Seattle (so smart!) so still plenty of time to enjoy a nice meal in Seattle before boarding our flight to Lihue.
We board the flight and settle in with our noise cancelling headphones and cushy neck pillows and … uh, the plane doesn’t seem to be moving. Of course the plane will need to de-ice. Not a problem. Just pick out a movie on your own personal movie screen in front of you! I’ve got a great book. Relax … We have a 3 1/2 layover in Seattle. The plane pulls out of the gate and moves a bit and we’re stalled again. It’s hard to tell what’s going on outside with that heavy snowfall but there sure are a lot of planes lining up.
Well, long story short, we are asked to stay in our seats as we could prepare for take off at any time. And we sit right there for the next three hours as they plow the runways. Megan finishes her movie. Finally we’re in line to get de-iced, good sign! We do take off. It’s a 2-hour flight to Seattle. By the time we land in Seattle we’ve been strapped in our seats on the plane for 5 1/2 hours.
The 6 1/2 hour flight to Lihue has already boarded by the time we land in Seattle. David and Eric run to the gate to hold the plane while Megan and I race to the nearest ladies room. But we do make the flight to Lihue. Thank goodness for that 3 1/2 hour layover. Of course we’re starving. Well, this trip isn’t as bad as when we booked first class tickets to Kauai two years ago (yeah!) from Salt Lake to Lihue through San Francisco. You can guess how that turned out. We boarded our first flight in Salt Lake which had eliminated first class because they had changed to a smaller plane. Then we ended up landing in Monterey because San Francisco was socked in with fog. Sat on the tarmac in Monterey for three hours waiting for the fog to lift in San Francisco. Re-booked a later flight to Lihue in cattle car. I blogged about it of course. In case you want to read the hot details here’s the link: https://decompressionofaboomer.com/2022/02/06/kauai-2022-do-you-know-the-way-to-monterey/
So now we fly ‘Comfort Plus’ on Delta, which gets you seats at the front of cattle car, with a little extra leg room (maybe?) and free drinks and one extra slightly larger bag of chips beyond the usual snacks from the snack cart. That way, if you get bumped from your flight (which, at this point seems likely) you have a better chance of rebooking similar seats (not at the back of the plane in cattle car when you have a connection to make…)
So now we’re all settled in on our flight to Lihue. Try to cop some ZZZZ’s on the 6 1/2 flight. (Impossible.)
We land in Lihue, Kauai about 8:30 pm. Rent a humongous van and drive in the dark to Steph and Vic’s house on the north of the island. I roll down the window and inhale the ocean breezes. “Hey, Megan, out your window there’s the Pacific Ocean! Can you smell it? Hear it? Maybe we’ll see it tomorrow!” We arrive at Steph and Vic’s about 10 pm – 1 am Idaho time, which, added up to a 21-hour travel day. Steph and Vic had prepared a nice meal for us. We had finally arrived! Boy was it was wonderful.
Thursday, January 17 – It takes a bit to decompress once you arrive in Paradise. I heard the most beautiful bird song our first morning. Wonderful, and I wanted to know what kind of bird it was. I had downloaded a free app called “Merlin Bird ID” where you press ‘record’ and capture a bird song and it will identify the bird. Steph and Vic had a western meadowlark singing away in their back yard. So, imagine yourself, waking up in Paradise that first morning, walking toward the kitchen, bare feet over cool tiles, looking out at the brilliant sun, when you hear the sound of a meadowlark – check it out on this you tube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRgU4xS06sM
We took a morning walk around the Princeville golf course and heard a lot of Myna bird song – (identified by Merlin) – here you can hear it too (skip the add…) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ix1hugefpo
A major golf course in Princeville (behind Steph and Vic’s house) is being refurbished and is enclosed in a tall green mesh fence. You see a lot of that fence in my photos. Hopefully the golf course will be reopened in the next year. But on our first walk we also saw a nesting Albatross – right up against the fence about three houses down the street from Steph and Vic.
I wonder how the nest even survives. They nest on the ground right in people’s yards. It might be because they are imprinted to return from the sea to nest in the place they were born, and maybe these albatross were here before the houses were? Albatross don’t find a mate and start breeding until they are at least 7 years old. https://ypte.org.uk/factsheets/albatross-wandering/breeding-5e050f07-1dc7-477a-adcd-dfe1fbc0b194
Here we are on our walk through the wooded path along that same golf course near the Westin resort.
Eric, David and Megan
You will always come across feral chickens on this path. Likely with clutches of newly-hatched chicks. Here’s a photo I took and a video (I hope you can open the videos!).
Back home at Steph and Vics I recorded this really strange sound coming from their back bushes. Is it a bird? Merlin did not recognize it. Do you?
Well that about wraps up our first full day in Paradise. We’ll have to solve the mystery …
Tags: Flying Delta Comfort, Kauai, Layson albatross, Myna birds, Princeville Kauai, western meadowlark
The Decompression of a Boomer 
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