I drug myself out of the bed at 5:45am – yesterday was a long day, but no rest for the weary. They will call the cops if we aren’t out of this tiny house by 10 am – checkout time.
We did a better job of not pulling everything out of suitcases in this location, so packing went quicker. We cleaned off the dishes, loaded up the car, Victoria said goodbye to the chickens (sorry, he-he’s) and we were out on schedule at 8:45.
We drove back the way we came in – down Hawaii 99 that splits the island.
On the way there, we stopped at Lee’s Lunch Wagon for breakfast. It’s labeled there as Lee’s Breakfast Wagon. Lee probably had an issue with bad reviews or the health inspector and had to rebrand himself. It didn’t look like much, but was a very good breakfast. I got the steak and eggs, that was chopped up steak and an over easy egg with onions over rice. Noelle got a BLT with an egg on it and loved hers. Good work Lee.
Traffic was light, and the rental drop off was a breeze. I’ve been carefully taking videos of every ding I find on the car when I pick up the car, but they barely even glance for damage. I think if you aren’t just missing the entire bumper they generally don’t care. Security line was VERY short – maybe 10 people ahead of us with 3 lines working it and we made it to the gate with a couple hours of extra time. With all the time to kill I worked on the blog a bit, and Noelle took Lydia over to starbucks to get some treats. Victoria got a brownie that she ate with her typical refined grace.
We’re on another short Hawaiian airlines flight that was about 3/4 full. We convinced the girls that it would be a great idea for them to sit at themselves. There was a 14 year old hawaiian girl in front of them that was passing them secret messages on their phone (she’d type a message and Lydia would type a reply on her phone). She was probably being offered drugs, but if it kept them busy and out of our hair for a few minutes, I wasn’t going to intervene.
We landed in the Hilo airport on the Big Island 50 minutes later. It was a much older, airport that felt very small. The elevator was missing a couple tiles and creaked when it went down. It was very convenient to get around though – we were outside of the airport in 5 minutes. The rental pickup is actually a walk across the street where people were waiting to picked up their loved ones. All 10 of the major rental places had a little booth next to each other. We didn’t get to pick our car this time – they gave us a Nissan Altima.
The credit card was starting to melt from all the eating out, so we decided to drop by a Walmart to get some supplies to cook a few meals ourselves. On the way in we walked by the dog from the movie “The Sandlot” waiting to steal our baseballs (sorry Hercules, none today). Inside was the busiest Walmart I’ve ever seen – it was like black friday in there, but people were dashing to grab frozen foods instead of TV’s. It was the first time we’ve ever seen every single checkout line lit up with a cashier working it. I also looked for a gopro to replace the one still recording in the ocean – they had one for $500 – I decided to check the costco on the other side of the island instead.
In parking lot, the bottom dropped out and started raining hard on us. The family quickly jumped in the car, leaving me to unload groceries (with no bags since we didn’t buy any of the reusable ones and plastic wasn’t an option) in the pouring rain. We originally had plans to do some snorkeling in a little park that was next to the vrbo, but since it was pouring I sent a message to the VRBO host to see if we could check-in a little early instead (check-in is 4, it was about 3 at this point.
I hoped for the best and drove over there. We weren’t super impressed at the beauty of Hilo based on the first impression. When It’s cloudy/rainy and you’re used to seeing Maui / North Shore tropical paradise, seeing more of a run-down industrial area looks more stale by comparison.
Things looked better when we got to the VRBO parking, although we had one issue. We were assigned parking spot #20, and there was a large green crane/cherry picker parked there. All of the parking was assigned, so I called the owner to see what I should do. He pointed me to spot #19, which you have to make a 3 point turn around a trash can to get in to. He also told me he hadn’t heard back from his cleaning lady, but if the keys were in the lockbox, we should be go up. For this one, you grab the room key and elevator key from a cabinet that has 50 very similar looking lockboxes without clear labels. The instructions amused me a bit:
“Then look to your right and you’ll see a wooden cabinet. Open the cabinet doors and you will see 5 rails full of lock boxes. Look on the 4th rail down… our lock box is toward the right and has a large pink heart painted on its plastic cover. (It sits next to a box with the letters “ABS” on it).”
I got the keys out, which you use to unlock the elevator (with a gentle turn to the right). Our place was on the top floor (7th). It was very obvious walking by the other units that noone had AC as all of the windows and some of the doors were open to let breeze in.
We made it to our home. It was actually quite spacious, with decor that was a little dated but I liked it. It had good fans in every room, and the windows were all open to let in the breeze, which would be our AC for the next 4 nights. The highlight of this place is the view from the lanai that overlooks the park and its lagoon below with green tropical forest and a couple of the beautiful wide (oak?) and sound of crashing waves.
I cracked one of the Kona brewing company beers I bought from Walmart, kicked my legs up and enjoyed the view with a brew. It was close to dinner time at this point, so I defrosted and browned the ground beef and Noelle made some spaghetti for us with Garlic toast. Even better than restaurant food!
The rain lightened up a little bit, and we didn’t want to waste the rest of our daylight, so the kids put on their bathing suits and we made a quick run to the laggoon. As soon as we got out there, it started raining again. A little rain won’t stop the Hodgson’s, so Noelle and I put on our rain jackets and the girls jumped in the water with their snorkel gear. They snorkeled around for 10 minutes and saw a few schools of small fish. The sun was going down, which Noelle thinks is prime shark feeding time, so we made the kids get out and walked back to the apartment building.
This place came equipped with a pool also, which the girls took a quick dip in (ignoring the sign saying no swimming after sunset). The water was very warm. We let them splash around for a couple minutes then headed back up. We have a long day planned tomorrow so showered off and hit the sack, dreaming of rainy lanai views and walmarts.
