Saturday - The beginning of the journey!

Kauai on Wikipedia...

Well, the trip was long, yet uneventful. That's always a good thing when you have to take 3 different flights; are crossing an ocean; are putting the lives of your family in the hands of strange pilots... and have watched the last 4 seasons of "Lost".
We left the house at 6:45 am and made it to the parking place, and got checked in at the airport with plenty of time for a good hearty Mickey-D breakfast. Our flight departed on-time at 9:30 and we got to Portland around 11 am Pacific time.

The time zone changes were a little confusing because some of us travel with one time zone, (home or destination) and do the mental math... and some travel always changing to the local time... and trying to stay on the same page was a little bit 0f a challenge.
We had about 90 minutes for the layover so we stretched our legs and found a "Good Dog Bad Dog" hot dog stand and had the all-nutritious chili-dog and corn dog meals. We made it to Honolulu around 4:30 pm (local Hawaii time) and had another 90 minutes before our inter-island flight to Lihue airport on Kauai.
It was a bit dreary and rainy in Hawaii so far, but that did little to dampen our spirits as we eagerly trudged through the airport, found our luggage waiting for us and got to the rental car. Unfortunately, my initial fears when I rented the Mustang convertible came true... when you want to rent a sportier car, always think of luggage, too. The 3 large suitcases were crammed in and almost didn't quite make it, but we did it.
The drive was about 35 minutes to the North Shore town of Princeville and the timeshare resort did not disappoint us. It is as luxurious as we had hoped but we had feared that we would be disappointed. The Cliffs at Princeville has undergone a multi-year renovation and they just updated the furniture in the units with $50K of furnishings... and it shows! It is gorgeous. Unfortunately the pool is not yet completed... and that bit of bad news almost set the tone of the week since Kyle always wants to go swimming... but they told us that we have the use of a neighboring resort's pool. Hallelujah!!! In preparing for the next day's activities, I checked and found that Hawaii does not observe daylight savings time... so our 4 hour difference from Central time zone just changed to 5 hours.
We got some badly needed sleep and I awoke at 5 am while the rest of the family got up around 6 and we are heading out for breakfast before we take the Hollywood Movie Tour. We'll probably just relax by the pool after our day's activities and get accustomed to "the island way of life". My Internet connection is being temperamental, so I will upload the pictures later today.

Aloha for now!

Tom, Rosie and Kyle