Vacation-Hawaii Traveling Days

We went on vacation!!! It was a perfect get-away. We used this as a way to celebrate graduation and our coming up 5 year anniversary. We left Utah late Thursday night and drove to St. George. When we were first looking up flights to Hawaii we looked at every option and found Allegiant to be the best but they were only flying to Honolulu from either Boise, ID or Las Vegas. Since we were traveling with Jan and Spencer and they had a place to stay in St. George, it was decided that Las Vegas would be the best option for us. We researched a lot before we purchased and discovered if we brought in person it saved us a lot of money. So we found a day that one of us could buy the tickets and we got huge savings right up front with our flight. (Just in case you haven't traveled Allegiant before they don't have the nicest planes and don't serve any refreshments but it is great deal if you know that ahead of time and are prepared for it.)
We then got to relax in St. George on Friday. We enjoyed some light shopping and just relaxing in general. We all reassessed our packing and got rid of things to lighten our loads.  Brian and I took a backpack each and one carry-on (which you only get a personal item with Allegiant and pay for carry-ons and checked bags). Jan and Spencer had 2 baby items, a carry-on, a bag each, and a checked bag. We then ate some amazing corn dogs that we didn't take a picture of and some pizza and went to bed. We were up bright and early the next morning. We left St. George by 3:30 am. Our flight was a 7 am and we had to find our parking lot and get checked in. I guess mornings are the busiest time for the airport too. We were there nice and early and had plenty of time to relax after getting to our gate. We grabbed some breakfast and some water for the flight. We ended up by each other 3 of us together and Brian behind us. We had a six hour flight and we used that time to nap, nap, read, and play games. It went by pretty quick and we gained a ton of hours since we landed at 10:22 am in Honolulu.

On the airplane ready for our first "first" flight

Once we landed in Honolulu we got a rental car, a Nissan Xtra. It was nice to have some leg room after being on the flight. We got some food (which most places were closed that we tried, Saturday not a great place for local places). Then we went to Pearl Harbor. We had reserved tickets to go out to the Arizona site and planned to spend the day here until our flight to Maui at 8 pm.Sadly, it was super windy and so the boat ride out had been canceled shortly before we got there. We rescheduled our tickets for our days on the way home and enjoyed just walking around the grounds. There is so much history that can be learned from this place. It is a site of a tragic event that changed the United States.

The anchor of the Arizona.

Some of the coolest trees could be found in Hawaii

The first attack on Pearl Harbor

Second attack on Pearl Harbor

They had a lot of thoughts/comments made around the whole place that were very thought provoking

The site that we were going to go to and didn't get to this day

Model of the Arizona

There were 3 ships that sunk that day and this was the site of just the Arizona but they have sites for the Oklahoma and the Utah.
Since we weren't able to do anything except walk around and listen to different things. We needed another activity. Luckily we had planned on doing the Dole Plantation on the days we came back but since we now had the ship ride we decided to hit the Dole Plantation this day. It was the perfect solution and we had several activities to choose from. The Dole Plantation is huge and has activities that you can do at your own pace meaning as quick or slow as you would like to. So we were able to really push ourselves to get everything in in our few short hours there.
We started with the maze.

Lost in the maze finding the markers

Happy kid regardless of how many naps he had/didn't have

Figuring out where to go next. Spencer was our map reader.

Marking our cards and figuring out next spot to go.

Then we split up. Brian and I did the garden while Jan and Spencer did the Train.
Here is the Train Ride:

Here are the pictures of the Gardens/Grounds:

We had an audio tour that taught Brian and I so many different things about all the plants in the garden. They had trees, bushes, and different sections for things. I had lots of favorites but it was fun to see the Lei Garden.

Remember Pineapples grow on a bush not a tree. Did you know how long it takes to grow? 18-20 months for the first pineapple then about 14 months for the 2nd one.

 The whole day was fun and educational. We loved it!! Then we ran back to the airport and got through security super quick so we sat around for almost a whole 2 hours waiting for our flight. Luckily the airline was super nice. They gave us priority boarding, got us on the plane quick, and before we knew it we were in the air and headed to Maui. It was a great first day and we were all ready to go to sleep after our long day. Plus we had full plans for the next couple days.

The Dole Whip was delicious, especially with fresh pineapple and so was the Dole Plantation Grill. This was probably my favorite place for the kalua pork.

Driving back to the airport.