Hearts in Hawai'i
Our Trip To Maui (2016)--Day 20
6/2/2016
Patty was up and out of bed at 5:15; it's our final day on Maui and I believe she wanted to get the fun going early! I slept in for an extra house--getting out of bed, I sat on the lanai, drinking my mornng coffee and marveling at how the shadows come up over Lanai nearly every day.
We walked over to the Pioneer Inn for a final breakfast at 7 a.m. Alex was there, of course, and yapping a little bit so we sat somewhat further away from him than we did on our first visit. Patty had her usual oatmeal--she loves how they make that stuff here--and I ordered the two egg breakfast with an added order of whole wheat toast and Portuguese Sausage. This was a great meal to start off our final morning on Maui.
After leaving the Pioneer Inn, Patty walked the beach for an hour and a half and I finished packing. I located the TSA lock I thought we had lost, in a camera bag pocket. I understand these things won't deter a determined thief, but they will deter the casually curious. Good enough.
Grocery-wise, we gauged fairly closely how much food and beverages we would need. I left behind two 20-oz bottles of Gatorade. All the milk and POG is gone. A couple apples, one of the four pineapples we received as part of our Maui Gold Pineapple tour, and some chips will be left behind. Overall, we did a good job of finishing off what we bought at Safeway and Times Supermarket.
With every drawer having been looked through one final time and every nook and cranny examined to ensure we didn't leave anything behind, we turned in our key cards, got our final bill (the only item being for 18 days of parking @ $3.35 per day) and brought our bags down to the 505 garage. They are on Day 2 of the re-do of the parking lot and driveway, so we weren't able to drive our car up to the resort entrance to aide in loading up our bags.
We hit the Honoapi`ilani Highway one final time. It's fairly cloudy here today, and we reminisced about the best parts of our previous 18 days here. After stopping off to top the tank off at the Chevron station in Ma`alaea, we continued up highway 380 to the Alamo rental place near the Kahului Airport. We dropped off the car and hopped on the Alamo/National bus to the airport.
Waiting for the bus at Alamo
We were designated as TSA pre-check and sail through security. I started to take my sneakers off and the agent told me "Hey, you don't need to do that in this line!". I mentioned that I was used to taking off my shoes like peasants and he responded "No, you get treated like royalty today", with a wide grin.
We arrived here with probably too much time to spare--it's just past 11 a.m. and our flight wouldn't leave until 3:04, so we grabbed some lunch at Burger King and then located our departure gate. The gate was full with people waiting to board a noon flight to San Francisco, but emptied out soon enough and we had the waiting area to ourselves for quite a long time. Patty stretched out on the seats and took a half hour nap, and I sat and stared out the windows at Haleakala. Not a bad viewpoint for an airport terminal!
Haleakala view from the departure gate
I watched the Groups lines (similar to Delta's Zone lines) and as soon as someone got in one of the five lines, we jumped into the Group 3 line. This really helps when it comes time to board, since the groups correspond roughly with areas of the plane; it you're the first one in your group to board, you almost always have easy access to the overheads in your seat row.
We were in the fourth row from the rear of the plane, and a large group of foreign people boarded and took up the other side of our row and the rows behind us. I couldn't gauge what language they were speaking, it sounded Arabic. We later found out that the group is from India and their language is a form of Hindi. I googled it when we got home and found out there are 122 different languages spoken in India! I wonder how well it would be received if there was a movement to speak only one language in India as some "Knucks" would like to see in the United States. 
This was a fairly long flight, 4:41 in length and we were a bit fried by the time we reached San Francisco. Patty managed to get short spurts of sleep. I managed none. I just don't do well in these damn sardine cans which are referred to as "coach" by the airlines.
We caught a wonderful view of the San Francisco skyline lit up at night as we descended to the airport. I really like the airport here; it's wide open and bright! After finding our next departure gate, I spoke with the lady working the counter about our connection in Chicago. It is scheduled to be only 50 minutes and felt like it could be a problem. After a few minutes of speaking with her, it occurred to me that she is either new or dumb.
Again, we were in Group 3 and again, we're first in line. They say this aircraft is completely full and warn that the overheads could run out of space by the time Group 4 boards. We found a spot for my bag just behind our row, and a spot for Patty in the row in front. The guy sitting in seat C said to us "well, I was wondering where you were". Cute.
He's a businessman who lives in Chicagoland and had a Smart Phone so was able to look up which gate we'd be landing at and where our flight to Minneapolis would take off from. We would land at Gate C31 and depart for the Twin Cities from B7. He said it's not a bad walk, about ten minutes so it shouldn't be a problem. We trust him with this, since he knows O'Hare and we've never been there!
Again, we endured a long flight. There is no in-flight entertainment since this is an Airbus A320. I tried to sleep but had no luck. The sun came up about an hour before we landed. And here I missed a golden opportunity for some great camcorder footage as we circled the downtown area just south of The Loop, crossed over onto Lake Michigan and veered north, catching a good chunk of north Lake Shore Drive. In the early morning light, this city looks great! Patty says we should spend a long weekend here some time. I'd like to spend about five or six nights, take in the sights, maybe take in a Cubs or White Sox baseball game. This would be fun.
Landing at O'Hare, it was very easy finding our way to the tunnel connecting the terminals. B7 is the second gate after exiting the tunnel via an escalator. Our seating companion walked with us and then had to go in another direction to his car. We thanked him, shook hands and parted company. Very nice guy!
The Airbus A319 taking us to Minneapolis had less overhead space, but we still were in good shape regarding overhead space. We also arrived a full ten minutes before we began boarding the final flight, so it was another case of a gloom-and-doom scenario by me having no reasonable substance. We breathed a sigh of relief as we boarded. A short hour and a half later we were back on terra firma in Minneapolis.
Our checked bag came down the carousel, but the handle was jammed and difficult to operate. This bag was a cheap one (about $60) and has served us well over the past six trips to Maui. It's time for a new one!
We located the Skyline Shuttle desk and found it not occupied. We're here well before the 10 a.m. departure (we're schedule to leave here at 11:30 but hope to catch an earlier shuttle). We called to see if we could transfer, and there was room! We're told to look for a Chippewa Valley shuttle bus; a company had just bought out Chippewa Valley and Skyline Shuttle so some buses are being moved around.
Just before 10:00, a bus pulled in and who walked in but our friend Rob! There were only four of us on this shuttle, a lady who was going back to Duluth to care for her mother and a guy who is a pilot for Southwest Airlines, heading to the Scanlon Park-And-Ride to meet someone. We had a conversation about Southwest's expansion and the possibility of it expanding to Hawai`i. It doesn't appear that this is in the foreseeable future, if at all.
There was moderate traffic on I-35 heading north this morning. A patch between Rush City and Hinckley was undergoing construction so only one lane was open in each direction, which concerned Rob. He decided not to detour onto Highway 61 and the traffic on I-35, as it turned out, was moving fairly well.
Rob drove us right up to our doorstep! Very nice service. We thanked him and walked in the front door. An hour later we reunited with Kimo. Susan said he was pretty good, more so with her than with Randy. Kimo was very happy to see us, in stark contrast to two years ago when he gave us the cold shoulder upon our arrival at a different local kennel. We got him home and start unpacking. We're back home again!
Previous: 6/1/2016--Our Trip To Maui (2016)--Day 19
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