Day 0 Travel Day! Bee what you will!

Travel day! If you followed some of my prior blogs, travel day can either be a unique experience or pretty much uneventful. Thankfully, this was one of the more uneventful travel days, however, was not without some stories to tell. Our flight from Tampa to Phoenix was smooth , very little turbulence and just how I like it with nothing major to speak of. Likewise the flight from Phoenix to Maui, for the most part was without incident, except for the fact that we were not served any food, but thankfully, my lovely wife thought ahead and packed us plenty of snacks and sandwiches for the trip. Approaching the islands we encountered some pretty extreme winds that left me borderline motion sick and slightly sore from gripping the armrest. I maintained my alcohol free status for the first leg, but did finally fall off the wagon for the second. Upon approach to Maui, we quickly learned that there are some brushfires being fueled by the high winds that are frequent on the islands. I must stop and say our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those here that were affected last year by the wildfires that destroyed complete towns and have now left many residents traumatized and having to now relive the nightmare with the new round of wildfires. With that said, the current situation has changed our plans for the first couple nights as we were due to stay at Hosner Grove camp and have a early morning sunrise viewing above the clouds at Hala Kalea crater. Due to the wildfires the camps and national park are closed to visitors indefinitely. We’re hoping we can rearrange the trip to visit at the end and still see the sunrise. We picked up our mobile hotel, a huge travel van that we will be staying in for the next week. (Much larger than the Iceland mini mini-van) As we usually do we quickly pivoted and given access to a private property in the Highlands, which is actually a working bee farm where we were able to park our camper van with a gorgeous view of the ocean and a nearby island. Consequently, we also had a view of a home owned by Jeff Bezos. We learned quickly the cows here are free range and will walk up for a visit whenever they like and the resident cats will also come for a visit. We watched the sunset and the ocean turned a golden hue and later I was able to see one of the main attractions that I was looking forward to, the night sky void of any light pollution. I was able to capture some beautiful photos of the Milky Way and stars. Annemarie cooked us a wonderful dinner of pork chops and vegetables and we had a few spirits consisting of her black box wine, and my local craft brew and we spent the rest of the evening enjoying the stars and talking with a new friend Felix who is working at the farm. Tomorrow morning we look to adjust our plans due to the fires and we will see what our first full day brings and look forward to sharing.Baca lagi