The Snowaggedeon Exit - Kona, HI - Part 1 (February 2019)

Kona, HI - Part 1 

********************************************************************************

Full Disclosure before you start....Part 1 of this trip blog is mostly about how we ended up getting there one day early and why.  It's a lot of words...not as many pictures. If you don't want to read the exit story...feel free to go to Part 2 for lots of pictures.

********************************************************************************

For vacation this year we booked a 10 day trip to Kona, Hawaii to stay at our favorite place on the islands, Kona Hawaiian Village Resort.  It looks like this.    

Old style Hawaiian village type houses with lots of lush greenery and across the street from the ocean.   2 bedroom condos, 2 pools and close to Kona.  We've stayed their 4 times, it feels like home.  My brother Erek and his wife Laci were meeting us there (flying in on TH from Kentucky)  and we were so excited to spend some time with them. 

We barely made it there.  It’s a really interesting, miraculous story of a trip that was clearly meant to be.

Our trip was supposed to start at 11 am on Saturday February 9^th when we would fly from SEA to SFO and then at 4 pm SFO to Kona.  Seattle had a snow storm the week before our trip and what was supposed to be a trace of snow ended up at 7 inches in Kirkland.  We were out of school for a few days and the neighborhood looked like this.  Perfect time to head to the islands.

As the week progressed, another bigger storm was predicted to come into Seattle on Friday, February 8^th. One day before our trip.  The newscast was foreboding and we were worried about actually getting out of Seattle.  I called the airline on Wednesday to see if we could get rebooked from SEA to SFO on Friday night (we would get a hotel on Friday in San Fran then back to the airport in SFO on Saturday for our afternoon flight to HI).  That option was $595 per ticket in change fees…..times 4 people plus the cost of a hotel in San Fran.   It was not worth it. So, we decided to just wait and see.

I watched the weather all day TH hoping the airline would issue a travel advisory so that we could get the change fee waived.  No luck.   I worked most of TH packing to have us ready to go if needed. I even told someone that I was getting us ready so that we could leave the house with one hour notice if we could get a flight out.  We discussed booking a hotel near the airport for Friday night so we would be close enough to get to the airport if the roads were bad but the airport was open.   But, we didn't end up doing that because they were all full.

Friday morning, the 8^th, I got the girls up and ready for school.   Lunches packed…ready to go.  It was 8:45 am.  James happened to call the airlines and they were finally issuing a travel advisory for Seattle, so the fees would be waived if we changed our flights to a 12:35 pm flight THAT DAY and then straight on to Kona that afternoon.  We decided to go for it.   (Miracle #1)  We had ONE HOUR to get out of the house.  Good thing I had preplanned and packed early.   

James and I hurried to shower and get everything packed and out of the house.   We did it….it was a bit frantic and we ended up leaving some stuff…but nothing that we couldn’t replace in Hawaii (ie: like socks...I forgot to pack socks for everyone, but we didn't really need them anyway)…and more importantly we did it!!!  (Miracle #2)   It was a bit crazy. In fact, the girls were putting their shoes on for school and I told them “No school, we are going to Hawaii today…right now”.   Then we started hurrying to get everything ready and things were so crazy that at one point Anikka said “I’m scared!” So, I explained to her it was EXCITING!   And how lucky we were to be going at all. 

We hurried to the airport and parked.  Luckily there was no traffic and no issues with parking. We were at the airport by 10:40 am and there was barely a line checking into our flight.  BUT....... the line for security was THE LONGEST I have ever seen. It was all the way back to where the ticketing gates are. I asked the TSA lady at the end of the line how long it would take us to get through security?  She said 1 hour and 30 minutes.  I looked up at the clock and it said 10:50 am. We had 1 hour and 45 minutes until our flight left.  We just kept moving forward and before we knew it we were through security and to our gate just as they started boarding at 12 pm.  It ended up only taking 45 minutes for security.  (Miracle #3)  James went to the gate agent to see if we could get seats near each other. Because we had rebooked only hours before, we had 4 random middle seats.  The lady was able to get the girls and I in a row of 3 with James just ahead of us in a middle seat.  (Miracle #4)

 As we were sitting on the plane waiting for it to take off it started snowing.  

Due to deicing we didn’t actually take off until 12:55 pm.   I sat on the plane completely amazed that we had pulled off that fast of an exit and that we were actually going.  It was smooth flight to SFO and when we landed we learned that SEATAC delayed all flights leaving SEA at 1 pm.  We had literally left with 5 minutes to spare.  (Miracle #5).   

In SFO we had lunch (because we had no time to get food at SEATAC) and then we asked the gate agent for seats together if possible.  She seated us all in row 23, 3 girls in one row, James across the aisle.   We got on the plane and this never happens anymore...but the other 2 seats next to James were empty.  So,  for the long part of our journey (7 hours) we were able to spread out a little and sit with 4 of us across both rows.   (Miracle #6)  

A seat for Kanani...

And one for Caroline.

Long but uneventful flight....We made it to Kona around 9 pm HI time.  One day early with no place to stay and no car….but we made it out of Seattle.   The rental agency didn’t blink an eye about us coming a day early and we stayed the first night with Erek & Laci who had flown in the night before and had a two bedroom condo in our same resort. (Miracle #7)

I learned on Saturday that our original flight that would have left Saturday morning was delayed due to weather. We would not have made it to Hawaii on our original connecting flight and it probably would have taken a few days to get us all to Hawaii.  There were so many people rescheduling flights, the flight we left on from SEATAC had 60 people waiting on standby.  

Seattle ended up getting around 2 feet of snow from that storm and then another snow storm also came in the next Monday.   It was called Snowmaggedeon.  And we missed it ALL!!!  

It was a miracle from start to finish that we actually even made it to Hawaii.  7 miracles actually.

---to be continued---