hawai'i 2005 - day 0

I had never been to Hawaii, and Jeremy had been to the Big Island only once to observe at Keck with no extra time to explore. We knew our time in Los Angeles might be short, so we took advantage of excellent sale fares to visit the Big Island of Hawai'i. We hit traffic in downtown LA, our flight was delayed an hour, and a young autistic boy sat behind me on the flight out. Normally someone sitting behind me who kicks, screams, and pulls my shirt makes me mad, but that's because they are usually adults who aren't autistic. This boy couldn't help it. I slept horribly nonetheless thanks to some rowdy young men playing musical chairs and getting drunk on the plane. When we got to Honolulu, we made our connection to Hilo, but our bags didn't. They said to come back at 6:30 to check the last flight.

Okay, 2 hours. We went to meet up with Jeremy's friend at her workplace to decide on dinner and borrow a stove (since Hawaiian Airlines confiscates all stoves unless new, which is a ridiculous policy). That took a very long time. When we did finish eating at 7:00 it was dark. Jeremy and I went to the airport to grab our bags, then to the KTA to buy groceries and meet up with his friend and her partner to get the stove (which he had forgotten at home). They arrived as we finished paying and we waited for them to buy what we thought was just cat food, but turned out to be a lot of groceries and cat food. They graciously loaned us stove, pots, and two full fuel bottles. We were finally on the road by 8:15 and made it to the Namakani Paio campground in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park by 8:45. The place was full, I mean like a veritable tent city, thanks to a bus that had brought an undetermined number of noisy students. As the campground was free, we could pitch the tent anywhere, so we found a small area by the roadside and went to sleep. We were exhausted.