Day 1: so the trip begins

For the first time in my traveling life, I FULLY packed the night before our trip! I love traveling but I hate packing, so there's usually some whining and grumbling involved, but not this time! Todd said I was pretty mellow! So I got up, paid some bills online, and got to watch the Ohio State vs Illinois football game until halftime before we had to leave for the airport. There were NO lines at the United check-in, and NO lines at security either. I guess Saturdays around noon is a great time to arrive at the airport! We were going to eat at the Chili's inside the airport, but nobody came to take our order or to even give us water after several minutes, so we left. After settling in at the gate, we bought a sandwich and a pepperoni pizza for lunch. Todd was eating the sandwich but it turned out gross, so he ate some of "my" pizza. I'm so glad that the pizza was big enough to share! It was pretty good too. So if you're ever in Terminal 1 at the San Diego airport, at the end of the "circle", get the pizza, not the sandwich! Our flight to San Francisco was pretty uneventful, except that I could see fires/smoke in the LA area. The smoke was pretty thick in some places too! During the layover in San Francisco, we got dinner. I got a chicken pot pie soup and a Snapple Asian Pear green iced tea, while Todd got fake Chinese food which was salty and oily. Man, the flight to the Big Island felt like forever, even though it was only 5 hours. We arrived at the Kona Airport around 8:45 PM. Picking up our rental car at Thrifty Car Rental took forever! I'm used to being an Emerald Club member with National Car Rental, where they point to the car and the keys are in the ignition for me already. It took about half an hour for Thrifty to give us our car (a bright blue Dodge Caliber), even though there were only 2 people in front of us. With Thrifty, spouses don't get to drive for free, so we only put Todd on the contract. Emerald Club members with National lets spouses drive for free, and other car rental companies like Budget and Avis do too. I found out this too late, the day before our trip, after having reserved the Thrifty car months before. Oh well, live and learn! On the way to the condo, we got a little lost. There was lots of road construction on Hwy 19, plus the main road that we turn off too, Palani Rd, was not labeled. We finally made it to the condo before 10 PM. The nice people there were still at the office to check us in. The condo was one bedroom, one bath, with a full kitchen, and the living room and lanai (balcony) had ocean view.