We probably never thought this was a trip we would make. Jeremy doesn’t like to fly, and it would eat up vacation days really fast to go all the way out to Hawaii. Then we thought…. why not go the week between Christmas and New Years? We’ll be off work already! Nah… that time of year is crazy and we hear is very popular for vacationing. Then it hit me one day while at work. I had to travel to Boise, Idaho for my day job and the following week would be Thanksgiving….. the wheels started to turn. Before we knew it, we had plane tickets and a hotel booked! We are truly grateful that through all the craziness of building a vacation home, we actually saved too much money for the down payment (and we aren’t really sure how that happened seeing how I had to pay a crazy tax bill in April for this photo biz, and totaled my car in June and bought a new one… thus depleting our savings quickly). With the few extra dollars we had, we knew that if we didn’t take this trip now, we would likely be “retired” before the chance came again. Off we went, not looking back. As you know, I stopped in Waco, Texas on my way to Boise. Then flew to Boise where Jeremy met me towards the end of my week there. On Sunday afternoon we hopped a plane to Portland, Oregon and then on to Honolulu, Hawaii. I was really nervous about this flight. Of the 9 different flights I would take in those 2.5 weeks, this one was the longest at 6 hours. We were on Alaska Air for that flight, and I have to say it was the most positive flying experience I have ever had!!! We boarded to find an itinerary in our seat, there would be 3 services, with the final one serving free Mai Tai’s! Those 6 hours flew by as we watched The Blind Side, Horton Hears a Who, and Jurassic Park 🙂 Before we knew it, we were on the ground in paradise. (The only 3 photos I took in Boise with the Bronica…. the state Capitol, The Boise State Bronco’s blue field, and a mural painted in downtown). I actually really liked Boise, it was clean, people were friendly and their downtown was full of cool shops and restaurants! It reminded me a lot of Asheville. Here are my Boise instagrams 🙂 On to Hawaii….. Monday we visited Pearl Harbor…. a place I think everyone should see. …. and then spent the afternoon driving around the eastern part of the island. Below is Makapu’u Beach park. There was a fee to get down on the sand, so we admired from above. Tuesday we visited the Dole Plantation and the North Shore. Wednesday we went out to the beach at Waikiki, which I think was pretty disappointing. The sand is really hard. So, we cleaned up and headed to find the Lanikai Shrimp Truck…. with no luck. But we did discover Kailua Bay… so beautiful!! We even came back to Kailua the next day (on Thanksgiving) to soak up a little sun. The photo above of us is at Kailua on Wednesday, we were really sad that it’s the only photo of us together that whole trip and it’s blurry 🙁 I guess that means we’ll just have to go back! A huge thank-you to Ashley Goodwin who, at the last moment, invited us to spend Thanksgiving with her, her hubby and some of her friends. Alyssa Turner graciously welcomed us into their beautiful home where we all chatted like old friends over a huge spread of food. We were so thankful for some home-cookin’ after eating out every single meal for 2 weeks. Hawaii Instagrams:   We boarded our overnight flight from Hawaii to San Diego on Friday night. Orignially, the plan was to come home on Friday and have some time to relax and catch up before going to work on Monday…. when we booked our flights, the only flight home on Friday was a non-stop flight to New York and the New York to Charlotte…. NO THANK YOU. No way you were going to convense us that HI to NY was a good idea. So we thought…. why not stop in California for the weekend, and help break up the flight home. As luck would have it, there was a San Diego Chargers home game on Sunday… perfect! We arrived in San Diego about 7AM on Saturday morning, extremely tired but excited to see California. We picked up our rental car and spent the next 6 hours driving around seeing what their was to see (the hills, Coranado, etc.)….. and sitting in Starbucks to re-charge our phones. Travel Tip…. BRING A CAR CHARGER!! By the time we landed our iPhones were almost dead, so we camped out at a Starbucks for nearly an hour while we recharged so we could find our way around. We decided on tacos for lunch, and found Taco’s El Gordo is listed as a great one. It was awesome!! Total hole-in-the-wall…. with fresh tacos, quesadillas…. etc. And so cheap, I think we both ate for about $12! After eating, we decided we might be able to go ahead and check in our hotel (which we randomly booked on Friday afternoon before leaving Hawaii!), the Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina….. we got in, and discovered our balcony looked out on to the view below…. forget being tired, the pool was calling our name. We spent about an hour by the pool and decided that having not slept in about 36 hours had caught up to us and it was nap time. About 4 hours later we googled for a local dinner spot and found The Tractor Room. This was by far some of the best food we ate the whole time we were gone, SO YUM! We slept like rocks and woke up the next day ready to visit Qualcomm Stadium to see the Chargers play the Ravens. San Diego Instagrams:   Our 36ish hours in San Diego was so great, and we really want to go back. We left the game to turn in our rental car and head back to the airport to head home…. one more overnight flight to Charlotte.