18-19 August 2011: Waikoloa, Kona, and Honolulu, Hawaii, DFW Airport, and Baltimore, Maryland

We got up somewhat early on our last day in Hawaii and went to the pool at our resort to spent a little more time in the sun. We hadn't been to the pool yet, nor had we ridden the waterslide, so we opted to do that instead of going to the lagoon again. About an hour and a half later, we had some reading completed and each of us had ridden the waterslide, so we went back to our room, showered off, packed up, and headed out. Goodbye, Hilton Waikoloa Village...you are an awesome resort.

We drove into Kona and spent a good amount of time in traffic, as there was a funeral procession going on for a Hawaiian native who was one of the Navy SEALs killed in action a few weeks ago during the horrible helicopter crash in Afghanistan. We eventually made our way into Kona and went back to the Kona Pub and Brewery for lunch, which was good. Yes, I know I shouldn't go to the same place twice while traveling like this, but we knew where it was, knew it would be fast and we would like it, and we were a little time crunched. So, oh well. Afterwards, we went back to the Kona airport, checked our luggage (Hawaiian Airlines was able to check our backs all the way back to BWI even though we flew them to Honolulu and then American Airlines all the way back...how cool is that?), and got on our very short and uneventful flight to Honolulu.

Then, we waited. We were supposed to spent about an hour in Honolulu and that turned into about five, due to a large delay. We spent that time working (I wrote more in the book I am writing) and then in the airport bar, which had decent food for an airport and also enabled me to get a few more Kona beers on draft. We eventually took off and then spent eight hours in the airplane, unable to sleep. We did some more work and played some games and eventually we landed in DFW. We gave way for those that were trying to making connections (remember, we were about 3.5hr late at this point) and then made our way off the plane, happy to be standing. :)

We ate lunch at the Blue Mesa Taco Bar (their website is here) where I had tacos and Cin had avocado quesadillas, both of which were good. We then got on our flight to Baltimore and arrived with no problems, having watched a bunch of How I Met Your Mother on the laptop. Good times. Our friend Mo picked us up at the airport and that's that. Vacation over. Awesome vacation over.