Today is the day!!! (4/4/14)

Finally!!! A long awaited 6 1/2 months is finally here. We are very very excited to start this journey. We are at the airport now eating some breakfast waiting for our plane that's flying in from Chicago to arrive. We board in about 45 minutes, next stop Vegas!!!!

Enjoyed the parting gift from mother nature this morning, goodbye to you to Iowa!! :-)

The countdown is on! (3/12/14)

22 days to go!! Time to get serious about planning an itinerary for the trip and figuring out all the little details. Of course the planning for the 44 hours spent in Vegas will be easy: go go go, sleep as little as possible, see the fountains, hit up Fremont street, visit all the casinos, get EVERYTHING we possibly can fit in to the little amount of time we have! We are really hoping that the new High Roller Ferris Wheel will be open so we can take a ride on that! Our flight from Vegas to Honolulu is about 6 & 1/2 hours and we plan to catch up on our sleep then :) I really love following other people's trips so my plan is to try and keep this updated (when I can) while we are gone.

Getting Closer! (1/29/14)

I cant not believe how fast but unbelievably slow the time is going! Only 64 more days to go. We have FINALLY decided on a hotel for Oahu. We will be staying at the gorgeous Park Shore Waikiki.
We are staying in a beautiful Ocean Front room and are very excited to wake up to the wonderful views of the ocean. 

In the meantime we have also booked a guided kayak tour where the guide will take us to Poipoa island, Lanikai beach and the Mokulua islands and we will also get to search for Hawaiian Green Sea Turtles while snorkeling. We have also set up surfing lessons and purchased tickets to go see Pearl Harbor.

  

It's OFFICIAL!! (11/5/13)

Well the trip is finally OFFICIAL! Plane tickets were booked last night and we could not be more excited. Of course the downside to the trip is that we still have 149 days to go, boo!

We will be leaving Des Moines on Friday April 4th mid-morning arriving in Las Vegas around 1:00 pm. We are then going to spend the next 44 hours in Las Vegas before we head to Hawaii! We figured we might as well stop and enjoy sin city for a minute while we are passing through!

Sunday April 6th at 9:00 am we are going to make our way to Oahu. We will arrive in Oahu around noon where we are going to stay in a hotel on Waikiki Beach until Thursday April 10th. Thursday evening we are going to leave Oahu and head to the Big Island where we will stay for the rest of our trip.

We leave late Sunday night April 13th around 11:00 pm and fly overnight back to Vegas and then Vegas back to Des Moines getting home around 5:30 pm Monday evening.

Now time to decide hotels for Vegas and Oahu!

And the planning begins! (10/24/13)

We will be spending time on the Big Island as well as time on Oahu. Here are some of the things we would like to do and see while we are there!

Big Island-
Hawaii Volcano National Park
‘Akaka Falls State Park
Waipio Valley
Wailuku River State Park
Punaluu Black Sand Beach
Liliuokalani Gardens

Oahu-
Sunrise at Lanikai Beach
Waimea Valley
Day trip around the Island
Pearl Harbor
Kayak Tour
North Shores "famous" Ehukai Beach (Banzai Pipeline)
Hanauma Bay Snorkeling
Honolulu Zoo & Aquarium