CRUISE VIGNETTES 23, Enna G

FLIGHT TO GUAM
The short flight to Guam was uneventful, and since Guam is a US Island, mostly occupied by US Military, we were not surprised to see a McDonald’s, Burger King, and the Sizzler Steak house. We had a few hours to spend, so rented a car and drove here and there. At one place Emmy saw a table cloth she almost (but not really) bought, but just as we were going to the airport, she made up her mind, and we had to rush back to the store and … … . More trivia — when we visited the island of Sicily later that year, she bought some napkins that matched perfectly.

FLIGHT TO HAWAII, THEN TO KAUAI
We spent the night on the Pan Am 747, on the flight to Hawaii. Few people were on board, so we could stretch across several seats and get a little sleep. When we arrived at the airport in Honolulu, we decided we would get on the first airplane, with available seats, leaving for any one of the outer islands. That’s just what we did, and soon found ourselves on Kauai for 5 days. It could have just as well been Maui or The Big Island, Hawaii.

On the east side of the island, where all the people live, and where the hotels are located, it rained and rained, off and on, for days. Someone said the west side of the island was different. We drove down the east side, and around the south side of Kauai (we had stayed at the Shearton Hotel near here, during one trip), and 5 miles past the end of the road. After driving through pineapple fields we made a left turn through the sugar cane, then found miles of beautiful beach with plenty of sun, and almost no people

COCO PALMS HOTEL
We visited the Coco Palms Hotel (where we had stayed during a visit, several years ago), and in a room next to the lobby we saw a group of people eating McDonald’s food from a bag. Several of them were playing a card game that Jim recognized as “U-ker,” it’s not spelled like that, but is pronounced something like that, and most likely not played anywhere except Indiana. Sure enough, they were from Logansport, Indiana, and a couple of them knew of Charles and Patty's (my Sister Mary’s daughter) lawn mower store. It’s a small world!

FLIGHT TO SAN FRANCISCO
We finally flew to San Francisco, got our car out of the garage, drove to Los Angeles, and a couple of days later our luggage joined us. We had checked it from the airport in Kauai, to San Francisco, but it didn’t get on our plane when we left Honolulu. The airline delivered it to our house in Sherman Oaks a few days later. (I have made maybe 1200 to 1500 airplane flights, and my luggage was only lost twice, but most times I didn’t check it, I carried it.)

A week or so later we drove to San Francisco to meet the ship, retrieve the chain and the rest of our clothes. Well, now we found the chain was too big for some things, too little for others, but I still have a link or two on display.