Trip to Kauai, Hawaii Day 1

Well, the day that we have been waiting for arrived.  We have planned a trip to the island of Kauai in Hawaii.  Kauai is known as the Garden Island of HI.  We have never been to Hawaii and in case you didn't know it 24MT does not have the range to make it there so we had to break down and fly commercial, yuk.  Well, I like flying in any form, but it is always better when it is in your ride.  The plan though was to incorporate a flight down to the Twin Cities (Minneapolis/St. Paul for you non Minnesotans) in our plane to then fly out of KMSP to Hawaii the next day.  We were saving $400 per person to fly out of there rather than taking a puddle jumper from Thief River to the Cities.  So the decision was a no brainer.  I got to incorporate a flight down to the cities in my plane which gives me a good excuse to fly cross country in my plane as part of our trip.  This also allows me to make a good blog entry into my general aviation blog.  But NOOOOOOOOO, the gods seem to have a sense of humor.  We were fogged in across the entire state for three days.  THREE DAYS!!!!  Forcasts said it would lift. by the day we were planning on leaving, but unfortunately the forcast was wrong.  So, I finally broke down after waiting for most of the morning for the fog to clear up and made the only decision that I could make, DRIVE TO THE CITIES.  God I hate that.  You see, I live 6 hours from the Cities by car, compared to an hour and forty five minutes in 24MT.  You can see why I would prefer to fly rather than drive.  I would fly even if it was closer, just cuz.  But safety for me and my family dictated Plan B.

To give you an idea of what it looked like outside my place when we started driving I have included two pictures of how thick the fog was below.  I mean you could cut it with a knife.

 So as you can see it was impossible to take off in this.  The take off alternate would have been somewhere in mid North Dakota.

About 3 hours into our drive the fog began to lift in some places and you could see the frost that was on the trees from the temperature inversion.   OUCH!!!, that stuff would have stuck nicely to my wing.  I think we made the right decision.  This fog lifting was in intermittent places and then you would be back in the soup again.  That blue sky in the picture is also just a whole in the cloud/fog cover.  It was just ugly all the way down.

It took us the same time to drive to the cities as it took us to fly to Hawaii from Los Angeles KLAX.  But we made it safely to the Hotel that we would stay at overnight for our flight out the next morning.  Below is a picture of my excited kids in the lobby of the Hilton just as we arrived.

All safe and sound in the cities.  Safety first.  Stay tuned for day two.