Hawaii - The 50th State, My 50th State, January 2020

I managed to reach my 49th state (Kentucky) back in April of 1997 and have been planning to add my last ever since. Supposedly only about 1% of the American population has been to all 50 states. That seems somewhat low to me since I know several who have, including my brother, but birds of a feather tend to flock together. I’m also not sure how having been to a state is defined. Regardless of what counts, though, I’ve spent at least a night, had a meal, spent a significant amount of time in, and seen some significant sights (sometimes called “national geographic moments”) in all the ones I’ve been to at this point. Hawaii is a state most well-traveled people hit before they get to many of the others. So what’s taken me so long? Well, for one thing, you can’t get there by car. A second is that it’s a rather expensive but also easy destination. I always figured I’d save it for later when I was older, frailer, and richer, and hit some bigger adventures and exotic locales earlier in my life. And during the last five years based on the East Coast, it made sense to go to the Caribbean or Latin America for winter season trips. With six islands that can be visited, a trip to Hawaii seems like a major logistical undertaking too, at least if you want to see them all in one trip. I always figured I would do it that way, which seemed to me to be something to which I would need to devote at least a month. Over the last few months I was rather inspired by pictures my friends Don and Ann Marie posted on Facebook from their Hawaiian vacation in October. Why wait any longer? The time is now. I also decided not to tackle the whole chain in one go. The rest of the islands will be there for one or more future trips. This first trip I’m going to cover only two of the islands with six full days on Oahu and nine on the Big Island. As usual when I start studying all there is to see and do in the places I travel, I’m heading there wondering if I allocated enough time.

Planned Dates

2020-01-15 to 2020-01-30

Countries

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