Travel to the Big Island

(Katherine) The days between our wedding day and SF departure day consisted of frantic packing for long term SF storage, short term SF storage, items for Goodwill, items to trash, and items to take with us to Robert's Uncle John's house in LA (our home base in the states.) After a sleepless night of final packing in SF and driving all night to LA, we arrived at Robert's sister & her boyfriend's house (Joanna & Jason) at 5am and got just a few hours of shuteye before we left for our Hawaii adventure out of LAX.
This was the first leg of our honeymoon, but we had decided to spend it with friends. My friend Kien has been my gay boyfriend for about 10 years, and is now a close friend of Robert's as well. He had been wanting to visit Hawaii for a vacation anyway, so he & his friend Natalie joined us for a week on the big island. Kien is friends with a super nice couple named Tina and Barbara who live in Santa Rosa, CA, and also own a house in Hilo. They generously offered to let us all stay at their house for 5 nights for free (in exchange, you purchase something for the house – very fair deal.) Our plan was to fly into Hilo where Kien & Natalie would pick us up & spend 5 days in Hilo, and then visit Kona together for 2 days, then just Robert & I would continue on to Ohau. Although the transition to Hawaii was exhausting after 2 weeks of packing & moving out of our apartment, we were extremely happy to finally arrive on the island and stay at our wonderful house in rural Hilo (mind you, I was still wearing the same clothes I was put on in SF – ugh!)