April A-Z 2018: My First Trip to Hawai'i

It's been just over a year since I made my first trip to Hawai'i and not a day goes by when I don't think about how much I hope to someday return.

How did I get there, though? How did I make a dream become a reality?

For the answers to those questions, we have to go back in time to October 2016. Or, really, even further back to May 2016. My husband and I were planning a trip to France with friends. To get a discount on the flight, my husband opted into a Delta Gold SkyMiles card with a bonus of 70,000 SkyMiles. The trip to France was expensive; it exceeded all of my expectations. It was worth every cent. But the additional SkyMiles we got just for having taken the trip and put the flight costs on my husband's new Delta Gold SkyMiles card took our trip to France to a new level. Because you see, those SkyMiles were the difference between booking two tickets to Hawai'i when the flights went on sale … and not. :)

I follow a million different travel blogs. So, when I saw the deal for spending 35,000 Delta SkyMiles for a flight to Hawai'i, I didn't think much of it. I looked at my husband and jokingly asked: "wanna go to Hawai'i?" I mean, my plan was to split the 70,000 SkyMiles up and use them for a bunch of different flights. One flight to NYC. One flight to DC. You get the picture. But ultimately, I had decided they were my husband's SkyMiles so we would use them how he saw fit. Well, to my absolute shock and surprise, he said yes, he did want to go to Hawai'i with those SkyMiles. 😳 I had two days to decide which island we were going to or we would miss out on the deal altogether.

Google to the rescue!

Someone, on Google (probably a FlyerTalk forum), recommended splitting the flight. Fly into Island A and out Island B. Ok, so which island? Pearl Harbor was a must-see, so I knew we had to explore Oahu. But I had heard a lot about Maui. So, in Maui, out Oahu. Sounds good, right?

But the other islands?

I quickly added Lanai and Molokai to the itinerary. The Big Island was much too big to add to a week-long vacation, but two small islands could fit in pretty easily, so why not?

After booking the flights, I spent countless hours researching and organizing, planning intensely for this once in a lifetime trip.

And now, a year after having returned from going, I have decided to share my tips, tricks, surprises, and aloha love during April A-Z. I hope you enjoy seeing and learning all about my trip during the next 25 days!