A real vacation-check!

First let me say, vacation is a wonderful thing! I don’t mean just a three-day weekend or a week off from work to have a break from that routine to stay home and not go anywhere in particular. A real, two-week vacation means getting out of town, without the tacked on conference or business meeting, without the constraints of accommodating friends, children, or other relatives and totally disconnecting from TV, computers or social media.

Don’t me wrong, those options are NOT always a realistic option for “vacation” and my husband and I have taken just about every one of ours within the limitations of every one of the above. But at least once in your life, take one vacation…a REAL one! Oh, and sand must be involved! Just because!

We returned from our first one like that…ever! We will celebrate our 34th wedding anniversary this year and it was time for one just like that!

We limited our social media influence purely for security reasons…the world doesn’t need to know how many days our home might be unattended while we are “sharing” every little detail of our vacation. We only kept our cell phones charged to check on our daughter, who was keeping the dog, and to check the weather back home as compared to our glorious island vacation. We did enjoy missing the 100 degree days Norman experienced while we were walking the beach at a much more delightful 82 degrees! We “watched” about 4 minutes of television to see an infomercial regarding the island but the TV flickered so badly we turned it off. We could go outside and live the infomercial!

This was our due diligence vacation to determine if we really, truly want to move more than 3,000 miles to Kauai. The short answer…YES! We saw and experienced nothing that was a deal breaker. Sure there will be sacrifices and trade-offs, but that would be true with any move. We have moved six times in our married life and *fingers crossed* this will be the last but there are lots of people who have moved more often, and much further, so we don’t fit in the category of nomads…yet! (Yes, my friends are chucking about THAT!)

We went on “vacation” to live the island life for two weeks. We bought groceries and cooked our own meals in a real home. We purposely didn’t go the resort route to eat out every meal. We shopped for clothes, we bought gasoline for a full-sized rental car, we talked to locals – native born and short-timers as well as long-time residents – got stuck in traffic, and did a lot of soul searching. At the end of each day we assessed what we liked, didn’t like, what surprised us, disappointed us and listened to the roar of the ocean with trade wind breezes lulling us to sleep every night. No pressures, no deadlines, no hassles, no squabbles…a blissful real vacation.

We picked up a brochure promising 101 things to do on Kauai and I hope we can do them all! We saw the breathtaking Na Pali Coast on a dinner cruise on the Pacific ocean and drove to the top of Kalalau for a lookout over the same coast. Yes, the sky and the water is really that blue! Our photos are a humble attempt at its beauty. Some things you just have to see with your own eyes to believe. We could faintly see where the sky met the ocean…barely. It was surreal!

My husband took more than 2,500 photos so that will take some time to sort through but there are some great ones!

Of course, I found the quilt shops and took some great pictures, too! Come back and see some more of what we lived on our island vacation!