A Week in Paradise

We flew back from Hawaii a week ago. We had fun while we were there even tho it rained a lot. One of the things that was new to us was the rental car. It didn't have a key. All we got was a fob. It would lock and unlock the doors, do the panic thing (blow the horn) and it also had to be in or around the car in order to start the car and to open the tailgate, liftgate, whatever. I think if you were to buy that model it would come with a key as there was a slot on the handle for the driver's door for a key, but it had a piece of scotch tape over it.

This was the rental car, a Buick Encore.

  At first I would put the fob in the cupholder in the console, but then I thought what if I locked the doors and couldn't open them. After that revelation I would keep it in my pocket and only take it out to unlock and lock the doors.

This is the fob.

One of the things that I didn't like was there wasn't an owner's manual in the car. When we first got it the dash was saying the percentage of the oil change that had been used. One day I played with it and didn't figure out how to change it. When I tried again a day or so later I was able to figure out how to navigate the menu and put it on fuel range. That way I had some idea on how far I could go before it ran out of gas. We had paid for filling the tank at the time of the rental and the guy said as long as we brought back with less than  a 1/4 tank it would be a good deal. We managed to run it down to about 60 miles left and because it was over 25 miles back to the airport and we weren't done running around I put $5 worth in it, which was a littl over a gallon and a half at $2.929 a gallon.

One of the places we went was Waimea Canyon. It was interesting and at the observation places the wind was such you almost had to lean into it to get close to the railing at the edge.

Waimea Canyon

Here's a link to more pictures and info on Waimea Canyon, the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

We managed to see most of the island, Kauai isn't a very big island. There is still some stuff we didn't see, but we only had a week and like I said it rained a lot. It would rain and some times it was a downpour, but later it would stop and the sun would come out. Some days it would be off and on rain, we would wait until the rain stopped and then go out and play tourist. Almost everywhere people will say, "If you don't like the weather, wait a while and it'll change!" Well, it certainly was true while we were on Kauai. I don't remember it raining so much when I was on Oahu almost 30 years ago, but I was there in April that time.