So We’re finally back! And I feel like I’ve been running cross country for the last two months straight.

Basically since we left for our North Carolina trip back at the beginning of December. But all this has been a great distraction from the terribly post-election mess I had become back in November.  So, let’s go back.

December 29th. Penny came to pick us up to take a long late night trek to Austin for our 5 am flight to Hawaii! Typically, I had barely even started packing until that evening. To start out the trip on the right foot, we all witnessed a shooting across the street from my parents’ very normal boring suburban house. Harold was saying goodbye to us by the car when we heard two gunshots and a car peel away and another man run into his house. In my typical awkward Dr Hubert style, I coulnd’t stop laughing. It’s just my luck to start out this birthday escapade with a call to the police while some strange suburban drama unfolds.

Nothing that couldn’t be fixed by a trip to Buccees. So, Chris, Penny and I got about 2 hours of sleep at Molly’s house in Austin before heading to the airport. My first experience with TSA Pre-Check (My mother’s early birthday present to me) was heaven! If heaven was filled with a bunch of haughty old rich people and 3 year olds with their own iPads.  Our layover in Denver was loooong, but I found a cozy spot to bunker down with a beautiful view of the mountains. If you’re going to have to suffer through an extended layover on little or no sleep, you might as well spend it looking out over the spender of the Rocky Mountains, one of my favorite places on Earth.

Flying from Denver to Kona on the Big Island of Hawaii was a spectacle of ever changing landscapes out of my tiny airplane window. Although I’m usually the champion of sleeping anytime, anywhere, I found myself unable to take my eyes off of the ground below. My phone camera feebly trying to capture the grande with each click. The peaks of the mountains gave way to vast cracked deserts before lush forests then cities with homes, buildings and tiny cars on ribbons of highways crowded the skyline until miles and miles of ocean spread out below our wings.

It was a great visual representation of my challenge up until this point. Thousands of miles of highway has been beat down below my tires since my journey began. My favorite part was always the transitions. I travel by road across the country, each inch connecting the next connecting the next. Before you travel it, it seems so far, but once you’ve experienced the journey, it’s just a few inches then steps the blocks that make up the miles in between. Just a series of road trip tunes and short naps lulled by the hum of the car rolling across the pavement. It all feels so connected. Until now.

Hawaii is unique. An angry volcano spewing up new land into the middle of the Pacific. Unlike the  wonderfully calculable hard ground I’ve been driving on, it is connected to us only by miles upon miles upon miles of deep, vast, ever churning ocean water. As we flew above, it felt like each mile we traveled was being constantly washed away.  I set an alarm on my phone to make sure I would be awake to see the first sign of the shoreline.

Before this trip, I didn’t realize that I had some pretty firm preconceived notions about what I would expect to encounter in Hawaii. Mostly based on photos and videos and the way it is portrayed in media, film and popular culture. A beautiful paradise of perfect white sandy beaches and MaiTais in coconuts. I didn’t expect to be truly touched by a place like that. I’m not sure why I expected Hawaii to be what basically amounted to a glorified theme park but I now realize that that idea of this place as a novelty is exactly the dangerous thinking that has lead to the disrespect of the native people over the years.  In my visit, I realized on a visceral level how very alive the islands are. Teeming with plant and wildlife, but also, perhaps due to the constant volcanic activity, the land feels deeply alive in a way that’s difficult to describe.

When we flew in, my tiny camera snapped away at the new scenery that had appeared from the blank slate of the ocean. First beach, then rainforest, then black lava flows encrusting the Earth. As the plane circled around the island and back over the sea to align itself for landing on the black barren land of the Kona side. We saw a long stretch of white sand beach straight from a pamphlet appear below the plane opening up onto the water but surrounded on all sides for miles by a sea of black craggy lava rock landscape as if someone had placed the wrong puzzle piece onto the edge of the picture. The Kona airport itself is a trip. The entire airport is outdoors. A few waiting areas are adorned with roofing but most are opened up to the sun and the clouds above.

Most of that first day was just me thinking – I can’t believe I’m here! We made it! And grinning from ear to ear.  The 50 states quest is over. I can’t help feeling  accomplished albeit a little sad. The goal that pushed me to places and experiences I never thought I would have ended on a truly unusual and unique place in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. America is weird, guys.