Wednesday June 21, 2023 Take Southwest airlines to Nassau, Bahamas. Hotel Transfer: Majestic Tours, book thru Atlantis hotel 2 weeks before the trip. Stay 4 nights at Atlantis on Paradise Island, Bahamas.
Thursday June 22, 2023 Explore hotel
Friday June 23, 2023 Two hour tour of Nassau: 2 historic places are Ft Findale and Queen staircases.
Saturday June 24, 2023 Explore hotel
Sunday June 25, 2023 Check out Atlantis hotel, fly to FLL, from FLL fly to John Wayne airport.
Saturday June 17, 2023 Fly to Ft. Flauderdal (FLL) from John Wayne airport (SNA) via Southwest airlines. Stay 1 night at Hyatt House Fort Lauderdale Cruise Port. Picked up car rental at Budget. They upgraded to 4Runner from Rav4 free of charge.
Sunday June 18, 2023 Check out hotel and drive to Key West. Stay 1 night at Hyatt Centric Key West Resort & Spa.
Monday June 19, 2023 Check out and take Yankee Freedom boat to Dry Tortugas. Breakfast and lunch provided on the boat. Depart at 8:30 AM and back to port at 5:15 PM. Drive to Miami. Stay 2 nights at Hyatt Centric South Beach Miami .
Tuesday June 20. 2023 Five-hour Tour Everglades, book thru Groupon.com
Wednesday June 21, 2023 Check out hotel in Miami, drive to Ft. Lauderdale to return rental car at FLL and take Southwest Airlines to fly to Nassau, Bahamas.
Due to Covid-19, Japan has closed their border and does not allow any travelers to get in their country, which means our trip to Japan is cancelled. The Stunning Tours company gave us the option to postpone the trip to next year (Nov 2022) or to take the credit; we chose to postpone to next year. This meant that we had a full week of vacation with no where to go so we decided to take the road trip to see the Monument Valley, a place where the famous movie was film: The Forest Gump. This would be our longest road trip ever with the driving of 8.5 hours on the first day to reach to the first destination and the total trip days was 6 days. Before this trip, we only arranged the trip to drive max of 6 hrs a day and 4 days in total. This was also the first time that we missed Thanksgiving dinner with our family.
Saturday 11/20/2021: Drive to Page, stop at Las Vegas for lunch and break. Stay at Home2Suite hotel in Page.
There was traffic after we left Las Vegas that it took us 6 hours to get to Page. By the time we got there, it was so late. Fortunately Hilton hotel allows us to digitally check in so we went straight to our room upon arrival.
Sunday 11/21/2021: explore Page, stay 2nd night at Page.
Horseshoe Bend, Upper Antelope Canyon tour.
Monday 11/22/2021: drive to Monument Valley from Page (2 hrs)
First stop was View Hotel, took a quick drive on the scene drive, then Sunset tour of the back country.
Check in a Goulding Hotel around 5:30 PM.
Tuesday 11/23/2021: Forest Gump Point, Mexican Hat, Valley of the Gods. Drive back to Page.
It was raining and cold this day but we got a good shot at the Forest Gump Point.
Stay at Home2Suite hotel in Page for 1 night.
Wednesday 11/24/2021: Zion National Park, Las Vegas.
On the way back to Las Vegas, we stopped by Zion Park. Did not know it still had beautiful yellow leaves so we stayed here longer than we planned.
Arrive to Las Vegas and check in to Hilton at Resort World, a brand new hotel just opened this year.
Thursday 11/25/2021: Las Vegas.
Spent our Thanksgiving at Las Vegas. Explore the hotel Resort World. William loved to swim at the hotel pool until they closed at 5:00 PM.
Walk to Paris Hotel to see the Effeil tower lit at up night; and Bellagio to watch the dancing water.
Friday 11/26/2021: Go home
Check out the hotel and go home, there was no traffic at all so we got home early around 4:00 PM.
It’s our most favorite season of the year: Autumn; and the nearest location to our place is of course Bishop, which is around 6 hours driving. Actually this year we were planning to go to Cedar City, Utah but then we heard that it’s peaking at Bishop so we changed our plan in the last minute. It’s peaking at North Lake and South Lake, Rock Creek Lake but other areas at lower elevation is still green. Maybe in the next 2 weeks it’ll peak there.
William was so excited as usual about the trip, but he did not like Travelodge, “It’s a motel, not hotel!”.
– It’s a small city, there’s no resorts here. I said.
– Why? he asked.
– Because people come to this town for hiking and fishing , not to relax.
– Bishop is a bad city, it only has motels not hotels! – He kept saying that.
This time we had his Grandpa Thieu Bui (Tim’s Dad) to go with us. He wanted to see yellow leaves. We did not think that he’d have trouble breathing in high elevation area but he did. First afternoon we went to North Lake, he had trouble breathing ; and worse, he left his ventilator at the hotel so we gave him William’s ventilator (which we always carry with us along with EpiPen everywhere we go) and then we had to leave right away.
The plan for today was visit the famous Ho-omaluhia Botanical Garden and Byodo-In Temple. After that we had lunch at the KFT in the small shopping center near by and headed to the Kailua beach.
Today highlights would be riding the Maitai catamaran for 1.5 hour and Kuloa Ranch’s Hollywood Sites tour.
This day marked 1 of the most terrifying moment in my life: we lost William while walking from hotel to the Maitai catamaran departure point. I was not sure if we headed the right direction so I left William with Tim to go asking for directions. When I came back I asked Tim, where’s William? Tim looked around and there was no sign of him around! Tim said, “He was just here looking at the sign!”. Tim ran back toward the streets, I looked at the beach but I did not think he’d go there by himself because he’s always afraid of the waves, so the only direction he’d go is to go back to the hotel. So Tim ran that way, I followed. After 10 minutes walking, we met a couple and they said they saw a boy was running and calling “Dad! Dad!”. Someone already stopped him when Tim caught up with him. Poor little guy, he was crying so hard. Lots of thanks to those nice people that stopped him, otherwise we could not catch up if he kept running.
Maitai Catamaran: William at first was excited when we got on the catamaran but later he felt asleep, he only woke up that last 15 minutes. Not sure if he was seasick or not. It was a beautiful day to spend the day with family: nice music and clouds and view of the Waikiki beach and Diamond Head. At some point it was rough that the ocean water was splashed into our boat.
Maitai Catamaran
Waiting to board the boat
William was sleeping
Our whole gang…
Before boarding
After boarding
Kuloa Ranch: the tours at Kuloa ranch sold out fast 2 weeks in advance so I could only book 5 tickets to the Hollywood Movie sites tour. We were supposed to check in 1 hour before the tour time but we got there late because it took almost 1 hour to get there from the hotel. They called us right on time when we just got to the ranch entrance. They took us around the ranch on a open window bus. It’s a very beautiful ranch where they shot lots of famous movies like Jurassic Park. But in my opinion it’s not a must to visit.
Our summer vacation this year was Honolulu, Oahu, and we were staying for 3 nights at one of the most beautiful hotel on the island, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. William is 7 years old now, he’s old enough not to cry and he loves to fly! The only issue during our flight from LAX – Honolulu is that he kept standing up on the chair and touched the lights on the ceiling and often times pulling down/up the food tray so strong that would shake the seat of the person sitting in front of him. Lucky for us it’s Danny seat so we were not yelled at. He did not want to watch any movie, all he wanted was looking at the map.
William only slept for about 30 minutes; United airlines did not serve lunch; I brought 1 lunchbox from home so that was William’s lunch. We were late because we had a bit of issue getting the pre-approval of covid-19 so did not have time to buy any thing for lunch; lucky for us aunt Eliza gave me a croissant, which I shared with aunt Julie.
Everyone is required to wear mask all the time, except for when eating.
We arrived at Honolulu airport around 11:00 AM, it took so long for the luggage to come out. Then we headed to the Budget rental car to pick up 2 minivans to fit total of 12 of us. Then we headed to Pho Que Huong at China town for lunch; the food here is good. After lunch, we stopped by Costco on the way to the hotel for some water and snacks. Aunt Eliza bought William a set of Beach toys! William enjoyed his churros while looking out the window: it’s his first time here at Waikiki.
Check in at the hotel took so long: about 1 hour! I already checked in via Hilton Honors app, otherwise it’d take longer because the general check in line was so long. It took so long because they required EACH adult to log in to the Safe Travel web site and show them the trip details.
But then when we got to our room, the view was spectacular; it was worth all the hassle! After a short break, we headed down to the Hilton Lagoon, William loved it here! We got lucky that someone gave us 3 floats because their trip ended today.
William loves this Hilton lagoon because it’s not deep.
Waikiki beach, in front of the hotel
Walking to Mc. Donald, Danny holds William’s hand.
