While my family and I had a great time on our multigenerational trip to Maui, by the end of the week we were prepared to fly home to our regular lives, but Hurricane Lala had other plans. We had been keeping a close eye on the forecast and predictions of the storm’s likely path and effects on the Hawaiian Islands. It seemed the storm would pass south of the island chain, though some models suggested it might briefly make landfall on the Big Island. Maui would likely experience some strong winds and heavy rain (highly dependent on where you were on the island), but towards the end of the week forecasters were predicting it wouldn’t hit until later on Saturday. We were scheduled to fly out late Saturday morning and felt we would be in the clear for takeoff. Ah, we were such optimists!

Friday afternoon we gassed up our rental van at the Costco in Kahului, taking the rainbow arching over the pumps as a good omen for our upcoming travel day. After a final island dinner at a nearby food truck lot (amazing food, by the way!) with a stunning sunset (red sky at night, sailors delight, right?), we headed back to our condo for our final packing. At about 9:30 p.m., we received text notifications from Alaska Airlines that our flight had been cancelled, and we jumped into controlled panic mode. We immediately got on the phone with a representative to work out how and how soon we could catch a flight home. As my husband talked with the agent, my daughter was on her phone scanning all the possible routes we might take to get us to Portland. The Alaska agent’s first option for us was a convoluted route that would involve a flight to Dallas on Sunday, then a red eye to San Diego, on to Seattle and finally to Portland. Even without flying with a two-year-old and a six-year-old, that was a hard no. Keep in mind that we had to find a flight that could accommodate five of us and we could be assured of each little girl being seated next to an adult. It took easily more than an hour on the phone with two different representatives (and some persistent sleuthing by daughter Jenny), but we finally worked out a route on Hawaiian Airlines from Maui to Sacramento, then on to Seattle and PDX, leaving Sunday around 11:30 a.m. Phew!!

Next, we had to work out where we would stay Saturday night, as we were to be out of our rooms by 11 a.m. on Saturday. Our three-bedroom unit was already booked for the next night, but the two-bedroom condo next door, which our older daughter’s family had occupied, was available. We grabbed that (Sarah’s flight, departing at 7 a.m. Saturday, was still on, and they got home via SFO without a hitch) and made the transfer Saturday morning, with Jenny taking the Murphy bed in the living room.

We spent the day Saturday doing a little extra souvenir shopping and walking around while wondering why our flight had been cancelled when flights continued to depart Kahului Airport well into the afternoon. (We later learned it had to do with the aircraft type that had been assigned to our original flight, which apparently did not have the rating to handle the expected weather.) Indeed, in Kihei on the southwest shore of Maui, we had moderate winds and no rain until evening (and then, only sprinkles), but the temperatures were quite warm. I walked down to the beach in the afternoon and found few people there, only a couple in the water. There were whitecaps farther out, but really no greater than what we had seen on a few windy afternoons earlier in the week. Dark clouds moved in and out, but it all felt pretty anticlimactic. Of course, we were the fortunate ones.

We nervously watched our phones the rest of the evening, but fortunately no cancellation notices arrived. Weatherwise, it was a quiet night: no really high wind and only moderate rain. The drive to the airport Sunday morning took us through areas where traffic signals were out due to spotty power outages, and branches were down here and there, but, again, that part of the island seemed to have escaped significant lasting impacts. Our luck ran out just as we began unloading our luggage at the terminal, as we were notified our flight was delayed for at least two hours. This meant that our connection in Sacramento to Seattle would be missed, which blew up our whole itinerary. It also meant NICU nurse Jenny would have to cancel a second shift at work.

The next three hours were pretty uncomfortable as we stood in line with a mass of other people also scrambling to deal with the fallout of several delays. Part of the Kahului terminal is open-air, and so we stood in hot and humid conditions with little airflow and two little girls who were amazingly tolerant considering the situation, but it was not a fun experience! Jenny made good use of the time, however, as she again began working her phone to find us a way to get from here to there. We quickly determined we’d need to overnight in Sacramento, as our new departure time meant we would get in around 10 p.m. Our new itinerary had us departing Sacramento on Monday morning for a direct flight to Portland, so that was a plus, and we would get a good night’s sleep at the hotel before a relatively short two-hour flight for the final leg.

The line to get to the ticket counter seemed interminable, but at last we dropped our bags and car seats, got our tickets and hustled to our gate. We had just a little time to get some cold bottles of water and snacks (little Josie kept exclaiming how good the water was after every sip) and use the restroom before boarding our flight. As much as we enjoyed our visit, we were all pleased when at last we lifted off!

One of the bright points of our return home was Sacramento‘s open, spacious, modern airport. The airport has often been at the forefront of innovation, being the first airport in the United States to open a consolidated car rental terminal and one of the first to offer free WiFi to its guests. SMF boasts 51 nonstop destinations, including service by Aeromexico to Mexico. Terminal B was part of a $1.03 billion project completed in 2011, featuring a landside terminal and airside concourse connected by an automated people-mover. (Josie, a Daniel Tiger fan, was delighted to ride on the “trolley.”) I really appreciated all of the natural light that flooded into the four-story atrium, and Laurence Argent‘s 56-foot-long whimsical suspended sculpture of a bright red rabbit, Leap, bounding through the space towards the ground-floor baggage claim area, added to my delight. (Global travelers may recognize Argent as the artist who created Denver Convention Center’s Big Blue Bear.

65270924 © Nyker1 | Dreamstime.com

After such a stressful 48 hours of travel chaos and upheaval, it reminded me that the placement of art in transit hubs is not just a matter of aesthetics, but it also serves as a balm for harried travelers.

May all your future travels be trouble-free!

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor