Hawaii/LA Day Eight:
Today was a lazy day. Got up a little late (7AM), hung around the hotel and checked-out about noon. The plan was to drive back to the RTH and find the rainbow trees that SomethingFishy spoke so highly of. The trees are located right off the highway at mile marker 7 (you will notice these a lot more if you are using the Maui Revealed guide). Mile marker seven was right outside the town of Paia, and we started scanning the tree groves once we made it through town. We did a few drive bys, but could not seem to locate the trees. I reached out to SF and was made aware, that we were at the wrong place, and the trees were at marker sever on the RTH, and not highway 36 which leads into the RTH. With not enough time to go find the trees, we hung around the town for a bit and then went to the airport.
I went to check-in before dropping the car off, as I did not want to drag our suitcases any more then I needed to. Something to note, they scan all bags departing to the mainland for fruit/vegetables. I know pineapples, are allowed off the island, but not sure if anything else is. The flights were booked on AA using BA and an AA credit card for free bags and the infant was added for free as well. After getting our boarding passes, we went to drop the car off, took a shuttle back and went to security. We were not so lucky to get pre-check on our boarding passes this time, but the line was fairly small. After security they scan your bags again for fruit/vegetables and then off to the gate.
At the gate, I was able to secure an extra seat for my kid as we were flying in coach (slumming it, I know) and also gate checked a bag they wanted to charge me for at check-in. The flight went by pretty quickly, and we were landing in LAX about 11:10 PM. There was some congestion at the gates, so we had to wait about twenty minutes until we were able to approach our gate and get the jet bridge attached. The luggage seemed to take an extremely long time to come out as well, and once it did, we went to grab a shuttle to our hotel. Hotel check-in was smooth, the room is in middle of renovations, but it was a place to sleep. We know have half a day of fun in LA before we head back home and say goodbye to this vacation and TR.