Off to Maui

Friday morning, we left the Big Island and headed to the airport to fly to Maui. I thought we were taking a "normal" sized plane from the regular part of the airport. But, when the rental car bus driver dropped us off, we found ourselves here:

We were told to get there an hour before the flight -- you know, security lines at airports can take a while, right? Well, this is the "crowd" we had to contend with.

And, then we learned what our plane looked like:

In fact, this airline is so small that the PILOTS loaded our luggage!

Once we boarded, we might as well have been getting on a bus. They never looked at any of our identification the entire time we were there. They did not send our luggage through an x-ray machine and we did not have to go through any sort of security check system.

Here's the pilot giving us the safety talk in our 9-passenger plane prior to take-off. He laughed when we asked him if there would be a beverage service.

You can see they have Maui on their radar screen, so that was reassuring.

The trip took about a half hour. We arrived safe and sound. More about Maui later.