Living the 9-5 Travel Lifestyle in Hawaii and Las Vegas (Ep. 11)

Transcript

Drew (00:15):
Hello everybody and welcome to Travel Fuels Life. This is Drew Hanish and this is a very interesting and different episode from what I've done in the past. No real interviews this time, but instead I'm going to pack you along inside of my travel bag as I do a nine to five travel lifestyle trip. And so this kind of exposes you to how I travel and how I fit work into what I do. And as an entrepreneur, I've got two businesses. One is a web design company, the other one is my travel business. And for Hanish Web, I need to be available mostly for my employees and clients. They need to be able to have a way to contact me if they need me, and then I need to have a laptop to be able to do some work on. So I use GoToMeeting, I use Google Chat email, just my smartphone in general.

(01:13):
And then for Travel Fuels life that I, on this particular trip, I'm going to be doing and capturing some video footage as well as doing this podcast episode. And so in Hawaii and Las Vegas, there are lots of different sites that can be seen. I thought it'd be cool to put together some videos that show all of these different locations and maybe give, you know, a chance to be able to plan out a cool trip to either spot. And so by watching video, of course, that gives you a nice teaser of some places that you might want to go see. And then on the blog posts, I'll be putting the directions to each of those places. So look for that video coming out later this month for each of those. Those will be two separate videos, but that's really the work that I'm going to be doing while I'm in Hawaii for travel fuels life.

(02:06):
So it creates a need to do a very aggressive schedule. And so this isn't probably the kind of trip that you normally would want to take. You probably want to relax a little bit more. I'm not going to be laying on the beach. I will probably play a little bacarra while I'm there. You'll find out as the show rolls along. And I also wanted to give you guys an idea of how I pack for a trip and also give you the checklist that I use so that I don't forget stuff when I head out on a trip. Of course, silly me, I did leave my charger for my laptop. I mean the one thing I really need other than the tickets to get on a plane. And yeah, it happens. You leave something behind and unfortunately you just kind of have to work around that kind of a thing.

(03:02):
But the checklists work, otherwise, that is on my checklist. Just for some reason I decided to leave my laptop out in the morning and then when I packed it up, I just didn't think about unplugging the cord. And there you go. So you'll hear all the stuff that goes on this trip. And then if you want to find the checklist and also what I put in my travel bag so that I can use the personal bag, carry on. It's a weird thing to call it a personal item because my personal item, I can put enough stuff in there to last for eight days of travel. So I consider it a carryon, but there is a sizing restriction between a carryon and a personal item. And the personal item are usually free. Unfortunately, I found out with United Airlines, they are not free if you're in basic economy, but on American Airlines, I didn't have any problem in taking that personal item on board with me and not having to spend any extra money on it.

(04:08):
So that's what I did. I packed a very light bag and if you go to the show notes page, you will see what I put in that bag because sometimes people are quite amazed that I can take such a small bag and be able to do that kind of travel with it. The other thing is, if you're interested in that bag, you can actually go to travel fuel life.com and click on the shop link and you'll find that bag in the shop. It's actually an Amazon store, so you'll be able to buy the bag through Amazon if you want to do that. So sit back, relax, enjoy a flight to Hawaii and Las Vegas and you're not going to have to pay a dime for it. Not too bad. As I go out on my quest for video footage, a great nine to five travel experience and a lifetime of memories as Hawaii will be my 49th state. So we're going to pick things up as I get to the airport on the way out of town.

(05:09):
Alright, so I made it through TSA and I did the TSA pre-check. It's pretty quiet here at the airport today. So an easy way through. I did say thank you to the TSA agents. They're working for free during this shutdown, and so trying to keep them in mind as I'm rolling through all this. Now of course I got three hours before my plane takes off while two and a half, so that's a good time for me to pull the laptop top out and start working, grab myself a coffee and getting ready for the flight to Charlotte. There's a little weather out there from Chicago and Washington have delayed some planes. So they're moving my gate from a one to three, but I, everything's going smoothly other than the laptop battery. So I guess I'll get that worked out as I can. Maybe I can find one when I get to Vegas. But anyway, off to my next destination

Drew (06:04):
Instruction, I will take off, make sure that your seatbelt is securely fast, your ax entry tapers are in upright and locked position. Headrest the load. And please unplug your device on the aircraft until we are airborn.

Drew (06:34):
So just getting off the plane here in Charlotte, time to refuel, get some food in my belly because I get a five and a half hour flight to Las Vegas. Got about an hour and a half before that one takes off. So this will also give me a chance to catch up on email, get a little more business done. It's kind of funny because the woman that was on the plane next to me who had a nice conversation on the way when we landed, she said she was headed to Pittsburgh and this was a small plane and I can't imagine taking this all the way to Pittsburgh, but somebody said, oh, you're at that same gate. And lo and behold, as I got off the plane and walked by the gate, yep, it is going to Pittsburgh, so hopefully my plane to Las Vegas is a little bit bigger.

(07:38):
All right, so day one in the books, that was a long flight between getting to Charlotte and then taking the five hour plus. We sat there on the runway for 40 minutes. It was a long flight, long day, actually got into a point where they said that they had overbooked the flight and they were giving a $600 credit if somebody wanted to hang out for four hours and wait for the next plane to show up, I could have done that, but I just wanted to get here and relax. So did I. No, I didn't. I got here, got a lift to pick me up and take me over to my hotel, which actually isn't necessarily a hotel. It's more like one of those suck you in to a timeshare kind of places. But I got very lucky because I have to leave tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM So when she said, well, would you like to be here tomorrow at 10 o'clock for, oh, you're leaving early?

(08:44):
Yeah, no, I'm not going to sit around and watch you try to sell me on a timeshare that I don't want. I'm not a big fan of those. She did of course offer to have me come back to Vegas for three nights and pay $199 and get to sit in on a fantastic timeshare discussion. No, not for me. I'm too tired for that. Actually, I wasn't too tired. As I was going to say, as soon as I got done, I grabbed some food. There was a subway right here, so I just got a sandwich and then they had a shuttle that left from here to go over to Planet Hollywood. But I sat there and waited for it for a few minutes and I was looking over at the skyline and I'm like, it's only two blocks for me to get over to the strip.

(09:34):
Why don't I just walk down? So I did. And it wasn't bad. I mean the street was dark, there were no street lights, but there was a lot of traffic on that road. And then it got me a chance to walk down to some casinos I've never been to before who knew Hooters had a casino. They do, it looks like a Hooters when you go inside. They have a couple of different restaurants in there. And then I walked down to the Tropicana, which made me feel old school, Vegas and then went to, that's really nice actually. It was very nice inside. And then I went across to Excalibur and Lor and Mandalay Bay. They're all connected to each other, so you could just walk through the inside, although I went via the outside and saw the front of the buildings before walking through the insides.

(10:29):
So that was a bit of an education for me. I thought about going a little bit further, but it was getting close to nine o'clock, which is around midnight at home. So time to cash it in tonight. Got to get up early tomorrow, five o'clock and be ready to be on a plane. Exact amount of flying that I did today, I got to do tomorrow on the way to San Francisco and then to Hawaii. And by the way, I still don't have a AC charger for my laptop. I guess I'm just going to have to do without one because luckily this thing has a really good battery life and hopefully if I just keep shutting it off after I quickly do whatever I need to do, it'll last out most of this trip. But Best Buy was going to have to order stuff in, and I try to get it through Amazon to Hawaii, but they don't seem to recognize the address that I'm going to. Hopefully it's there. It is an Airbnb, so we'll see. So more adventure coming up tomorrow. And tomorrow is going to be the start of the cruise around Hawaii while also also trying to get some business done. But it looks like most of my business is going to get done on the phone rather than on the laptop unfortunately.

(11:53):
So up at four 50 and ready to head out the door by five 15 after a shower, I didn't unpack much and I'm ready to get to my next destination. So I'm headed to the Las Vegas airport, going to get myself a lift to take care of that. And I did not take much out of my bag last night, so easy to make sure I don't forget anything. I sort of keep everything in a central location. And then once I get to the airport and get through tsa, then I've got myself about two hours worth of working time before I need to shut everything down for the first leg to San Francisco and then on to Hawaii.

(13:00):
So luckily my plane left a little bit early and we got here about 20 minutes early because I only had about 20 minutes to get to the next flight, but now I have 30 minutes to get to the next flight, which gives me enough time to get some food. And so I got what was called a Fillmore at the Klein Deli, which basically is a Ruben, so it works for me. But anyway, that's, that's it for my little lay over here. Got a few minutes to wait and then I should be taken off for Hawaii.

(13:50):
Well, I am officially in Hawaii and I stopped at the rental car agency and ended up with an Altima, which is exactly what I drive at home. Just a newer model. So that's kind of cool, being familiar with the vehicle that you're going to be in, as for landing at the airport, that was pretty awesome. I'll tell you the first thing I noticed was the blast of heat. Whew. It's probably like 84, 85 degrees here. And I just came out of Las Vegas where it was 50 and it was 38 when I left the house. So pretty hot. It was funny, the people I was sitting on the plane next to said that it looked like Idaho when they looked out the window they were from, they're from Washington state. So that was kind of funny. But as I'm driving through here, it's just, it's all of these greenish beige grasses and all this brown lava and lava rocks, and I just saw a woman come up and start picking up lava rocks.

(14:50):
So whatever you think of Hawaii, whatever vision you had is probably on a different island rather than this one because this is a very interesting landscape. So I didn't get much time to do any kind of work in San Francisco. I was on the phone doing a couple of different tasks, still trying to avoid using my laptop at this particular moment. And so far haven't had any business calls that haven't been able to be handled by my staff back at the office. So everything working really well so far and tomorrow is Friday. So with it being a Friday, I am going to be more in touch because no problem with internet service here. I will say one thing that I did not know about coming into Hawaii is that they will ask you to fill out an agricultural document while you're on the plane to make sure that you mention any kind of fruits or grasses or dirt, whatever you may be bringing into the state.

(15:56):
So it's kind of like going to an outside country from that respect. So something to be prepared for. But I'm now going to start doing the two hour drive across the island to Hilo, and this is on the saddle road, so that's going to be fun. But before I even get to that, I need to stop off at a drug store and I got to go about 30 minutes to get to a drug store to buy some mosquito repellent because mosquitoes do love me. And it's just always a good precaution when you're going to a place that your immune system may not be completely ready for so off to see Hawaii. Woohoo, this is not a long drive from one side of the island to the other. It's probably about 70 plus miles. Gas prices will be a little bit high. I would say that they are almost double what we pay in South Carolina.

(16:54):
There's drizzle and that's something that you got to kind of get used to. You also have to get used to a lot of sheep because I drove down a back road and found myself seeing sheep everywhere, horn, sheep. So be a little bit cautious when driving through and also realize that temperature is going to drop. I haven't even gotten to the saddle road yet, and it was 82 degrees down at the airport. It is now 65 degrees with some drizzle at mile marker 48. So this is just something you got to get used to the wild temperature change. And then I saw some cyclists who've been here for a little while from California and they were saying, monk definitely go up and go to the observatory, but they did it in a Jeep. I am of course driving a Altima, don't think I'm going to be driving it up that hill for sure, but at least I can get to the visitor's center. And then there's a six mile hike, but they said that's probably a little aggressive because it goes from something like 9,000 feet to 13,000 feet. And yeah, I don't think I'm really ready for that down to 64. 64. All right, so I'm just watching the temperature drop as I roll along here.

(18:23):
All right, so I got into my Airbnb last night and it was a little touch and go trying to find the place because apparently there's three different houses down one little dirt lane with a house in front, and then my house was the second house. It was very dark, didn't have any of the lights on. That was tough. Luckily I remember I had my flashlight on my phone, so I got in fine with that. It's a nice place though. It's good size and there's two beds in here. I mean, there could be a couple staying here, and it's just me. It's a little noisy with the local frog population. But not too bad. I went ahead and turned this big circular fan that they have on, and it had a nice rumble to it that covered up most of the jungle like noises. This morning I woke up to the sound of that noise, that white noise, but there are, now that it's off, there are roosters and crickets. The frogs have apparently gone to sleep. I will say that

(19:31):
I am not quite acclimated to this time zone yet, but I think having that extra day layover in Las Vegas to sort of get myself acclimated to this probably helped some. I woke up at four, I went to bed last night at nine. So I think my body's not really feeling that same drag going west that it does when you go east. And so it's just making the day a bit longer that first day. And so you just go to bed early and then you can sleep as long as you want to. In fact, I sort of equate it to the idea of when you get up during the weekdays during six o'clock, at six o'clock, and then on the weekends you go out and party and you sleep until 10 or 11 o'clock on Saturday morning. I mean, what is the difference? We're five hours off.

(20:24):
There's about five hours difference there. So sometimes I think we play too many games in our mind anticipating jet lag, and we can kind of maybe adjust the schedule a little bit when we get to the new place or just stay up. You'll be a little tired that first night, but you can get a good night's sleep and you'll probably wake up abnormally early while you're on vacation. But for me as a worker, as somebody who's doing the nine to five business lifestyle, it's good to stay somewhat in touch with your local timezone. That's why I don't really want to stray any more than five or six hours off of my own timezone in living this kind of lifestyle because I have people in the office who are taking care of things in the morning, yes, but I do like to make myself available if I need to.

(21:17):
And so if I get up at four by the time I shower and do all that sort of stuff, five o'clock hits well back home, it's 10 o'clock, so I haven't missed too much stuff that's going on, and now that's going to give me a chance to sit down and get working on whatever it is I need to get working on. And then the cool part is that once it gets to about noon here, everybody's gone home and it's Friday, so I don't think I'm going to have to be worrying too much about what's going on. I can just enjoy the rest of my day from noon until tonight on a Friday night, and then I'm set for the weekend. So this is working out really well. I think in terms of this business planning now, going to Hilo last night, it was a beautiful drive through the sun, kept breaking through, had blue skies, so saw on a Kia without clouds on it, which was really nice.

(22:18):
I heard that sometimes can be a bit of a challenge. And so I snapped as many pictures as I could. And then I went down to Coconut Island in Hilo and was going to get some food down there. But the place that I had picked out when I looked at the menu, it's like $25 for fish and chips. No. So I figured I would go outside of town. I didn't want to settle for going to fast food or something like that, but I found a kind of hole in the wall Thai restaurant. So I spent about $12 for pad tie, which isn't too far out of line for what I would pay for it at home, but I don't want to put all my money into food while I'm here or overspend. So I will try to be thrifty as much as I can, but there will be times when I don't want to go completely on the cheap, but there will be times that I want local flavor if I can find local flavor.

(23:19):
So I'm going to do that as much as I can today. I've got a lunch spot picked out that should give some traditional Hawaiian fair that is my day I'm going to head out to it looks like the weather is better today to do the southern route and go down to Volcanoes National Park, which really was the plan that I had today. Anyway, that was my hopeful, that was my hoped for plan. And then tomorrow I'll go across and over to the west side of the island, maybe a little rainy tomorrow. Not sure, but we will see. So I'm going to listen. I'm going to enjoy the crickets for a little while longer. Sit down, do a couple hours worth of work, leave here about six 30 this morning to head to my first stop, which is to go get coffee and breakfast. And then I'm going to drive along the south coast of the big island of Hawaii, an absolutely beautiful morning here along the coastline, the southern coastline.

(24:29):
I went up to a state park that is right off of the ocean. To get there, I had to go down a bunch of one lane roads, and then there were some spots where the lava flows had actually recently gone across them in the destruction. Wow. I mean, it's definitely something to be seen because you go straight from green vegetation straight into black lava rocks, and then you're back into green vegetation again. So Isaac State Park unfortunately was closed. I was not able to go in there, and that's something that's going to happen in this part with the lava issues that they've had around here, the eruptions, it's dormant now. But that destruction really did do a number on this area. So I went out there, I went to the Lava Tree State Park. That was pretty cool too. One thing I will say is that I do not have an internet connection out here, so I should have downloaded the Hawaii maps on my Google Maps in that way because my GPS is working.

(25:35):
But unfortunately, the map directions are not working. And that's something you can do when you have a wifi connection before you go out and start exploring. The island doesn't take up that much space on your phone, and it's a good way to make sure that you get a chance to not be lost while you're doing all of this. But I really can't be doing any work right now because well, oh, and isn't that so sad? I can't really do any work right now because I can't get an internet connection to get on Google Hangouts or whatever else I may need to do. So there'll be a little bit of unplugging time here if you're trying to do your nine to five travel lifestyle. But sometimes unplugging is a good thing. And of course, tomorrow's Saturday and I'll get to unplug all day tomorrow, which will be a very nice break. But beautiful shores here, something to see. I mean, I'm finding some nice little pull offs that have just amazing views, black beaches with that blue water coming in, almost a turquoise color, and then foamy foamy white as it comes in and hits the shore and sometimes blasts up into the rocks. It's just an incredible view.

(27:07):
So now I'm in Ka Pana Hawaii and I'm walking out on a brand new section of the island. There's a lot of black lava flows out here parked by Uncle Roberts and take a walk. As I understand it, there is a need out here to be a little bit cautious because, and bring some water. I brought some water with me, but it's huh. And there's a little bit of local artwork laying out here by station three. Very interesting landscape. Definitely something worth coming out to sea because you see the lava, but you also see the, and of course it's all rock now, black rock, but then you also get to see the new vegetation that's growing up around it. And over here by the little display I see it says Hawaiian kingdom still exist. We never left. Little Shrine. I'm going to walk on a little ways, not sure. I'm going to make it all the way to the ocean, but might do it.

(28:35):
I have never seen a black sand beach before. I got to tell you. It is so cool. It's like looking at gunpowder. This is a great walk and it's not a long walk, and as long as you follow the red dirt into the black sand and just listen for the sound of the waves. Just watch your footing in some spots. But like I say, for the most part, this is not a very strenuous walk. Take a little water with you because you're probably going to want to hang out at the beach and just watch. Those waves are rocking and it's just a coolest thing to see. I would definitely take the time to come to this part of the island.

Drew (29:25):
Do we need a couple minutes

Drew (29:26):
Here? I think I'm good. Yeah, that'd be good.

Drew (29:37):
Anything drink?

Drew (29:40):
No, I'm good actually. Thank you. Thank you.

Drew (29:46):
Okay, so there was a government shutdown that was keeping federal employees from working except for tsa. TSA had to work because they were mandatory, but the national parks, there were only a couple of people that were having to work and everybody else was off. And I had planned all this around Volcano National Park because after reading online the limited information that was out there, they said that the park was open, but there would be limited services. I did not realize that limited services meant that basically they have a restroom and all the trails and roads are closed.

(30:33):
I mean, I understand they're trying to protect the park, and these are structures and elements and it's history. It's an ecosystem. You have to protect all of that. And so I get it. I just wish that they were a little bit more forthcoming with the information because I drove way out of my way on something I probably didn't need to drive way out of my way for to work Volcano National Park into my day. Well, I asked at the gate and they said that because the shutdown is apparently ending, they are meeting to figure out what they want to do next. So there's a possibility that tomorrow when I make my rounds, I'll be able to go to Volcano National Park is one of the last things I do. The drawback is that tomorrow's a pretty full day. So finding the time to be able to go there is going to be intensely hard. So I'm going to try to figure this out. The main thing that I'm going to do is I had some items on the agenda for tomorrow morning, such as going to Rainbow Falls and some items on the agenda for

(31:50):
Sunday. One of those being going to a Akka Falls. I'm going to try to knock those out today. It looks like it may be sunny on the East Coast, even though I'm in a rainstorm right now. This is all part of that. Being flexible when you're on a trip, figuring out ways to kind of work things. If something goes wrong and this is one of those, something went wrong and I got to figure out my way around it. So I will let you know what I end up doing, but right now it's a wee bit frustrating.

(32:32):
Well, it was a bit of a bummer that I didn't get to go to the Volcano National Park, but I'm going to check it out tomorrow and also on Sunday, and I may just move my plans around on Sunday. I was going to drive this north part of the island. I might do that tomorrow and then get over to the Kona side and get me some Kona coffee because I had something this morning and wow, it restored my faith in coffee. I was actually getting kind of tired of coffee, so I will consider doing that tomorrow. Or if I find out volcanoes is open, I might just go down there first thing and just do it tomorrow. This afternoon I went ahead and knocked out Rainbow Falls, which was on tomorrow morning's agenda. And also I came over to Richardson Beach because I heard there were sea turtles over here.

(33:30):
And the answer to that question is if there are, I'm not seeing them, not sure where they're at, but that's okay that sometimes you'll read stuff online. That's the thing about blogs. It's one person's experience. And they said that they'd seen them every time they came here and there were a bunch of them, but I don't see any. So that I guess you can mark off on your percentage list that it's maybe a 67% chance that you'll see sea turtles out here. Sea turtles like sunshine. So that's probably the reason why I didn't see any. I did see, however, a scorpion, now tell me how I can't see a green sea turtle, but somehow I can see a black scorpion on black rocks. That's crazy. I think it's kind of the same as me calling Isaac State Park instead of Isaac Hale State Park, right?

(34:33):
There's all of these Hawaiian names around here that I could completely mispronounce and get wrong, and I get wrong. Isaac Hale can't remember it. I'm not an attention to detail guy all the time. I think it's, it's that a d d thing. But anyway, so fun out here today, kind of checking out as much of the sunset as there is. There's a lot of clouds out today, but just another beautiful day at the beach, a lot of black volcanic rock. And there's people out here, but there's scorpions out here. Leave it to me to see that on such a beautiful black, lava rich, interesting beach. Yeah, I see the scorpions. That's just the way it is. Well, tomorrow morning we'll see what happens, but it's the weekend so I can let loose from my nine to five business travel lifestyle and I can move on to just having a nice weekend in Hawaii. So I will talk you tomorrow.

(35:52):
So here it is, Saturday morning, and I made it through the rain last night. And apparently all the rain happened during the evening and now everything has starting to clear up. In fact, as I looked at the weather forecast yesterday, it was solid rain all day in the north, and now it's showing that it's going to be partly sunny for most of the day in the north. So I've decided to head north instead, I stopped into Hilo to have breakfast this morning, decided I wanted to have a nice sit down breakfast and enjoyed some eggs benedict and a little conversation. The topic of interest this morning were mongooses. I see mongooses all over the place instead of squirrels. These mongooses seem to be all over and they're slinking around every little park I go to. So I asked about those, and it was funny because the woman at the restaurant said that they had a rat problem in Hawaii, that rats had been introduced by people coming to the island via ship, and then all of a sudden they decided to bring Mongooses in to settle that problem.

(37:07):
The problem being though that rats are nocturnal and mongooses are more daytime creatures. So that little experiment didn't work, and so lots of mongooses here and still lots of rats that they have to deal with. So she seemed surprised that I saw a scorpion yesterday. She did give me a little hint on where I could go see the sea turtles. Apparently I wasn't quite in the right spot for them. As for today, I stopped by Rainbow Falls to see if I could check it out in the morning with the sun hitting it, but the sun is kind of hit or miss right now. And while the sun did seem to be hitting the falls, I wasn't seeing the rainbows I was supposed to be seeing. I'm going to head up to a Kaka Falls next and then drive back down to the botanical gardens. And then she was telling me some great places to go check out on the north side of the island.

(37:58):
So I'm going to do all of that and do it in a very relaxing manner, whereas this was supposed to be my Sunday before taking off on my flight plan. And so I'm going to hold off on Volcano National Park until tomorrow, and hopefully that will be open. Otherwise, I'm going to just do the southern route that I had planned on hitting a little bit along with Kona today. Ooh, there is a pretty rainbow over there. See, I, it's in the middle of the sky. I didn't have to go to Rainbow Falls to see it. I just had to drive North. So beautiful drive here so far, going to be riding along the coast the entire day. So this should be a very, very nice day.

(38:49):
End of another fantastic day here in Hawaii. I am now back at the Airbnb relaxing a bit, but I have basically circled the entire island today. I started out in Hilo, had myself a nice breakfast and then saw some waterfalls. If you're going to drive up 19 north of Hilo, you're going to see a few waterfalls up that way. It's pretty spectacular. And then continuing to drive north, just fantastic scenery all the way around. So I scooted along the entire north end of the island and then started to make my way back down on the west side. And the weather cleared up nicely for that entire part of the drive. And I didn't do anything in Kona really, other than go to the painted church and then worked my way down to the Green Sand Beach. Apparently there's only four green sand beaches in the world, and I've been to one of them.

(39:55):
It's also the southern most part of the United States. So concrete, a couple of things on that. I will say that that was probably the Bumpiest ride in a pseudo golf cart I think I've ever had. It was, it's about, he said it's about a three mile drive, and I think he's right. The guy who took us, it cost 15 bucks to go there and come back. I showed up because of course, as much driving as I'd been doing, I got there at five o'clock. Sun was going to go down at six. So I thought, well, let me have him ride me out there and then I'll just walk back. Well, by the time we got out there, man, it was already five 30. We'd been going way out. I never would've found that beach by myself. It's about a eight mile drive off of the Hawaii loop that goes around the island that I had been driving on.

(41:02):
And then, I mean, they're taking four by fours out there, and sometimes I wonder how those four by fours still have shocks by the time you're, you're done with that particular drive. So I would highly suggest if you end up going to this spot that you get yourself a ride down at least anyway, and then have plenty of time for the walk back, the Green Sand Beach, it's pretty awesome. I mean, it's kind of an olivey green, so I was expecting maybe something a little brighter, but it's very cool. There's turquoise water coming in. It's in a little cove. And like I say, I don't think you'd find it on your own. It's best to have somebody probably ride you out there and then you can walk back if you want to. It's a beau beautiful shoreline with some lava rocks and blue water coming in.

(42:05):
This is me wrapping up for the most part, my Hawaii trip. I will be tomorrow doing some stuff in Kona, still don't know about Volcano National Park, so it looks like I'm probably going to have to ditch that. May have to ditch the botanical gardens. They up until nine o'clock and I have a lot to do in Kona. And then I fly out tomorrow night at 9 45. Got a message from one of my employees that she's not going to be in for the first three hours of Monday, which doesn't work very well for me because I'm going to be flying in on a plane and not arriving till eight o'clock in the morning in Las Vegas. And so that means that I'll have one employee who's going to have to cover those first three hours. And it'll be interesting to see how I handle taking the red eye because I don't tend to sleep on planes, and I'm really going to need to because I don't have a hotel until later in the day. And so I'm going to be bleary-eyed walking around Las Vegas. I have a feeling if I can't get a little bit of sleep on the plane, but that's for tomorrow. As for now, time to rest and relax a little bit and let the day go.

(43:37):
All right, well, just got out of the Airbnb and went and got some breakfast muffin and a coffee. They didn't have Kona Coffee. I was kind of sad about that, but that's okay. I am headed towards Kona today, so I will get some coffee while I'm there, go straight to the source, see if I can maybe find a tour to take or something. See, it's a sundae, so it's a little tough to determine that I was going to take a Uber or Lyft downtown to Kona to get something to drink,

(44:11):
Maybe find a restaurant somewhere that wasn't overpriced, but somebody at the car rental place said, Hey, the restaurant is open. You can go in there and hang out. So I thought, okay, yeah, I'll get through TSA and all that stuff and just sit over here and have a drink. And while away, the hours, my plane leaves in six and a half hours. And then I got in here and it says, restaurant closed. Apparently they don't have another plane going out of here until nine o'clock, which means they won't open the restaurant until six o'clock. And in fact, everything is closed. So I get to listen to Hawaiian music for the next three hours at least anyway, and then I'll be pounding my ties for my flight home, the Red Eye to Los Angeles, and then on to Las Vegas. But the rest of my day was really good. I spent a lot of the time in Kailua Kona and went to some really pretty beaches, and it was a good way to end things up, kind of do everything in one centralized location. Gave me plenty of time to just kind of relax and get over here to the airport and had a client contact me while I was by text. And so took care of that. No big emergency

(45:37):
Drinks coming up in a little while.

(45:59):
All right. So I made it all the way to McCarran back in Las Vegas. Again, going to go pick up my bag since I had to check it. And I'm actually working for the next two days. It's not going to be all fun and games. I will get in a game or two of BA up potentially, but I'm actually putting together a YouTube video that's going to feature different casinos, attractions, things here in Las Vegas for kind of a preview for people who've never been before and kind of want to get a scope of the different casinos and which ones they might want to visit. So I will be doing that. I checked my email this morning, got all that stuff handled while I was in la, and now here I am, ready to get a busy day started. I didn't get much sleep on the red eye. Oh, I just can't get comfortable on a plane. Not sure what that's all about, but my legs just want to jump all over the place. So yeah, that's all right.

(47:09):
We'll mosey on through here and grab the bag, get over to my hotel and see if they'll hold the bag since it's seven 30 in the morning and I don't feel like hauling my bag all around Las Vegas today if I can possibly help it. So off for adventure. All right, so I've made it into my room and I'm staying at Harrah's. This is my first time staying here. I have stayed at other Caesar's properties. I have the total rewards card. I always suggest getting any kind of rewards card that you can get in Vegas because you can even get comped rooms from time to time, and it's not that hard to get them. You can actually go look on the schedule and see what days may be available for those kinds of deep discounts or even comped rooms. And so my hotel tonight was 45 a night for two nights, and then when I got here, of course I rode the red eye in, so I was just hoping to drop my bags off.

(48:17):
But she said that she would add for an additional 25 bucks, they could upgrade my room, get me a room immediately instead of having me pay for early check-in, which is $30. And so I mean, over two nights, that's a $20 difference. But I mean, wow, the view room is huge. It's, it's much more than I need myself, but it's got a little corner view, and I'm looking straight at the Mirage. So when the volcano goes off, instead of me having to go outside and stand with the crowd, I can actually just look at it from my window. This is pretty awesome. So I'm going to take a shower, I feel I get myself to feel like a human being again, and then I'm going to go explore Vegas at May. Check my email also, of course,

(49:24):
Well, I just tried my hand at $5 live Bacarra where you just kind of sit at a video game console, but yet there is somebody actually drawing the cards five bucks per hand. My system, it saved me from the brink a couple of times. In fact, three times I was down to my last $15 and laid the $15 on the line and actually got the money back. I started with 60, and I mean, you got to be willing to lose the 60. And so I did. I put all the money down that I had, and there were times I was over 60. And then three times I got to my final bet and one each time and ended up walking out with $25. So for 35 bucks, I entertained myself for a good hour and 15 minutes or so. So I guess that was worth it. If I'd have been working with larger amounts of money, it probably would've been a little bit more painful. But it all works out in the end. It's all about being entertained.

(50:32):
Well, today was the last day of Las Vegas, and it was good. I knocked a couple of things out this morning. The laptop is still hanging on by a thread. My phone just about ran out of juice a couple times a day because I've been making so many videos for this YouTube video that I'm going to be putting out in the next couple of weeks about Las Vegas. And I visited, oh, I'll get the final tally and let you know how many hotels I actually went through at casinos. I went through, needless to say, it was a lot over two days and getting some video of each of them so that I've got something to share. And I did go to downtown today and enjoyed that quite a bit. I actually found a restaurant that Sinatra used to go to for breakfast, which is called the Pepper Mill.

(51:29):
I have been there before. There is a breakfast item there called Joe's San Francisco Scramble, I think is what it's called. And yeah, it's not something I normally eat. It will definitely fill you up. Lots of eggs, lots of pork products, and some hash browns, all kind of mixed in there together. And then a muffin on top of that. So that fueled me all day. In fact, the next meal I had was a Sinatra meal again, and this one was at a place called The Golden Steer, which I highly recommend, highly recommend. That was so cool that I didn't go in with any reservation. And I got there at probably about 5 45, and they said, oh, sure, you want a table? And they took me back to Sammy Davis Jr's booth. And this isn't one of those made up kind of places where they're trying to give you the feel of what it used to be like.

(52:38):
I mean, this looks like the kind of place that Jimmy Hoffa probably would've hung out in. I mean, that was the first thing I thought when I walked in. It sort of reminded me of that building you see in Detroit that Jimmy Hoffa, the last restaurant he went into, but I mean, he got inside there and sit down. And this is a really high class restaurant. They made my salad, a Caesar salad, made up the dressing and everything in front of me, and then Carl was my server. And Carl was just full of all sorts of information. Apparently anybody who was anybody got a booth at this particular restaurant. It was right down the street from The Sands. And he told me the story of Sammy Davis Jr. The booth I was sitting in was Sammy's. There were four in this little cubby hole area.

(53:33):
One for Sinatra, which I sat straight across from one for Dean Martin and one for Joey Bishop, Peter Lawford. I think he was on the Outs, so probably not the reason why, probably the reason why he's not in there. But he was telling me that at that time there was still segregation in Las Vegas and in Nevada. And so Sammy wanted to go eat there with his friends. Well, they put him in the back corner. And so guess what? Sinatra being the guy he was, he would go back there and sit as well. And he wanted to be with his friend. And he racially, he was way ahead of the curve in terms of trying to break those color lines. And so it was fun hearing those stories. He was telling me a story about John Wayne, and then I looked behind me and there's a picture of John Wayne over one of the booths, and he said, yeah, that was John Wayne's booth.

(54:35):
And so it is, it's like stepping back in history and the food was really good. And so if I come back to Vegas again, that is going to be one of the places that I will make sure that I stop at again. So get ready for my airplane tomorrow morning, and this little adventure is over. No issues at work. Everything seems to be going well. And so the nine to five business lifestyle intact. And in a week I'll be off again doing another adventure. So we'll see how that one goes as well, because I'll be a little bit more disconnected and out of the country. So it could be interesting. And it's straight in the middle of the week though. We'll find out how that goes.

(55:50):
Well, thanks everybody for checking out my show this week and climbing in my travel bag and heading along with me on the nine to five Travel Lifestyle trip and kind of a bizarre episode. I know, but sometimes remember the show Mash. I don't know how many you watch that show, but they had to have a weird episode every once in a while. Let me just humor me. That's all. That's I'm saying. So anyway, head to the show notes page of Travel fuels life.com/podcasts for episode number 11. That is where you're going to find my list of all stuff that I take in my travel bag, a link to my Amazon shop, so you can get that bag if you would like. And also my European travel checklist, which is a very handy little list to look at if you are going to be traveling overseas. Of course, in this particular case, I was not. But it is handy Anyway to go look through that list and make sure you got all the stuff that you really need to have. Until next time, have yourself a great week. Safe travels and thanks for listening to Travel Fuels Life.