My family finally got to go on a much needed vacation. We have been home for just over 24 hours and I am happy that I have gotten two loads of laundry already. I figured I would post some tips that came in really handy for us (in no special order).
- Carry on luggage – Each family member was able to travel with one carry on suitcase and a backpack. Unless you have fancy events planned you will find that you will spend most of your time in your swimsuits and shorts anyways. But, at the same time you will sometimes find that the airlines will gate check your suitcases to your final destination (that happened to us each way). (We even had space in our bags to bring home new beach towels and a few other new items.)
- Roll your clothes – If you aren’t on Pinterest you might not have seen the posts that by rolling your clothes you can store more in a drawer, etc. It really does work so I would suggest you try it next time.
- Detangler spray & TSA liquid rules – Each person is able to take a quart-sized bag with your liquids/creams as long as each original container is less than 3 oz. The humidity and salt water makes it so we get more knots in our hair so this time I put some detangler spray in a small bottle and took some with us.
- Bug spray – We usually go hiking when travel and this trip wasn’t any different. So, we bought a small container of bug spray and took it with us (in the quart-sized bag with our other liquids).
- Breakfast in the room – The hotel we stayed at this time had a Keurig coffee maker and a mini fridge (no microwave). We bought instant oatmeal at the grocery store and made it for breakfast most mornings. (See #6, #7 and #11)
- Metal fork and spoon – I packed one for each family member. These came in very handy. Note: You are not able to take sharp knives in the carry on luggage so I took a couple of plastic knives.
- Plastic bowls – Since we had room in our suitcases (by not taking too many clothes and rolling what I did take) I was able to pack plastic bowls for each family member. These came in very handy for breakfast and for eating pie, etc (see #11).
- Plastic Ziploc bags – I took a few new quart-sized ones and a couple of gallon-sized ones. These were very useful! (One thing we did daily was put ice in a bag and used it as an ice pack in our ice chest.)
- Plastic, see-through water bottle – You can take an empty water bottle through security. We filled it with water at the airports and put ice inside of it when we traveled and it helped keep our snack foods and drinks cold.
- Ice chest – The last few trips we have been able to put a collapsible ice chest in one of the suitcases. We used this to keep our drinks and snacks cold for when we went to the beach or driving around the island.
- Grocery store – Usually when we arrive we look for a grocery store so we can buy some food. This time we lucked upon a local grocery store chain (Tamura’s Market) which definitely had cheaper prices than the big mainland chain that we found the first day. We were even able to find locally made (Ted’s Bakery) pie. The Macadamia Nut Cream Pie was really good!
So, hopefully these help you out and they will come in handy the next time we fly somewhere on vacation.
Later – H
A Creative Engineer In Nevada 