By Lee Cataluna
It took Olivetta Chavez nearly 50 years to visit all 50 states. Last month, her trip to Hawai'i completed her list.
The first 48 she saw in one magical summer. She was 13 years old in 1960. She and her mother and her younger sister left from Vallejo, Calif., as soon as school got out. Her mother bought a green sleeper trailer, hitched it to her '55 Chevy and set out to see the country.
"She had a big map of the USA on our living room floor in Vallejo and penciled in her route," Chavez said.
Chavez was trusted to hold the road maps as they traveled. To this day, she loves reading maps.
"My mother just wanted to see everything," she said. "She had a real wanderlust. If we saw a sign for something, she'd pull over."
Two years after that adventure-filled summer, her mother died at age 51. Chavez and her sister went to live with relatives, but her mother's love of traveling lived on in her. She drove around the country in a '68 Mustang convertible in her 20s, went hitchhiking in Europe by herself for a year, and worked as a chambermaid and dishwasher in Switzerland before coming home to the Bay Area.
But it took a while to get those last two states in. Last year, Chavez, a senior clerk typist for the city and county of San Francisco, found a great deal to Alaska. Last month, she and her husband finally made it to Hawai'i, even though the people they were supposed to stay with didn't come through and her husband struggled with poor health. They budgeted, booked a room deal on Orbitz, ate out only one meal a day and took in free entertainment at the International Marketplace.
"Every morning between 6 and 7, I would go to the beach to swim and read," she said. "One morning, I walked on the beach as far as possible toward Diamond Head, looked up and saw the people standing on the top and said I want to do that."
So she did. She kayaked, took the bus all over the island, made friends in church and saw seminary graduates loaded up with lei.
"That was a neat thing to see," she said.
She even found the mythical hula pies she had heard so much about. They ordered a slice at Duke's in Waikiki and shared it with two spoons.
During her two weeks in Hawai'i, Chavez thought of her mother often.
"Hawai'i was probably the only state she didn't get to," she said. "She would have been pretty starstruck."
Now that she's seen all 50 states, she already has her next trip in mind. She wants to come back to Hawai'i.
"We loved it," Chavez said. "I was enchanted."
Reach Lee Cataluna at lcataluna@honoluluadvertiser.com.
One year later on June 7, 2010, The Honolulu Advertiser merges with Honolulu Star-Advertiser:
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