Maui December 6-13, 2009
I'm not sure what my expectations were for Maui. I knew it would be beautiful, but other than that I wasn't sure. I hadn't had much time to plan for it, which was hard for me since I'm such a planner. We arrived early in the morning and spent the rest of the day checking into our hotel and waiting for Sophie to wake up from her nap. We did go to Wailea beach that day. It was okay, but honestly, we were not that impressed.
Monday morning we woke up and decided to go to a "hidden" beach. At least according to Maui revealed. We got some snorkeling gear and a see-through boogie board for Sophie in Kihei and then headed south. We ended up going to Po'olenalena Beach. It was secluded and really fun! Sophie had so much fun digging and playing in the sand and jumping into the waves.
It was a beautiful beach and it was so nice how few people were there. Look, none in this pic:
We went to the beach in the afternoon and it was soooo windy! In case you ever need to know, hit the beaches in the morning and drive around and shop or go to dinner later in the afternoon. It was like we brought Lubbock wind with us!
Tuesday morning Lee wanted to go on the road to Hana, but I was exhausted and we couldn't really get out in time. We thought we would try for it anyways and we had planned to stop to see one of the biggest waves in the world. Jaws. The waves were 30+ ft. tall that I was able to get pics of. They said that while we were there the waves were in excess of 50ft. Talk about powerful! It was pure madness when we got to the little one way street to get to Jaws. People were parking all over the place and so there were pedestrians everywhere. I wish we had known you could drive all the way down... we would have. I ended up walking Sophie down (she was on my back) and Lee went back up and drove the car down. It took 30 minutes for me to walk downhill. It was probably 1.5 miles. I'm glad we stayed and I'm really glad we went. I will never forget those waves and the chaos that was surrounding them. 3 helicopters were flying around and there were 100s of people on the cliff watching the boats/wave runners and surfers.
You can really tell how big the waves are when you see someone surfing it. WOW!
The guy at the top of this wave did a back-flip over the top of it. It was awesome and everyone cheered!
Here's a picture to show how crazy busy it was at times down there.
We stopped at a look-out point on the way back. It was so beautiful there as well. Sophie really loved Hawaii.
I was able to get a few sunset pics Tuesday night as well. I took them on the resort property. We didn't really stop for very many sunsets. We stayed busy all day and I'm so glad we stopped this day. It was gorgeous. A totally golden sunset!
Wednesday we snorkled at Ulua Beach, the one adjacent (north) of the resort property. We left the camera at the hotel so I only got one pic.
Wednesday night we had dinner with Chet, Amanda and Preston. The kids were hilarious. The spoke each others language... growling. I'm pretty sure they were annoying the locals, but they were having so much fun getting to know each other. :)
Thursday morning we went to Kamaole Beach Park 1. We learned our lesson about going to the beach in the afternoon and started getting up early! There were lots of retirees at this beach. It was definitely a locals beach. Everyone was laughing at Sophie though. She would run down to the water and then when it came splashing up she would run away from it screaming.
Friday we got up early and did the road to Hana all day. It was beautiful. It was everything everyone said it would be. It was also a little cool. At least to us. I wore a light sweater most of the day. It was very shady driving around in the mountains and it was also always wet, although it never rained on us.
The first stop we made was to see this church. It was a neat place to see and I'm glad we stopped there.
The road there was very twisty and turny, but it wasn't as scary as my parents and the Maui Revealed book made it out to be.
This waterfall is known as the Three Bears
My favorite place that we visited was in Hana at the end of the road. It was a state park and it had a black sand beach, bright green plantlife and the bluest water you can imagine. I've never seen anything so beautiful in my life. These pictures do not do this place justice. You have to see it to believe it.
We were able to go into a lava tube on the beach as well! For free!
Saturday morning we went to Baby Beach. It was Sophie's favorite, because the waves were blocked by an off-shore reef. She had a BLAST!!!
For some reason I thought Baby Beach would be a place that only Sophie would like, but it was fun and oh-so-beautiful!
After this fun we were all starting to get ready for lunch. We drove to Front St. in Lahaina and ended up eating at BJs. We had a pepperoni/pineapple pizza and watched the ocean and people walking around on Front St. There were also some little birds that flew into the restaurant to eat with us and Sophie thought that was just fantastic!
We walked to the Banyan Tree park to see what it was all about before we went and visited Chet at the Hula Cookies and Ice Cream store. I wish we had had more time to stay and play in Lahaina. Wait, I take that back. I just wish we had more time on Maui to do more. Like, maybe forever?
We still had some time left in the day so we ended up going to the Maui Ocean Center. It was expensive, but worth the $$. We could have stayed and played there another couple of hours, but Sophie was exhausted by then.
Sunday morning we got up and got ready.
Visited ABC for the last time
Took some pics around the resort:
Then we packed everything up and drove to Lahaina. We were lucky enough to be able to spend some time with Amanda and Preston before we had to drive to the airport. Amanda was also so kind and generous and let us keep our luggage at her house while we went out to dinner. Maybe some day we can live near each other and let the kiddos play again. :)
Amanda also took this picture for us, one of my favorites from the trip
The trip home wasn't bad at all. In fact, Sophie slept through most of it luckily!
Our last day on Maui was bitter sweet. Bitter because we were leaving, sweet because it was one of the best days we had while we were there. On every vacation I've ever been on, I've been ready to go home by the time the vacation ends. This trip however could have gone on forever... My <3 really does belong in Maui. I've never felt so happy and carefree. I am so thankful for this trip. It was one of the best experiences of my entire life. Right up there with having Sophie and getting married to my best friend.
1 comments:
this was fun to read. how exciting. your love of hawaii is how i feel about ny. it's funny how you can feel like you belong somewhere that's not anything like where you grew up. but arlington was kind of a bland surburban place so i'm sure many of our peers want to belong to somewhere else. ha.
beautiful photos though. i want to visit there someday soon.
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