< sigh > time to leave 🙁

Although I’ve enjoyed this vacation, I’m glad to be going home. Two weeks of sleeping in a bed that isn’t yours is kind of hard.

Although the hotel was generally nice, the toilet dripped incessantly and it drove Ginny kind of crazy. We called the hotel staff 5 times about it, but they never got it fixed. I mentioned this to the person checking us out and she gave us a $50 credit on our bill. That was reasonable I think.

Got the car packed up and headed to the airport. We stopped at the Boarders in Kahaluhi so Ginny could get some reading material for the flight, and then we went to the airport.

Checking in at the airport was uneventful, although we were asked to show our boarding pass 3 times in the space of 100 feet. A bit excessive, both Steve and I thought.

The flight was delayed because it was late leaving LAX (I assume that’s where it came from), but we’re on the way.

It’s now 8pm PST and we’re about an hour from our layover in LA (only an hour or so). We will arrive in Chicago around 5am.

Steve is going to try and meet up with a friend of his on our layover I think he’s being a bit too optimistic (considering we got a late start). Also, his friends’ daughter had a fairly major health issue crop up and she will probably be attending to that.

This vacation was nice, but not the nicest we’ve had. It was kind of awkward that Steve didn’t have anyone with him. I felt sorry for him because his girlfriend, Ruth, had to work. Since it was just the three of us, we only had one car. That kind of limited our ability to go and do things on our own. I think this ended up causing a bit of friction between us. Any rough feelings were very temporary, so no harm was done.

Now those people who are reading this blog might notice that the entries are back dated. This is primarily for security purposes. I didn’t hide the fact that we were on vacation, but I also didn’t advertise it. If I had posted the blog entries as they were written, it would have been obvious that we were away from home. Call me paranoid, but MAYBE someone would think that this would be a good opportunity to boost some computer equipment.

I’m not sure where our next vacation will be Ginny and I have talked about going back to the UK for a trip (maybe spending some of it with my folks) but that hasn’t been discussed in detail.

This vacation did show us how out of shape we are we REALLY need to hit the health club more often. I had been going fairly regularly before we left for this trip, but my back spasmed and I had to stop for two weeks before we departed.

We decided that today was going to be a relaxing day. We have reservations for the Marriott’s Luau that night, and Steve ended up helping a customer very early in the morning, so Ginny and I were on our own.

We walked up and down the Wailea boardwalk, which is quite nice people and whale watching. Then we headed down to the pool area for lunch and to relax for a while. Lunch was good, but the pool water was quite cold, so I didn’t do much swimming.

After the pool we lazed around a bit I took the laptop down to the hotel’s high speed internet room (free if you purchased the resort pass) to try and upload some pictures. The up channel was pretty slow, so I didn’t get that much transferred.

Four thirty rolled around and we went down for the Luau. I wasn’t as impressed with this Luau as I have been with others. Didn’t seem even close to authentic (IMHO, of course). The performance was, however, upstaged in a major way when a pair of whales came in close. It was a mother and her child and the child was playing around a lot. Breaching, splashing, etc. That kind of stole the show for a while. I tried to get some pictures, but the flash card is still in my camera, so I don’t know how they came out yet.

After the Luau, Ginny and I went out to the car to get our toy bag so we can get it packed.

Today we go back to ‘civilization’.

We had brought the fixings for macadamia nut pancakes for breakfast but I wanted to explore the grounds of the condo we were staying at a bit, and Steve wanted to explore in another direction. This got is going on breakfast a bit late. We asked one of the staff if it was ok for us to leave a bit late, and she said it was fine.

So we made breakfast (Ok, Ginny made breakfast) and we ate Around 11:10, as we were cleaning up, the owner of the property knocked on the door and asked us to leave soon. I asked him if 20 minutes was OK, and he said we were already 20 minutes late (check out was 11am). I wasn’t sure what time zone he was living in, but 10 minutes after 11, does not make you 20 minutes late for a 11am checkout. I told him we would try to be out in 10 minutes he groused a bit and left.

As a small peace offering to the owner, Steve helped him out with his Apple Airport base station.

Just before we hit the road, Ginny saw some kittens playing near the house next door… of course we had to stay and watch them a little.

We finally got back on the road around 11:45 we’re heading back to Lahina via the back way (not the way we came). This road is much less developed (dirt & gravel in many places, quite narrow most of the way). The car rental companies don’t like folks to take this road, but there’s really not much they can do about it. I’ve checked the rental agreements every time we’ve been to Maui and have never found a clause indicating that driving that road is forbidden.

The other thing about this road is that it’s very beautiful. Since it’s not traveled as often as the main road to Hana, there can be some very ‘interesting’ people along the way. There are also two geo caches that can be found, so we were on the hunt.

The first cache site was pretty easy to find it was hidden in the rock wall near a store in Kaupo. We bought some sodas at the store, and chatted with the clerk (she was kind of a flake). We also chatted with the operators of a little coffee stand who knew a bit about the cache. Mono and his girlfriend (didn’t get her name) were quite friendly and we talked a bit. Ginny got to play with there cat a bit, so she was happy. We bought some iced tea, logged our visit to the cache, dropped off the travel bug we picked up a few days ago, and got back on the road. .

We tried to find another cache along the way, but were not successful. It was hidden up on a rocky outcropping, and it was really windy. I was kind of nervous up there, so we decided to give it a pass.

One of the funny things about this route back is that the road is incredibly inconsistent. At one point we were on a very rough road that obviously hadn’t been maintained in quite some time, the next we’re on a nicely paved two lane road over a bridge and, quite literally 2 blocks later we’re back on the poorly maintained road again.

Ginny’s theory is that the bridge needed to be rebuilt and the federal program that would provide the funds requires any new bridges be two lane so there’s a brand new two lane bridge in the middle of a rough and rocky highway.

Finally back in civilization, we checked into our hotel (Marriott Wailea), we had to high tail it to see Warren and Annabelles show.

We drove to Hana today.

We wanted to start out around 9am, but because we had to get the car packed, it took a bit longer than we anticipated.

The drive was easy we were not in a hurry, because we are going to be staying in Hana for a few nights.

For those who don’t know, the drive to Hana is along the Hana Highway (Route 360) it is famous for being twisty and turny and it’s 54 one lane bridges.

We made a few stops and tried to find a Geocache (without any luck).

We arrived in Hana, found the place we’re staying at and checked email (priorities, man, priorities).

For dinner were decided to go for a local ‘hole in the wall’ take out place. It closed, however, at 7pm.

We arrived and found it was exactly that a hole in the wall. Just a take out window.

Steve, Ginny, and I, ordered our food and waited. When it was ready, I realized I hadn’t ordered enough (just soup, as it turned out). So I got back in line to order something else. The woman running the place took one more order, then came outside and closed the shutters to close up. With two people standing in line!

Oh well, I guess Ginny and I will just share (that’s what married people do, I’m told).

We got back to the condo and started to eat and found the soup was unbelievably salty. Way too salty to eat. Steve’s soup was acceptable. I had to dilute it with hot water to make it eatable.

Today we went on a Molokini snorkel cruise with Paragon cruises.

The water was pretty rough Steve and Ginny didn’t enjoy it as much as I did.

I finally mastered diving deep. I pinched my nose and blew out when going down. I can now go down as far as 15 feet without my ears hurting. I was kind of surprised when I did I dove down to take a picture, and turned around to go back up, and found I was about 14 under water. It was pretty cool.

After snorkeling at Molokini the Paragon cruise crew hoisted the sail and went back to Maalaea after we got out of the shadow of Haleakela the wind picked up a lot, and the boat picked up speed a lot. At one point we were going about 20 knots. The wind was also picking up a lot of spray, which Steve (who is much taller than I) ended up catching in the face.

After the cruise, we went back to our condos to relax for a while. We also had to pack up, as we are checking out tomorrow.

We had dinner at the Five Palms restaurant. The food was good, but the service was marginal. It was Valentines Day, so they were extraordinarily busy.

We went into Lahina today Ginny wanted to go to church at Holy Innocents of Maui. Steve and I wandered around town a bit until she was done. We did some GeoCaching and found two virtual caches.

For lunch we wanted to find a place called Mala Tavern we knew the address, and figured it would be a 4 or 5 block walk from downtown Lahina. We started walking and couldn’t find it. We walked some more checking the street numbers, but it didn’t appear we were getting any closer.

After walking about a mile, I pulled out my GPS to see where Mala Warf was, and figured we still had another ¾ of a mile to go. Maybe we weren’t fated to eat there anyway.

We headed back to Lahina and ate at a placed called Kimo’s. Not bad, but nothing amazing.

That evening we went to a concert Ginny had seen an poster for, held at the Maui Cultural Center. The event was catered by Mala Tavern! I guess we were fated to eat there. The food was quite good too.

The concert was pretty good although it didn’t have the same atmosphere as the slack key guitar concert.

All three of us had decided to leave the cameras at the condo, because the concert was going to be filmed by one of the performers. Unfortunately there was this absolutely incredible sunset through the mountains that we all wanted to get pictures of. Steve was able to get a reasonable picture with his camera phone, but I doubt it will do justice to the scene.

We went snorkeling at Olowalu today. It’s a nice area with a lot of coral heads and deep trenches between the heads.

We started out at a reasonable time, but because of a series of errors, we ended up getting a pretty late start.

We got out to the snorkeling spot and found a good place to get in. Then Steve realized he had forgotten the boots to his fins. Since he had done some of snorkeling already, he was just going to take a pass and relax on the beach.

Then Ginny realized that a piece had broken off of her mask. We kind of figured the day was blown at that point and were going to head back home (and probably buy Ginny a new mask). Then I took a look at her mask and realized I had seen the missing piece in the bathroom at the condo.

Steve and I decided to drive back to the condo so he could get his boots and I could find the mask piece.

It took a little longer than we had expected, but we finally got back with boots and fixed mask in hand.

The water was fairly clear and calm. We snorkeled for about an hour and a half. Steve and I tried to help a guy figure out how to use his snorkel (he had the snorkel attached to the loose end of his mask strap. The mask was far too big for his face.)

We drove around top (west) of island today.

Steve wanted to take a look at some of the surfing (not that he was going to surf, of course) and see what kind of pictures he could get.

Unfortunately, the really good waves are further east, going towards Paia and Hana.

It was a fairly nice drive though.

One thing you have to know about Maui you don’t drive anywhere fast. Partially because there’s a lot of traffic and partially because the roads aren’t really laid out that well. For instance: If you are driving in the up country, near the Tedeschi Winery, it’s only a few miles from Wilea … but since there’s no road that goes that way, you have to drive all the way to Kahalui before you can double back. It’s about 30 miles and an hours drive to go the 3 miles.

Since it’s Friday, and Stargate is on, we decided to eat in tonight Costco has some really good looking ahi tuna that we cooked on the condo grill. Ginny and I learned a really good (and easy) technique for cooking Ahi Tuna on the grill that works quite well.

We marinated the tuna for about 30 minutes in some asian flavored salad dressing, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and other bits. We pre-heated the grill to as hot it could get and cook the steaks for 90 seconds on each side. They usually come out quite nicely browned on the outside and rare on the inside.

Then we watched Stargates SG-1 & Atlantis and the new Battlestar Galactica.

Such an exciting Friday, eh?

Yesterday we went on a whale watching cruise. We saw a lot of whales, some of them coming really close to the boat we were on.

All three of us were busy snapping pictures and trying to stay balanced. Unfortunately this caused us all to have to brace ourselves with just our muscles, and this ended up hurting us a bit. We didn’t find out it hurt, however, until today.

Today was pretty exciting and not in the good sense.

We decided to go back up to Haleakala to do some hiking and see what the crater and summit look like when it’s warmer.

We did not; however, check the gas gauge before we left we only had about 1/3 of a tank left. We got up to the top without a problem, but going down was a bit dicey. Basically we ended up coasting half the way down which isn’t bad on a bike, but in a car it’s kind of ‘sporty’. If you look closely at the picture, you can see the gas gauge on empty and the transmission in neutral.

After getting gas, we went out to see a slack key guitar concert done by a local consortium of musicians. It’s held at the Ritz Carleton hotel. The tickets were kind of pricey, but the music was excellent. There were two guitar players (host and guest), plus a young ukulele player, and two hula demonstrations. It was obviously a smallish operation, as the guy who collected the tickets at the door was also the ukulele player. I think he was also the nephew of the host.

Didn’t write anything yesterday, we were kind of running around a lot.

We arrived on Saturday without a problem. As mentioned before, the flight was pretty bumpy the landing was quite rough, but everyone walked away from it.

Took a long time to get our luggage, but everything arrived safe and sound.

There was a long line at the car rental place, so Ginny walked over to the Budget counter and asked if they had anything available. Turns out they did, and we got a better rate than our original reservation. We even got upgraded to a full size car. Car turned out to be a Chevy Impala which is kind of a boat.

Once squared away on with the car, we drove over to the condo and checked in.

The condos are quite nice. Steve’s even has a cable modem! He’s going to sign up for a week of service later. His wireless signal doesn’t reach into our condo, unfortunately.

We had a quick bite to eat at Maui Taco and ate at Kamaole Beach 2, then walked along the beach and took a few pictures.

We stayed and watched the sunset and then went back t the condo and crashed.

The next day, we woke up REALLY early (3am) to drive up to the crater of Haleakala to see the sunrise. Oh my god was it cold!

I mean really cold Chicago cold. I brought my jacket that’s fairly windproof, but it wasn’t up to the task. I should have brought the shell too.

Got a bunch of nice pictures and then took a leisurely drive down. We stopped at Kula Lodge for breakfast. I had a taste for macadamia nut pancakes, which they had, so I ordered (so did Steve & Ginny). Really yummy.

As we were still screwed up on the time zone, we came back to the condo and took a ‘nap’. After the nap, we for a walk on the boardwalk in Wilea. As we parked relatively near the hotel we’re staying at for the last two days, we put in a reservation for the Luau on that Friday. We walked along the boardwalk a bit and stopped for lunch at one of the hotels. After lunch, we headed back to the car.

We then went to Costco and Safeway to pick up some staples and stuff for a very light dinner (poke, lomi lomi, and some salad).

We took a walk down to the beach after dinner and watched the sunset again.

It’s now Monday, and we got back from a (fairly) early morning snorkel. Steve had wanted to go out earlier, but it didn’t quite happen that way.

We had a few problems getting ourselves in gear, but finally did. Went down to Kamaole park 3 (near the condo we stayed at 4 years ago) and went into the water. The surf was quite rough, so it was a challenge. Finally got in and started paddling around. I didn’t see many fish, but I think I saw a turtle and I DID hear some whales.

Came back to the condo to clean up and wake up.

It’s now about 10:45 and Steve’s here, relaxing on the recliner. We’re going to figure out what we want to do the rest of the day.