Maui

We arrived in Maui on Thursday, got our rental minivan and went to a local chicken katsu place that Sam picked out. It was a really "local" place, but the katsu was great. We drove to our condo and checked in. After freshening up a little we went for a sunset dinner at the Sea House restaurant nearby. The food was good and it was a great start to the vacation.

Every vacation has to have the "Day from Hell". We wanted to get ours over with early. We started out driving north to go see the Nakalele Blowhole. The drive to the blowhole was nice though a little bit of a windy road (little did we know). We didn't get all the way to the blowhole, it was a steep climb and we were in flip flops, but we still got some pics. After the blowhole we proceeded east to Kahului on our way to visit Pa'ia. That was the adventure. The road was barely one car wide and hairpin turns around mountain cliffs. Fortunately we didn't find many cars coming the other way.
Pa'ia was a nice little town. There were a few small shops and a Rock & Brew's (a little weird for such a small place). We got some nachos at a local eatery and proceeded to walk the town. After Pa'ia we went to have dinner at the Hali'imaile General Store. This place was recommended by Larry (Jan's boss) and it was really good food. The purple stuff is local sweet potatoes, they are naturally that color! Our DFH wasn't over yet. I still wanted to drive up to the top of Haleakala to get pictures of the sunset and the Milky Way. I did get a few sunset pics, but we had to stop before the top since the sun was already setting. We all had to use the bathroom really badly and rushed to the summit only to find the bathrooms LOCKED! As it turned out, there was a full moon and getting pictures of the Milky Way was not possible anyway. We went back down the mountain a little ways to a hiker's trailhead where there was a bathroom (whew!!). We then went the rest of the way down. We almost hit several cows on the way down who were wandering in the middle of the road. Thanks to Sara's keen eyesight she warned me in time before I had a USDA prime bumper. We made it down the mountain and I stopped at a scenic overlook near Lahaina to try one last shot at getting the Milky Way - but no dice.The moon was too bright. I did manage to get a nice night time shot of the bay near Kihei.

On Saturday we had a much more leisurely day. We woke up and had breakfast at the gazebo restaurant which was a little place north of here. They have really good food but a little bit of a wait. It was kind of a prank place. The gazebo has this little spider that drops down from the ceiling above your table but it's a fake spider. It's certainly startles the customers when they're not expecting it.