Maui part I

We were on vacation in Maui from January 10 through January 17. Going through security at the airport in Portland was a breeze. There are two sides at which you can go through and we were directed to the empty side, there was hardly anyone there. There was no full body scan machine and we didn't get patted down. We just had a lot of stuff to get through the machines. My backpack with laptop, camera, lenses, Katie's diaper bag with toys and snacks, the car seat which was going in her chair on the plane, and her backpack carrier which we gate-checked. But we made it through. The flight left about 45 minutes late. Katie fell asleep only about an hour before we landed but other than that she did great. We took a shuttle bus to the car rental place and upgraded our car to an SUV and then drove to Ka'anapali to our hotel. Google maps was our friend. It rained pretty bad and as a result the traffic on the SW side of the island was really slow.

Our room at the Ka'anapali Beach hotel was nice and we had a beautiful view from the lanai (balcony) onto the grounds and the beach. We tried to walk to Whaler's village for dinner using the paved beach walk, but because of the rain the path was flooded so we turned around and got the car and drove there. We had dinner at Leilani's on the beach which was pretty nice. Our vacation started for real the next day.

We woke up to a nice sunny day so we decided to make the most of it and get the top item on our list out of the way before the rain would come back. We drove up to the volcano at Haleakala National Park. The drive was beautiful and the weather up top was great. A little cool but we took jackets.













On the way down we stopped at Grandma's organic coffee. Google maps had some trouble finding it, but after backtracking we did find it in Kula. Geoff had some iced coffee and Katie and I had juice. We each had a dessert which was amazingly good. Katie kept asking for more "chocate". Then we went back to the hotel and Katie slept some in the car. It was still dry so we went to the beach and let Katie play in the sand and then we saw the sunset ceremony at the Black Rock. Each night around sunset a man runs up the rocks with a torch and lights torches along the way, then drops the torch in the water, followed by a flower lei, and then he jumps in after it. It was kind of cool to see.