Sunrise to Sunset on Maui.

Holy moly.  A month later I'm finally wrapping up the Maui posts.  I'll come up with some sort of catch-up post for all the fun stuff we've been up to since our vacation, too.  Keep in mind as you read this post these photos don't do the views any justice.  But until you can get to Maui yourself, they'll have to do.

Click for part 1, Welcome to Maui, part 2 the Road to Hana, part 3 Pearl Harbor.

Day Seven, August 16: (Yes, I skipped Day Six-we were lazy bums and didn't do much at all after our two jam packed days) We got up at 2am to prepare for our 2 hour drive to watch the sunrise at Haleakala National Park.  This is a big tourist thing to do on Maui, so we figured we had to suck it up and do it.  The drive itself is only about 50-some miles, but with the slower speed limits and long windy, hair pin curve roads to get there it takes longer than you'd think.  We put on whatever heavy clothes we had because on top of a mountain is chilly, even in Hawaii.  We got to the visitor center, where the big event takes place, at about 5am.  We stayed in the warmth of the car for half an hour then decided to head out and wait for the sun to rise.  I prefer cold weather to heat, believe it or not, but this was cold.  The temperature itself wasn't so bad, but man was it windy.  I had on a sweatshirt and a windbreaker and zipped my hood shut as tight as I could.  Had I known it would be that windy, I honestly think I would have tried to bring my snowpants.  Anyway, the idea is to watch this awesome sunrise from way 10,000 feet high, above the clouds even.  The pitch black dark photos are pretty much worthless, so we'll start with this one, the sun hadn't peeked up yet, but there was some light telling us it was coming.

It started to get brighter, but we still couldn't actually see the sun yet.  Here's a look at our view.   You can see all the people on the right, bundled up, just waiting for the sun to rise.

The view got better and better as it got brighter.

And, finally, the sun started to peek up at us.  It was a lot of waiting and anticipation for something that happens so slowly!

It looked a little bit like Mars if you ask me.

I hate to admit it, but the drive down was almost a better view than the sunrise.  We were driving above clouds, then through them.  We could see parts of the island as well as the ocean.  It made the drive down a lot better than the pitch black drive up.

 

We made our way back to the resort after a quick Starbucks stop.  I think we were back before 8am.  The whole thing wiped me out so it was back to bed for a while!  After we got up, it was more lazy time then a sunset cocktail cruise around the ocean.  We were on a pretty small boat with a one man cover band that sounded like the real thing.  The views from the boat were a-maz-ing.

 

 

We got some really cool photos with this sail boat.

 

 

And that wrapped up our last full day on Maui.  The next day we took our time packing up and headed towards the airport.  We spent some time in Paia, a Bohemian/hippie town, got gelato, walked around, and ate at a fish market.  We had a little more time to kill before we needed to get to the airport, so we pulled over at the beach for a while.  

 One more biology lesson from Trevor.

And we took one cheesy mushy beach photo.

 

 Totally awesome trip!  Just what we needed after a long year apart and before all kinds of baby excitement.  I'd definitely recommend Maui to anyone!

-A

Pearl Harbor.

Part three of our trip to Hawaii posts.  Click for part 1, Welcome to Maui, part 2, the Road to Hana or part 4, Sunrise to Sunset on Maui.

Day Five, August 14:  We visited Maui.  Pearl Harbor is part of Oahu.  We were so close and knew it would likely be a while until we could come back, so we booked a day trip to visit all the big Pearl Harbor locations.  This one will probably be mostly photos and captions in an attempt to not give you all a giant history lesson.  I thought I knew a fair bit about WWII, but this really opened my eyes and showed me how little I knew.  I came back with lots of questions and a desire to read up on some of this.  Trevor has been watching WWII, specifically Pacific WWII, documentaries on Netflix, too.

Anyway, we headed to the Kapalua Airport just 5 miles from our hotel.  The flight was about 25 minutesto Honolulu, Oahu.  Too bad we didn't plan this for earlier in the trip or we could have picked up our luggage while there.  As soon as we got off the plane, our tour bus was waiting to take us on our Pearl Harbor journey.

We started at the USS Arizona Visitor Center where we had a good view of just about everything we'd be seeing that day.  We walked around, looked at written information about what happened, memorials, and quickly snagged some postcards and a shot glass for my collection.

Our first big stop was the USS Arizona Memorial which started with a video about the attacks on December 7, 1941 and events shortly thereafter.  This is where our involvement in WWII began.  I always thought this was the big Pearl Harbor must-see; don't get me wrong it was surreal to be there, but there's so much more to it.  Read on... 

 The actual Arizona is still below the monument.  This photo was taken from the Arizona Memorial and that white buoy in the distance shows where the end of the ship is on that end.

 

The Arizona is still leaking oil and they say there's enough that it should continue to leak for at least 20 more years.

Next we grabbed some lunch and went to the USS Bowfin memorial.  This was a submarine that was first launched one year after the attacks on Pearl Harbor, on December 7, 1942.  By the sounds of it, she sure earned her nickname of "Pearl Harbor Avenger."  It included an audio tour of the inside/outside of the submarine (yes, we were the tourists with the headphones), but I rushed the inside part a bit because it was quite warm in there and I do not do heat well.  

Cool tourist headsets.

 No wonder I felt cramped in the heat dungeon.

 

We guessed this was the first class luxury suite.

After the submarine, we headed back to the bus and took a quick drive to Ford Island, which is in the middle of Pearl Harbor itself.  It's mostly a military installation with some naval facitilies and military housing.  The reason for our visit was to see the USS Missouri and the Pacific Aviation Museum.

As we were driving, we saw the airfield where Amelia Erhart first attempted to fly on her big journey.  She had some technical difficulties and never made it anywhere which is why that fact isn't really known, but now we know.  Our first stop on Ford Island was the USS Missouri, where WWII in the Pacific ended.  It is moored where the USS Oklahoma capsized during the attacks.  This is also the site of many filmings such as the recent movie Battleship and Cher's video for "If I Could Turn Back Time."

 The USS Missouri was put back into service during Desert Storm.  See that black painted shape?  That's Kuwait.

This marks where the documents (see above) were signed.

The Missouri's dental office.

We got cute tourist stickers, too.

View from the top.  Obviously.

And, finally, the Pacific Aviation Museum-in an actual hangar that was there in 1941.  Trevor could have spent the entire day there.  The first half of it was all WWII planes.  We watched another movie then one of the volunteers, a former C-130 pilot, gave us a guided tour.  He sure loved planes and history-we could have listened to him go on and on if we had the time.

 The pilot of this plane is wearing his dress white uniform.  Our guide told us that was accurate.  We often forget these attacks are surprises-the sailors had a formal event the night before and some were still "carrying on" when the attacks started.

 Map of the attacks.

The next part of the museum, also a hangar from 1941, was everything from post-WWII until present day.  The building itself is considered a historical site and therefore can not be changed in any way.  Because of that, it still has broken windows from bullets and blasts from the attacks on Pearl Harbor.

And that wrapped up our Pearl Harbor trip.  We headed back to the airport, got on our plane back to Maui, and had a quiet relaxing night after two long days of sight seeing.  Here's a nice view from the plane ride back.

 

-A

The Road to Hana.

Part two of our trip to Hawaii posts.  Click for part 1, Welcome to Maui, part 3, Pearl Harbor  or part 4, Sunrise to Sunset on Maui.  I'm a bit staggered in posting these-Trevor has been hard at work on the computer doing school homework and Guard homework.

Day four, August 13:

We were out the door at 7:20am for a guided tour of the Road to Hana. The tour took us around the island of Maui and through all the difference landscapes.  We stopped for breakfast at The Dunes at Maui Lani golf course, can't beat the fresh pineapple around here. The pog (passion fruit, guava, orange juice) was delicious. We drove past the only sugar came factory in Hawaii and drove past sugar cane fields.

The hala trees have seed clusters that look like pineapples.

First we went through the rainforest part-lots of bamboo (not native to Hawaii), guava and other plants-lush green foliage everywhere! We passed the Garden of Eden arboretum where some scenes of Jurassic Park were filmed. Rainbow Eucalyptus is a cool tree, the trunk has multi colored streaks; it was brought here from Australia. 

We saw ginger plants (white, blue, red and yellow) they're floral not the edible kind (ginger root). They are very fragrant but there's a trick to release the scent, keep reading.  The road is very narrow and windy and the bridges are one lane so we had to wait if someone was on it coming towards us. There's a portion of the tour that rental car companies don't allow you to take your rental, one of the reasons we opted for the guided tour so we wouldn't miss any of it.  That and the driving would have been a little intense for Trevor! 

Our first big stop was Keanae Point, a peninsula with a jagged lava rock coastline.

This is also where we got some Auntie Sandy's banana bread. Our next big stop was Waianapanapa State Park home of a black sand beach and a lava tube (like a cave). 

 Shortly after that we saw bread fruit trees, the fruit can be prepared many different ways. We stopped for lunch at a tropical flower farm in Hana. Each of the women got a pink or red ginger flower. At first they don't smell, but once you give the flower part a good squeeze they are very fragrant. To me, they smelled a lot like fruity pebbles. Trevor said Trix.  You can keep squeezing them to bring back the scent.  We continued on to Haleakala National Park where we saw some Banyan trees (they branch out, reach the ground, plant new roots, and expand) and more of the coastline.

We stopped at Palapala Hoomau Congregational Church where Samuel Pryor Jr. and his wife are buried, as well as Charles Lindbergh.  Samuel Pryor apparently had apes that he treated as his children, brought them to church with him and they are buried next to him (photo below his grave marker), too.

 

We drove past some more coastline before getting into the dry area of Maui-quite the change in scenery.

There was more driving during this part, with occasional stops for photos.  It was a couple hour drive to our next destination, the Maui Winery.  The winery, the only winery on Maui, is part of Maui's Upcountry-the farming and agricultural part of Maui.

I did have some very small sips of wine here-I couldn't pass up trying pineapple wine.  Trevor, of course, got to have a much better taste than I.  To try to make up for it, I grabbed one of these at the general store across the street.

And that about did it for our Road to Hana tour.  There was more driving afterwards, but through some of the same scenery we had already seen in order to get us back to where we started.  I could have included about 100 more photos of awesome rainforesty views and overlooks of the ocean, but I wanted to be reasonable.  It was a very long day, but we saw so many awesome things, glad we did it!

-A