Home from Hawaii

Well, it's 1 a.m. and I can't sleep. Figures. I took too many naps today. We got in town at noon and were greeted by L and g&g. I wasn't real tired this afternoon and was ready to fall asleep at 10 pm, but somehow got my second wind. So I thought I'd start on my blogging. I'll try to keep my posts interesting so not to bore anyone. I really should have blogged daily while I was there, but I was too busy having fun.

So this first picture was taken from our hotel patio. Fourth floor, garden view studio. As you can see, we had a nice view of the ocean. The amazing thing about Maui is it's always sunny and when the sun rises at 5:45 am it shines into the room. We went to the beach a couple times and had fun. We walked the shore picking up interesting rocks.

We arrived Sunday night, and got up Monday morning at 1:45 am to go to Haleakala Crater. We headed up in the van about 3:30 am. It took 90 minutes to go from Paia to the top of the Crater (for our spot it was 9500 feet). We stood in the cold (38 degrees with 15 mile an hour winds) for 20 minutes before the sun rose. The view was breath taking. And one of the amazing things is how the clouds start flying when the sun comes up. The ride down was exhilarating. We voted it #1 activity of our trip.
We visited the Maui Plantation one day. It was really interesting. We took a tram ride to see the various plants/fruits produced in Hawaii. Sugarcane and pineapple used to be a staple for Hawaii, but it's predicted that in 7 years they won't make either (all being done in Costa Rica and the Philippines). This first picture is of the Kona bean (aka coffee beans). Very cool how they are a plant and change from green to red to brown.
Did you know that pineapples grow on the ground? I didn't before doing research on our trip. It was interesting to see them growing as a bush. We bought a Maui Gold pineapple and enjoyed it when we were in Maui. It was very sweet.
Here is a typical picture of Maui. Beautiful coast and blue ocean. It is very calm in the morning and by afternoon the trade winds kick up. It never rained more than 10 minutes the whole trip. We often felt that we were in California on Pacific Coast Highway except that there's not much land between the street and the ocean. The houses even had the California feel.
That's all for now. I've got to get some sleep. Back to work at 9 am.