We tried to get Aaron and Kyle to sleep on the plane, but they wouldn't have it. Considering they were up way, way past their bedtime they did pretty well.
Here is Aaron familiarizing himself with the plane.
and Kyle is saying cheese I think
When we arrived in Maui the ladies were given a lei greeting as it was Shelby and Sylvie's first time to the islands.
We stayed at the Mahana resort just north of Kaanapali. We had nice ocean views and their were many whales to be seen from our deck. The kids enjoyed the pool and as the week went on and Aaron's confidence in swimming on his own increased and was able to jump in the pool and swim to the side on his own.
Besides the pool a lot of time was spent at the beach building sand castles, burying people and playing in the water. We did some snorkeling, but not as much as the others. One day Mike noticed a whale sleeping in the water about a mile out, so with his dinghy and snorkel gear he swam out to the whale, my dad also swam out with a boogie board and Mark swam on his own to the whale. They we able to view the Humpback whale from about 15 feet away which they said was an amazing experience.
Here is our self portrait beach shot
A little self burial
We buried Mark and Kyle tested it on top to make sure Mark couldn't feel anything
A little frisbee on the beach
One day we took Aaron and Kyle and my mom joined us too on the Sugar Cane train. The train used to haul sugar cane from the fields to the sugar mill. Now it's just a tourist attraction as most of the mills have shut down. The train ride is about 30 minutes in each direction.
Here the train is letting off a little steam
Kyle found his namesake passenger car
Aaron watching the train make a 'Y' turn
One day we ventured to take the road to Hana. This is a famous road on Maui's north east coast. It is known for it's lush vegetation and and views along the way. It is also known for having over 600 turns and over 50 bridges most of which are only one lane. Before we began the road we all got smoothies as they looked quite tasty. Of course Aaron was interested in this as well. Shelby cautioned against this and I thought he should be fine. Well after about 100 turns Aaron gave back his smoothie to the world and the bag didn't make it to his mouth in time. Needless to say it made a mess. After that Aaron and Kyle both fell asleep which helped us get along on our journey. When Aaron woke up he threw up again, but my mother was a little more prepared with a bag and the mess was avoided.
I think this is after Aaron puked the first time and is about to sleep and Kyle's head got a little too heavy
We finally made it to Hana and stopped for lunch at a red sand beach.
Our final stop on this tour was the 7 pools, it was a nice place to cool of in the fresh water pools. One thing we had to do though was make our way back through the 600+ curves and 50+ plus one lane bridges. We couldn't continue to go around the island as the bridge was out. This didn't stop Mike from finding a way around in the Jeep, but our minivan had to make the trek back. My dad gave Kyle some apple and said if Kyle throws up, it's his fault. Well Kyle threw up and we'll blame my dad for that. We finally made it back to Mile 0 and a sigh of relief was felt. We bought Aaron an 'I survived the road to Hana' shirt to help him remember the journey.
On Saturday Mike, Viva, my dad and I took a helicopter ride around part of Maui and then over to Molokai. It was a cool experience to see parts of the island you would not otherwise get to see. Molokai has the highest sea cliffs in the world. The helicopter flew over them from the land side towards the sea and as you approach the edge of the cliffs, all of a sudden it becomes a huge drop off to the water. As we flew over the water we could see some groups of whales travelling together, pretty cool to see.
Before we went on our helicopter ride we dropped of Mark by the water for his sea to summit bike ride. He rented a bike for the week. He did a 100km bike ride around the north part of the island a few days earlier. So now his goal was to bike up 10,000 ft to the top of Mount Haleakala. So we left him at the picture below.
A few hours later we made our way up the mountain, there was a sign that said no fuel for the next 22 miles and I looked at the fuel gauge and it said 1/4 tank. I kind of thought we should get some gas as we had actually at least 44 miles as we had to come back down plus find a gas station, but I didn't see a gas station anywhere nearby so we went on. As we went up 3/4 of the way we caught up with Mark and cheered him on, his task seemed pretty impressive until we cheered a man running up the mountain which was even more impressive. I also found a geocache on the way up the mountain, so I was happy with that.
We went up to the top and cheered on Mark as he crossed the 10,000 foot elevation point to reach the summit 4.5 hours after he started.
Mount Haleakala is a huge crater which is quite impressive to see. We spent some time at the top looking around and had some lunch as well.
We had a bit of an adventure coming down as the gas light was on the whole way down. We used Mike's GPS to tell us where nearest gas station was, which was about 30 miles away. We were kind of anxiously counting down the miles and drawing a bit of relief as we got closer and closer. Finally the voice on the GPS says "You've reached your destination', only problem was there was nothing there! I mean nothing, no sign of anything! So our hopes were dashed and looked for the next closest gas station about 4k away. We did eventually make it luckily.
On our last day we went to the aquarium, the kids liked seeing the sharks. Aaron wanted to see dolphins as well, but these are about all we found. There were lots of different types of sea life to see, so I think they enjoyed it. I got to test out my 'aquarium' setting on my point and shoot camera with some success.
They had some glass jellyfish on display, they are a little easier to take a picture of as they don't move.
These next set of pictures is some of what each one of our family was up to at some point on the trip.
We had fun on our trip, it was my first time on Maui and I feel like I really got to see most of the island and explore what it had to offer. On our last day we were able to see our friends Dave and Estelle and hang with them on the beach. It was their first day and our last, so we got to tease them a bit about their pasty white skin. Estelle thinks she won't tan much we'll have see when they get back.
Thank you Maui for the memories, it was nice to have a week of summer in winter!
