7/29 - Haleakala Summit Sunrise, Tedeschi Winery, a beef carcass and sunset at the beach

Today we had to be up at 3:45 am and on the road by 4:30 for our trek up Haleakala Crater to see the sunrise at 5:53 am.  The last 23 miles up Crater Road takes an hour...  The map looks like a seismograph.

We made it up to the summit a little late, but it didn't matter, because alas, the crater was covered in clouds.  We waited it out a little to see if the clouds would break, but this is the best it would do for us.  At least the crowds had cleared out by the time we left.

It was a balmy 48 degrees up there, but with the wind chill and very wet mist blowing, it was much colder.

A few miles outside of the park, we stopped for breakfast at Grandma's coffee shop.

A darling little place with just one old guy cooking in the back and young lady taking orders in the front.  Made me think that this would be a good job for Mike after we retire here.  It's as if they set up a little road side breakfast shop just for the joy of making food for people.






We split two breakfasts, and it was more than enough.  The breakfast plates are served with two big plops of sticky white rice.  The omelet I was sharing with Mike had Portuguese sausage in it, and it was awesome!  Mike said he's seen the sausage at Weggies, so I will definitely be looking for that when we get home.


Next stop, Tedeschi Winery at the Ulupalakua Ranch - the only winery on the island (no surprise there!)

They make a very good pineapple wine and champagne.  Now I know what you wine snobs are thinking, pineapple wine can only be too sweet and fruity, but I must admit I liked it, and especially the champagne.  They also have a raspberry framboise that is excellent, and at 22% alcohol, gets you where you're going faster.  They have grape wines too, and all grown on the ranch.  The ranch also raises buffalo and elk, and you can stay for a sammy if you time it right.

I have no idea what this flower is, but the color is amazing and like nothing I've ever seen before.

Continue the trip East along the Pi'ilani Highway, and eventually you get to many cool overlooks and exciting views of the rocky black lava coastline.  This trek is quite tricky with winding narrow roads, dips, and some one-lane bridges.  As the rain and fog came and went along with our visibility, we couldn't help but feel we were on an adventure...in a Crown Vic, no less. 

7/28/12 - Discovering Maui

And now, a programming note: I've found that my blogging app, Blogsy, is very cumbersome, especially when placing pictures. For that reason I've decided to write about our hijinks while in transit to our next destination, post the words when I get within wireless, then go back on Mike's laptop to add the pictures. Check back every now and again for the pictures of the day!

Our condo is right across from Kamaole Beach Park III. The jibe here on Maui is much different than the Zen of the resort. I saw people in the park today as early as 6 am, some setting up bounce houses! Maybe there is a fair today...?

Update: Apparently the beach is the place to throw your big family parties. It is not unusual to see several bounce houses set up throughout the park. Someone was throwing their child's first birthday party, catered and complete with buffet tables and white chairs, and a bouncy house with a pool at the bottom. No need to rent a pavilion!

We are heading to West Maui today to check out the Iao Needle at the Iao Valley State Park, making our way back down and around the west side to Launiupoko State Wayside park for some snorkeling, making a stop in the antique city of Lahaina for a meal and shopping, and wrapping up the day at one of the world's most beautiful beaches, Kaanapali, where the cliff divers jump at sunset.

Stop 1: The Iao Needle is a towering 1,200 foot rock pinnacle (2,500 feet from the volcanic floor) that has survived the erosion that caused the valley many hundreds of years ago. The area is the site of a famous battle where King Kamechameha I defeated Maui's army in 1790 to unite the Hawaiian Islands under one rule.

The Iao stream runs through the valley gorge has many bubbling and tumbling water pools and flows that invite you a quick dip, if at least your toes.

The morning mist was rising off the mountain tops when we arrived, and it cleared for a bit before we got caught in a pretty good downpour. The good thing about Hawaiian rain is it only lasts for a few minutes, then clears up. Most of the time it's only a slight to heavy mist, but this was an all out real NY rain for 5 minutes. I had gotten separated from the gang, so took refuge under a tree.

Stop 2: The kids couldn't wait to get to the beach, so we headed out to Papalua Wayside park. We quickly realized why so many setup so early on the beach - there was very little parking, and the space on the beach edge was taken up with tents (tent camping is allowed with a permit on certain beaches).  

The waves here weren't going to work for body boarding, so we moved on and ended up Launiupoko State Wayside park instead.

This is a first birthday party...

The park was very busy with people having their family picnics, complete with bouncy houses, but the beach area was relatively clear, and perfect for body boarding and surfing. The kids and Mike were able to ride a wave or two in pretty far.






Stop 3: A few hours and pb&j sandwiches later, we made our way further north to the town of Lahaina. Lahaina is an old fishing and whaling town, which at one time was the capital of the Hawaiian Kingdom. The main shopping and attraction area is located on Front Street, paralleling the ocean, and is a collection of art galleries, souvenir shops, restaurants, and jewelry stores (lots of diamonds... cruise ships port here).

You have to get shrimp at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co!

View of Lahaina harbor from our table

After a bit of shopping, we decided to have dinner at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. Austin has been wanting to try it. We had an excellent meal on the water, and left absolutely stuffed.

One of the largest Indian Banyan trees in the world

In the center of town is an enormous Banyan tree, planted in 1873 when it was only 8 feet tall.  It now stands over 60 feet tall, has 12 major trunks in addition to its main core, and stretches over 200 feet in area.  Quite impressive, and is one of the largest Indian Banyan trees in the world.  The area underneath hosts many community concerts, meetings, and markets.

Walking along the harbor after dinner, we came upon a fishing boat that had caught a 513 pound marlin.  WARNING:  This video is not for the faint of heart, but I was simultaneously repulsed and fascinated, do naturally I had to share...

Dusk on Kaanapali Beach

Stop 4: All of the beaches in Hawaii are open to the public and require public access. The problem, however, is that no one has to provide you with parking to get to the beach. In the case of Kaanapali, there is no "beach park" to speak of. Instead, many posh hotels and resorts face the beach and take up any chance of easy access, since their parking is all "resort only".








The only alternative, which works but you have to either know this, or spend loads of time figuring it out like we did, is to visit the Whaler's Village shopping complex which sits in the middle of these resorts and caters to the resort crowd. Once you park in the parking garage of the shopping village and make at least a $40.00 purchase, all you have to do is show your receipt to the ramp attendant and they will validate your parking so that you don't have to pay the $3.00/half hour, or $30.00/day parking fee.



The views on this beach are spectacular, the white sand is like velvet, and the beach stretches for 4 miles of unadulterated pleasure walking. At the Black Rock, which resides at the northern most end of the beach, there is supposed to be a torch lighting and cliff diving ceremony to commemorate the closing of another day. Either they don't do it anymore, or it isn't as much of a ceremony as the brochures make it out to be, since we didn't see either. No worries, walking the beach with the kids at sunset was pretty awesome too!

7/27/12 - Dolphin Adventure and flight to Maui

Emma has always wanted to swim with the dolphins, and they have a program at the resort where you can do that. When she saw the prices she said she didn't want to do it, but Mike went ahead and secretly booked it for the kids.

Our flight to Maui was at 1, so we spent the rest of the morning packing and getting to the airport.

After a very quick and painless flight from the Big Island, we landed in Maui around 3 pm. First stop, Walmart for food and supplies, since we can cook our own meals now. PB&J, eggs, milk ($3.88 for a half-gallon), Mai Tai mix (hee hee!), turkey lunch meat, bread, pop, and various other sundries for a screaming total of $78.00 and no meat to speak of. It's like shopping at Wegman's at home! And the seedless watermelons are $10.44 here too, only not quite as big as on Hawaii island.

So we go to check out, and all they have are the blue Walmart bags that you buy - no plastic bags on the island. When you leave the store the guy at the door has to check your receipt to make sure you paid for everything, cuz most people don't spring for the .50 cheapo cloth bags (no bottom support either) and just walk out with the items loose in their cart. Oh yeah, and another observation: there are people of Walmart in Hawaii too.

Made it to our condo, then off to dinner at a local restaurant, the Pupu Lounge. Excellent ceviche! I had a satay plate of steak, chicken, shrimp and scallops, served with a ginger soy sauce and a hot sweet fruit sauce. Austin had the coconut shrimp and perfectly fried, light and cripsy pork spring rolls. Mike had a blackened and seared ahi tuna, and Emma had a Caesar salad with chicken. It was all delish, and we were stuffed!

Across the street from the restaurant is another of the Kamaole parks, and it looked like people were ice skating from where we were... well of course they weren't - it was the outdoor roller rink which opens on Fri, Sat, and Wed nights. Right next to that is a 'sick' skateboard park where we watched some kids show off for a while. We'll have to check it out in the daylight hours.

Thursday, 7/26 - Zip Line, Akaka Falls, Hilo, Observatory

Up and out by 7 am for the hour and half ride to the zip line. First a stop at the ABC for our .99 coffees, and $1.99 breakfast pastries! Our breakfast - $13.00. Winner! Bet the lady at the resort wish she knew about ABC!

 The zip line adventure was a lot of fun. Emma was a bit nervous at first, but did very well. We zipped 7 times total, traversing the river with a great view from above. The longest zip was 1,100 feet, and the last zip was a dual race to the end. Austin beat Mike, and I beat Emma!

Akaka Falls is a beautiful waterfall that plunges 442 feet into an eroded gorge. The .4 mile loop trail takes you through some incredible rain forest with banyan trees, orchids, hanging flowers, palms... just amazing, thick foliage. A stop on the loop trail is a view of the Kahuna falls - not as impressive because of the extreme angle and foliage blocking the view, but pretty none the less.

Emma & Austin at Rainbow Falls

Another stop was at Rainbow Falls.  Not running as heavily as seen in other pictures on the web.  It's called Rainbow Falls because of the resulting rainbows created by the mist.  No mist today = no rainbows.  However, we did have rain and mist throughout the day.  Go figure.

Austin creating his own Lava plate

They call them drive ins, but they are more like walk ins.

Killed some time in Hilo trying our hand at another plate meal. This joint, called Verna's and recommended by one of our zip line guides, served fries so he could substitute the rice for the fries to make a more authentic home-style garbage plate. He liked this mac salad and gravy better than the last place. We also discovered what POG is - it's pineapple, orange and guava juice combined. Emma now has a new favorite drink and is on the lookout for it everywhere we go. Otherwise, we weren't too impressed with Hilo. Seemed very depressed.

Last stop on our round trip was the Mauna Kea Observatory. There are currently 13 working telescopes, including the largest optical/infrared telescopes in the world. A summit tour of the observatories wasn't going to happen on this trip - due to the 14,000 foot altitude, you really need a 4WD car, and you have to be at least 16. But we were able to visit the Onizuka Visitor Center for the star gazing program.

We froze our butts off waiting for the clouds to clear, but they finally made their way down the mountain around 8 pm. The telescopes came out and we were able to see Saturn and her rings. It was so perfectly clear, that it looked like someone made a cut out of it and put it on the end of the telescope! The moon looked pretty wild too - the detail of the craters was amazing. The ride up and down

Wednesday, 7/25 - The Big Island - Relaxation Day

Today was our 'down day' to explore the resort and relax at the pool - the question being, which of the pools we would visit. The resort is so huge - it's comprised of three large complexes or 'towers' of rooms. We are staying in the Ocean Tower, which is furthest from the main check in, but has the best views and landscaped areas of the resort, we decided. Complete with a giant Buddha statue, it is the Zen side of the resort.

We decided to make the 13+ minute trek over to the opposite side of the resort to check out the giant pool, complete with water slide, grotto, water falls, and hot tubs (3!). We spent until after lunch just crisping up and swimming.

Lunch was the hamburger special - grill burger, fries, and a Mai Tai for $19.00 - a bargain considering the Mai Tai was $13.00 on it's own.

The rest of the day consisted of snorkeling at another beach outside the resort, and dinner out at the Kings shops.

Tuesday 7/24 - The Big Island - Volcanoes NP, black sand beach, & plates

Today we headed out to Volcanoes National Park, which is quite a trek from our hotel. The Waikiloa Village area is a collection of resorts and luxury condos which share two different shopping areas and golf course. The Kings Place has all the fancy-schmancy shops like Tiffany and Macy's, and the Queen's Place has an ABC store to rival Trader Joe's with upscale grocery items and other goods.

On the way out we stopped at the ABC for breakfast pastries and coffee for me - my first Kona coffee, and a bargain (even by home standards) at .99 for 12 oz. Of course the same can't be said about most of the other items in the store, like a can of Arnold Palmer for $1.89, and a bag of lime flavored Tostidos for $4.99.

It takes over 2 hours to get to the park from our hotel, and taking the North route around the island, we decided to make some stops along the way. First we checked out the Waipio Valley overlook, complete with a waterfall into the ocean.

With the kids asleep in the back, we took advantage of the Whine Free time to take a short 4 mile scenic route; a narrow, winding road which felt like we were taking an adventure ride through a rain forest attraction at Disney; Safe, but not without a little thrill here and there!

Two small stops resulted in magnificent views of lush valleys and waterfalls. Definitely worth the trip through the bumpy, winding road!

Like much of the ride to the park, there was a heavy mist blowing. Mike picked up four very attractive clear rain ponchos for us, since none of us packed rain gear. With the wind blowing so hard, we looked like we'd been shrink wrapped. Schlepping it in the wet wind, we made our way to the first steam vent and then on to the Kilauea Overlook area. Very cool to be able to see the caldera and the steam venting in the distance.

To get a better view, and possibly see some lava, we had to go to the Jagger Museum overlook where you can see the actual cinder cone. However, there was no viewing of actual lava today, folks! If you come at night, you might be able to see a red glow from down inside the cone. We would settle for steam and VOG (the volcanic version of smog). After a few pix, we were out of there and off to walk the short Devastation Trail.

Devastation, indeed. It was a miserable jaunt through the rain and wind across this barren area, and I couldn't help but laugh, feeling like I was in some kind of apocalyptic movie where we are the last survivors, and if we just go a little farther, we will make it to safety! This is mostly because the kids were not digging this. But the view of the lava field at the end was worth it.


Looking down into the still cooling lava field with all of it's crusty cracks and frozen black waves was pretty impressive, until you saw that there were people down there, then it was even more cool! The perspective is all off, and seeing the folks down below who were making the 4 mile loop hike across the lava made you realize the immensity of the whole thing. I really wanted to make that hike, but with the weather being so nasty, I knew there was no way I was talking anyone else into it. All they could think about was finding the next meal, so it was off we went. We skipped the Thurston lava tubes because there just wasn't any parking the two times we went by the parking area.








Last stop before heading back to our Shangri-La was to the black sand beach of Punaluu Beach park. Aside from the damp, cloudy weather, the waves were roiling in and out and there was not going to be any swimming. But we were in luck anyway, since several sea turtles had come up on the beach to rest, and we were able to see them up close and get some really nice shots of them.

The sand really is black - "like crushed up Oreo's!", Emma said, and the sand at the water's edge is so powdery soft! It really is quite beautiful. The pictures of the beach online couldn't really do it any justice - it is so much more black and beautiful in person. The kids enjoyed exploring the tide pools in spite of not being able to swim.

Gravy is NOT the same as hot sauce...

We had our second Hawaiian meal at a small hole in the wall place called Hona Hou's. We thought the plate meals would be similar to the garbage plates we have at home, and Austin was pretty excited to sink his teeth into one. However, although the plates are similar in that they have one part mac salad, one part rice (we have potatoes) and one part meat, they are kept separate on the plate, and not all heaped together like we were thinking. No wonder the waitress looked at me funny when I told her that we use home fries instead of rice, and we call them "garbage plates".

Austin is going to start his own garbage plate restaurant in Hawaii and call them Lava Plates!

Surf Lesson? Big Island arrival

Spent the morning having a leisurely breakfast and packing in prep for our commute to the Big Island later in the day.

Made a stop at Leonard's Bakery for a malasada. These are basically fried dough balls, but oh so much better! You can get them with cinnamon sugar, powdered sugar, and some other kind of Asian sugar. You can also have it filled with custard, chocolate custard, or a coconut custard. Mike got the chocolate. Yum! They are almost like the little sugar doughnuts you get on a Chinese buffet, but bigger, fluffier, and tastier. These ethnic treats were brought to the island 60 years ago by a Portuguese family, and caught on. They are now a landmark bakery, much like the Mike's Bakery of Boston.

UPDATE: Click here for an authentic Malasada Recipe!

Mmmmmmaladadas!

To kill some more time before our surfing lesson at noon, we drove up the coast a bit and stopped at this amazing overlook. We jumped the wall (you're not supposed to, of course...) and walked out on the rock ledges and discovered all of these amazing lava tubes and crevices where the ocean eats away at the coast one wave at a time. Quite incredible, the power of the ocean.

We get to our surfing lesson and check-in at the harbor, and it turns out the reservation lady only booked one person for the lesson instead of 4. I know when I booked this in January that I told her I had the Groupon for a surf lesson for 4. The boat only holds 6. One of us could go, or we could reschedule. Luckily we were able to reschedule for when we come back to Oahu before for our final trip home. Unfortunately though, it means traveling back from the North shore in order to do that. Oh well, what can you do. The kids were pretty disappointed, but we made the best of it by getting a chocolate dipped cone at McDonald's. I know, we went to Mickey D's while in Hawaii...!!? We don't even go at home. I hate to say it, but it was our second trip to the golden arches already. I tell you though, this Mickey D's had the best view of any I've ever been in!

Being that we were all greased up for the sun and had our suits on anyway, we decided to try our hand at getting into the Hanauma Bay nature preserve to do some snorkeling - Big... Fat...no go. The parking lot was full the first time we drove by, and still full at 1pm. We were on limited time, so didn't even entertain the "park at the bottom of the hill someplace and walk up" option. Whew...dodged that bullet.


Instead we headed back toward the airport and decided to spend an hour at Waikiki beach, seeing that we never went in the water when we arrived the first day. The kids walked the barrier wall (I thought they were going to get washed off, but I guess the waves weren't that big), and Mike did some exploring on the other side of the wall. However, sea urchins everywhere, so he and the kids beat it back to the other side of the wall. I hung out on the burning hot beach, but dipped in up past my knees when I could bear the heat no longer. I didn't want to be all sandy and gross for the flight in an hour.

The view of Waikiki Beach from the top of Diamond Head Crater

Fast forward to arrival at our hotel, the Hilton Waikoloa Village - OMG! This place is AMAZING! It has an electric tram to take you to your room - that's how big it is. Think of a Disney World resort - amazingly landscaped, adorned, decorated, and lush. Streams twist throughout the property, with paths and bridges that you can take to the different areas. There are various pools, some connected by 'natural' water slides and a lazy river. They have their own snorkeling cove with sea turtles, and there is an area where you can swim with the dolphins (for a fee, most likely). You can even take a boat from the main lobby back to your hotel complex if you don't want to wait for the monorail. We are on the 4th floor and have a lovely view of the ocean and the lagoon, statuary, mini golf, and the rocky lava coast.

The inside view of our hotel

 You never have to leave this place! - the resort has daily fitness and health classes if you want to partake, as well as evening activities, happy hours, movies at the beach and other fun stuff. We've decided to spend our down day on Wednesday checking everything out and taking advantage of all the amenities. The best part is, the kids can go explore on their own.

To Top it all off, the hotel delivered us a bottle of champagne, chocolate covered strawberries, some dried fruit with chocolates, macadamia nut brittle, and macadamia nuts to help us celebrate our anniversary and Austin's graduation. How nice! Tonight we will enjoy that champagne!







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