Maui Vacation Summary

I promise I won’t harass you with too many Maui pictures at once—I’ll merely split it into multiple posts. :)

Our trip began with dropping the boys off to my parents in Bend on the fourth of July. I guess Seth and Sam LOVED fireworks (a complete 180 from them bawling in the house from fright last year). And apparently Seth told my parents that he really like “that” music, i.e. country music that was playing in my dads’ truck. Ben and I watched fireworks just the two of us from a field by our house while eating homemade kettle corn.

We got up bright and early (3:45) for our flight. We knew our vacation was off to a great start when Ben won a Hawaii guidebook on the flight for guessing the exact half way mileage point between San Fran and Maui. Our arrival time in Maui was 11:30, meaning we had a whole afternoon to explore!

Here’s the view from our room:

We stayed at Makena Beach Resort in South Maui…a great decision for us! The only negatives we had read in reviews were that it was “really quiet” and “had no night life.” We thought that sounded perfect! The hotel had it’s own beach literally a one minute walk from our room and the most fabulous court yard full of Hawaiian foliage and a huge koi pond which we ate an amazing buffet breakfast by each morning.

Our rental car ended up being a “upgrade” to a Lincoln town car (apparently they ran out of medium sized sedans and apparently they think a Lincoln town car is an upgrade). We got a lot of laughs because of “Bert” our HUGE, old person car. (We ended up trading it in for something smaller so that we could tackle the roads of Hana and Haleakala). Here’s a picture of Ben and Bert: Ben is getting ready to go golfing at the Makena golf course (an activity which he thought was totally awesome!).

That evening we ate dinner at a fancy restaurant that was sitting on a deck built over a fish pond. We had an amazing view and enjoyed watching the fish swim under us. We also went for a walk along the beach, with some of the fancier resorts on the mountain side, which is where we saw this amazing tree:

Here’s us at dinner at Humuhumunujkunukuapua’a (I dare you to say that!):

Two of the days we did some snorkeling. Truth be told, I had a really hard time snorkeling in Maui. The waters were much rougher than those of the Caribbean (my only other snorkeling experience, 7 years ago). I’m not much of a water person to begin with, so sticking my head in the ocean with waves crashing around me is definitely out of my comfort zone. We rented a boogie board for me to float on, so that helped with the fear. I’m glad that I went out, however, because we saw some amazing fish, a huge striped eel, and a couple of turtles (and thankfully—no sharks!)

Walking down to snorkel at Honolua Bay

We were one of two sets of people at Honolua Bay when we arrived there

We spent an afternoon in Lahaina shopping and eating the BEST shaved ice ever at Ululani’s:

This is all ONE tree (Bayan tree in Lahaina)

That evening we watched the sunset at Haleakala which was one of the coolest visual experiences ever. Here’s a couple of photos, but I’m saving the best ones for a sunset post I’m planning on doing later:

Imagine the sun setting over these clouds…

Haleakala crater

Our final day we wanted to stay close to our hotel and rest and sit on the beach (the entire previous day we spent exploring the road to Hana—a post all of its own). Ben went body surfing and I looked for shells and relaxed.

Our final evening we splurged and ate at the Five Palms restaurant, one of our favorite experiences of the entire trip. The food was AMAZING and you can’t beat the location of the restaurant. Not only overlooking the ocean sunset, but only feet from the shoreline.

And that’s our Maui trip in a nutshell. Overall: we LOVED Maui and would travel back again in a heartbeat. You can’t beat the travel time (only 5 hour flight from Portland) and the people there are so nice. We spent a lot of time talking about “when we come back” or, “when the boys are older and we bring them here.”

So Maui, thanks for the wonderful trip, we’ll see you again some day (hopefully sooner rather than later)!