11 July 2008 – We woke up very early today to have a chance to enjoy the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve before it got overwhelmingly crowded. When we got there, just past the time it was to open, there was no one manning the booth to collect our parking money, so we drove on in. The bay is beautiful! It is a volcanic crater whose ocean side has been eroded away over time creating a relatively protected bay with high cliff walls.
10 July 2008 – Today was our stunning scenery / low activity day. Consequently, Darci hung back to sleep in a bit and do exciting things in Waikiki instead of riding in the car with us. We began our morning by driving out to the Valley of the Temples to check out the Byodo-In temple.
Up to this point, my fine dining experiences in the islands hadn’t been meeting up with my expectations. This was so true in fact, that I very nearly canceled our dinner reservation at Alan Wong’s. I am oh-so-glad that my wise spouse talked me out of it!
09 July 2008 – We got going relatively early today and stopped in to pick up breakfast malasadas at Leonard’s. Malasadas (sometimes spelled malassada) are dough-nut-like creatures that are coated in sugar, and Leonard’s is the place to get them. We got some that were filled (mine with lilikoi custard, Sean’s with chocolate) and some that were not, and they were incredible.
08 July 2008 - Sean and Darci were off to surf lessons this morning. Harry and Helen were off to visit the Punchbowl. Your friendly neighborhood Hungry Engineer was left in blissful solitude to catch up on her blog. I opened the shutters wide and flooded our room with beautiful sunlight and spent several quiet hours happily writing and digging up photos and posting away.
07 July 2008 - This morning we were Pearl Harbor bound. We got there a little later than we meant to and wound up waiting around for a while before we could tour the Arizona Memorial. We killed time by strolling around, walking through the museum and checking out the various displays around the grounds (among my favorite was a conning tower that you could climb up into and see all the instrumentation).
06 July 2008 - We had purchased apple bananas back at the market near our lodge in Kula, and were advised to let them ripen for a few more days before we ate them. Since I didn’t think we’d be able to take them on the plane to Oahu that afternoon, we instead ate them our last morning in Maui.
05 July 2008 – Today was the day for our Molokini snorkel trip. We got there just in the nick of time and boarded our boat. The captain and crew were efficient and funny, and they made the trip seem like an easy breezy island affair. It was fun to watch the Molokini Crater get ever larger in our view on the ride out from Ma'alaea Bay.
04 July 2008 - We woke up very early this morning to see sunrise. Harry, Darci, and Sean went down to Haiku for their bicycle adventure. One of the fun things to do on Maui is take a bicycle ride down the Haleakala Mountain. If you don’t have your own bike with you, several companies offer some variation on the ‘drive you to the top with a bike and let you ride down’ package. The company we went with drove you to the top of the mountain to watch the sun rise, toured you around the park for a bit, and then dropped you off just outside the park grounds and let you bicycle back to their facility at your own pace. In the mean time, Helen and I drove straight up to the visitors’ center at Haleakala National Park to climb the white mountain trail (in the dark) and park ourselves to watch the sun rise.
03 July 2008 - Sean and I woke up early in the morning and went out to Venus Pool (known to the Hawaiians as Waikoa Pond). We had read that you could no longer take the trail to the pool because it was on private land and that instead you had to sort of walk down the stream bed till you reached the pool.