Hawaii 2022

This was our big trip for the year, so there are lots of pictures. I’ll post a few for each day, but if you want to see all of them – feel free to come over for a visit to look at the book I’ll be making!

Our first day was mostly just arriving in Maui and getting situated in our room at the resort. Bryan owns a time-share at the Ka'anapali Beach Resort, so we had a suite: a kitchen, a dining area, a living room w/ balcony, and a nice big bedroom with a huge bathroom. It was on the 11^th floor so it had a nice view of the ocean!

The official First Day of Vacation we got to go to the Feast of Lele, one of the finer luaus in Maui. They offer a sit-down meal (as opposed to the more usual buffet style dinner) with 5 courses of food from the Pacific Island Nations (Aotearoa, Tahiti, Samoa, and Hawai’i). Each course featured three different dishes to sample while enjoying the dancers on stage. It was quite the experience!

Day two was my birthday so I got to choose the entertainment for the day: so of course, we went to the Maui Ocean Center! What a fantastic place: we got to see all kinds of fish, turtles, history, and artwork. Their finest exhibit, however, is an astonishing, virtually immersive experience that brings you eye-to-eye with Hawai'i's humpback whales! It’s a dome-shaped theatre showing a 3-D film that literally feels like you’re right there with the whales. At one point during the movie, I looked over at Bryan. He was sitting there looking up at the whale, and the whale was looking right back at him, not two feet away! It was the most amazing thing I’d ever seen! I could have SWORN it was real. It completely took my breath away.

The next day was our Road Trip to Hana. We had our own personal guide, downloaded onto our phone – SHAKA GUIDE - that took us step by step all the way there and back again. Honestly, if you’re ever in Maui – I can highly recommend these guys. We bought their bundle offering 6 different tours, so we were able to use it multiple times. The road to Hana is quite the experience even without the guide: it’s a one-lane, two-way highway that has over 600 twists and turns to it! It takes you from one end of the island all the way to the other, giving you some really spectacular views along the way!  

We didn’t want to be rushed during our Road to Hana trip, so we rented an AirB&B in Hana for the night, making it a two-day trip instead of trying to do it all in one day. The place we stayed at was okay – not the best place ever (no air conditioning) but not the worst either (no cockroaches). But I’m glad we stayed the night – we had lots to see!

One of the negative aspects of owning a timeshare is that you are required to attend meetings with them each time you use the timeshare. This gives them an opportunity to get you to spend even more money with them and are truly an awful experience. But we had to go because they had gotten us in to the Feast of Lele for free, and that would have cost us roughly $200.00 per person if we’d gone ourselves. And the meeting was just as awful as I expected it to be – but we did it, and then got to spend the rest of the day just relaxing and recovering from our roadtrip. These are some more photos from the day before.

Thursday was exciting – we rented “glass bottomed” kayaks and got to paddle around for two hours looking at the fishes! Unfortunately, Bryan could not see anything (he did not have his prescription glasses on) through the bottom of the boat – so he mostly paddled while I looked. Most of you know this, but I do not know how to swim – so I was a tad bit nervous. But I had a life preserver on, so really wasn’t that worried. However, the wind picked up while we were out there, so getting back into the little cove we set out from was tricky!

Friday we went inland and did a few tours on our way to the volcano, where we got to use the Shaka Guide ap once again! Our first tour was of the Surfing Goat CheeseFarm: we got to feed the goats AND do a cheese tasting! From there we went to the Ocean Vodka Distillery where we got to tour their grounds and taste their vodka (surprisingly good). We ended the day at the Haleakala National Park up at elevation 10,000.

Since Friday was such a hot day (temps were in the upper 90s pretty much our entire time in Hawaii) I needed to spend Saturday just relaxing and recovering in our rooms. Bryan went out and got some fresh fruit, so we munched on Mangos and Papayas! We played cards, watched movies, read books, and basically just enjoyed each other’s company.

For our last day in Hawaii, we went on another brewery tour at the Maui Brewing Co. and got to taste five or six of their best beers. Afterwards, Bryan really wanted to go to a place called Moose McGillicudy’s for a late dinner: apparently it was a favorite of his from past visits to the island, and his favorite t-shirt from there had just recently disintegrated to the point where it had to be thrown out – so he needed a replacement.