Maui

We just spent a week on Maui, and we had a great time! We stayed at Kahana Falls, which was a really nice hotel. We found it through a military time share exhcange program. Our room was small but clean, and it had a kitchen, which saved us a fortune on food. Groceries on Maui are expensive! $7 for a gallon of milk, and $7 for a bag of green salad.. Wow. Gas was expensive too, so be prepared if you are headed there...
The hotel had a pretty koi pond:
And a small, but gorgeous pool with waterfalls:
And 2 fabulous hot tubs. We spent a lot of time in these!
We got to explore most of the island. The only thing I really feel like we missed was the volcano crater, due to rain. We plan to visit the big island to see the active volcano though, so I guess I'll get over missing this one!
We really enjoyed the town of Lahaina. They have one of the world's biggest banyan trees, and it was a great place to play hide and seek. All of the trunks you see below are part of ONE tree.
Lahaina is full of fun shops and great art galleries. They also had some yummy restaurants. We didn't eat at Bubba Gump's (my vegetarian son would have lost his mind), but we had to take the picture...
And Lahaina is where I saw my first whale breach. Here's Crumpet pointing out something he was pretty sure was a whale:
One morning when Dad was snorkeling, Crumpet and I headed to the aquarium.
This is a small but nice aquarium and we had a lot of fun. They have a tunnel you can walk through and be surrounded by sea life.
We loved the giant rays!
There was also a really good educational exhibit about some of the larger sea animals living around Hawaii.
This was Crumpet's favorite - pulling a lever to make the dolphin release air through its blowhole. We spent a LONG time doing this!
They had a pretty good touch pool with sea cucumbers and sea stars There were urchins too, but we decided to avoid those...
The inside tanks were full of coral and creatures that can be found in Hawaii's waters. I liked these garden eels. They stay planted in one spot and wait for food to float by.
And the flounders were very active, swimming all over the tank. I'd never seen one move off the bottom before. The naturalist said it was because they are in a tank environment.
We found lots of amazing flowers to photograph while driving around:



We went to see the cliff diver at Black Rock one evening. Every evening, he walks up the cliff, lights a series of tikki torches, says a prayer to the gods while blessing a lei, and then jumps off the cliff into the sea. Quite impressive to watch! (Black Rock is also supposed to be a good place to snorkel, but we didn't get a chance.)
Ah, vacation...