Our Maui Trip

Warning - lots of pictures!! Mike and I got back from our trip to Maui late last Wednesday. We had a really nice time and it was the most relaxed I've felt in a really long time. We stayed in a wonderful condo that was literally right on the ocean. We could not have had a more fabulous view. The condo was my favorite part of the whole trip. I spent a lot of time just laying on the couch looking out at the view and listening to the waves.
This is the view that we had from the lanai. We sat here a lot all through out the day and ate breakfast outside every morning. The water was so clear, that we could see fish and giant sea turtles swimming in the ocean. How neat is that!?!

This is a picture looking out to the right of the lanai. We swam in the pool a couple of times and only had to share the pool once with other people.

We watched for a few minutes as this giant tuna was gutted.

I believe this was called Twin Falls park (there were mosquitoes there - hate them!)

I took a ton of pictures of flowers, they were too pretty to pass up!

This was a really neat Banyon tree that was in Lahaina and it took up one whole street corner. It was amazing! I think it was some where around 160 years old. The tree sends down vines, and once they touch the ground, the vines turn into a new trunk. These new trunks then support the heavy branches that reach out. It reminded us of something at Disneyland.

We took a drive up to a winery on the island. The drive was pretty with rolling hills, miles and miles of lava rock walls and lots of pretty, purple blooming trees.

The winery has only been in operation for around 35-40 years and was originally the home site for some different wealthy people and different kings used to come and stay there. The grounds were filled with some really old trees that were just fabulous.

One thing that I was not expecting when we went to Maui, was how barren and dry it is there. The ocean was beautiful, but the land was kind of ugly. The places that were pretty, were really only peoples properties, hotel sites and at our condo we rented. I was always really happy to just go back to our condo and stare out at our view, it was the best view we saw any where.

There was a bad brush fire that started right south of the town we were staying in. We just happened to be coming back from our drive to the winery right after it had started. So we got to sit in some bad traffic and watch as the helicopters tried to put out the fire. The fire burned through the night and they ended up having to close the road into town. So the next day we couldn't leave the town we were staying in.

All in all we had a wonderful time. It was pretty warm and humid the whole time we were there. We just cooled ourselves off with treats like gelato and coconut milk ice cream - that stuff is great! We did have one little misadventure when Mike accidentally locked the rental car keys in the trunk of the car. Thankfully we were at the condo and not out somewhere. The rental car place drove 45 minutes to bring us a key and didn't charge us one penny. We just tipped the lady and called it good. It kind of made up a little for the car being a piece of junk. It was a 2007 Chrysler and it only reaffirmed our love for Japanese cars. So anyways, we had a wonderful time and can't wait to do something like this again.