MAUI IN OCTOBER

In October, 2012 Charlie had a meeting in Maui.  I couldn't pass this trip up, so we both spent a few days.  What a great idea to go.  Charlie had a little extra time, so we had a chance to travel around and re-visit some of our favorite places on Maui.

One of our first stops was Lahaina.  Not only an interesting old whaling town with great Banyan trees, it was also the closest place to shop at Hilo Hattie's.

Here are a few photos of Lahaina:

Charlie is standing under a few of the Banyan trees in the center of town.

I'm sitting on the sea wall.  Behind me is Molokai.  We didn't have a chance to ever go there.  I'll definitely try to get to Molokai on another Hawaii trip.

We had a chance to sign up for a sunset, sailing, dinner cruise.  What a great success.  We haven't had a chance to sail in years.  The food was good, we met some great people, and the scenery was amazing.

Apparently, the weather on several previous trips had been too severe to put up the sails.  Everybody, even the crew was happy to get the boat under sail.

Me on the boat

The aforementioned dinner.

Our sunset.  

As I mentioned Charlie had a little time to do some touring around.  We decided to loop around the larger Maui piece.  Our first stop on our trip was Makawao.  It's one of the weirdest towns I've ever seen.  Kind of a Hawaii-meets-the-old-west.  Very Hawaiian looking, but with cowboys, cows, and western gear.

Charlie outside of a western gear shop.

Makawao's main street

Another view of the western gear store.

After playing around in Makawao for a time, we started our trip to Hana.  We were lucky that October isn't so crowded on Maui.  The last time we tried this trip, we were in bumper to bumper traffic.  This time, we had to deal with fewer crowds. 

We went on a little side trip to see a water fall.

When we got thirsty, we stopped off for a drink.  We ended up with a chopped up pineapple.

Why the road to Hana is so popular.

We decided to continue on the Hana road all the way around.  There were loads of signs warning us that there was no help on the road, that rental cars would have their contracts pulled, all sorts of stuff.  We decided to go anyway.  The photos below are scenes from the ride.  

Some of the road isn't paved.  Even though they were a bit rough, not at all impassible.

Loads of beautiful views.

A fellow back road traveler.

The Maui sugar factory/museum.

The only silly thing about our 'round the island trip was that we had to loop all the way back to the center of the island to get back to our hotel.  Our hotel was located at about 6 on the circle - we had to go back to 10, then loop back around to get to the hotel.

The last night we spent in Maui, we were sitting around the hotel, and an alarm went off.  A voice on the hotel loud speaker announced that a tsunami warning had been called for the Hawaiian islands.  We were to stay in our rooms.  A short time later, another warning alarm followed by a voice announcement came.  The second one told us to fill our bathtubs with water.  If the tsunami hit, we'd need water.  The bathtub filled with rust-colored Hawaiian soil-colored, yuk, water.  We turned on the TV to find out what was going on.  A 7.something earthquake had occurred in British Colombia, Canada and Hawaii was directly in the path of the waves.  We called Glenn and Krysty, and then, when they picked up the phone exhausted, realized the time difference made our call a bit cruel.  They were OK, or would have been if it hadn't been for our phone call.  The earthquake had been further north.  Eventually, and fortunately, the tsunami warning came to very little.  Only about a meter lift of the ocean.  Whew.  It made for an interesting last night.  

Then back to LA, work, and the usual.