Weekend Getaway in Maui

The weekend of August 9th through the 11th Kyle and I took a short, three day trip to Maui.  We had received vouchers for free round trip tickets to any other island from friends who won four tickets in a raffle.  So gracious of them to let us have two of those tickets!  We decided to use them on a trip to Maui.  Kyle is deploying to Qatar for 8 months and he leaves September 8th.  We wanted to have a little getaway before he leaves and we were so thankful for such a wonderful trip.

On our way from the airport when we were headed to our hotel we stopped by a little national park to look at the Iao Valley Needle.  This is where King Kamehameha came to unite/conquer (whichever you choose :) ) the islands.  

After driving an hour to our resort, we had about four hours till we could check in to our room.  We got some fish tacos for lunch, played some ping pong, and lounged by the pool. 

We arrived on Friday and had to wake up at 12:45am to leave our hotel and be at a bike shop by 2:00am where we were going to do a sunrise bike tour.  This tour took us up to the top of Haleakala at 10,000 ft.  We got to the top to watch the sunrise, but it had rained on us since we left our hotel at 1:00am and did not let up and as you can tell from the picture, it continued to rain when we tried to watch the sunrise.  We were one of the "lucky" ones to experience, on average, one the 20 non-visible days of the year.  The tour guide cancelled our bike tour, but fortunately we were able to get our money back.  Unfortunately, we got back to our car at 8:00am and had already been awake for 8 hours. :)

This is the view we SHOULD have gotten.  Isn't it beautiful?!

The rest of the day we spent at the pool, either lounging or swimming.

Saturday evening we drove into Lahaina, only 10 minutes from our resort.  This picture shows only part of the largest banyan tree in the United States.  It stretches over 1 acre and is 140 years old!

Here we are at the center of the banyan tree.

For dinner, we took advice from a local to try the burgers at Cool Cats Cafe.  We split a burger, fries and milkshake.  DELISH!

View from dinner of downtown Lahaina.

On Sunday, we started early and did the Road to Hana.  This was our favorite waterfall.  It flows under the main road, so a lot of people drive by without taking the short 3 minute hike off the road to see it.  Thankful for our Maui Revealed book that told us where to stop!

The two of us in front of the Lower Puoholamoa Falls.

Beautiful view from the Road to Hana.

We took an off road called Nahiku Road and at the end of the road we had this beautiful lookout!

We stopped to eat at a little Thai place in Hana before we continued on.  We walk in and I look at Kyle and say, "Isn't that Weird Al Yankovic?!" I know this is a poor picture, but I didn't want to blatantly take a picture of him because he was with his family, so I snuck this one. 

As we continued on, we stopped by the Seven Sacred Pools.  Unfortunately, it had rained so much the day before they closed the pools from all swimming, but we took a nice little hike to view the falls.

After we left Hana, we continued around the bottom of Maui heading west instead heading back the same way.  The road turned to gravel for part of the way (only about 5 miles) and got VERY narrow.  We were following a mini tour bus, a rental car and then coming our direction came a truck and horse trailer! We had to put our car in reverse for a ways for the other vehicles to back up to allow the truck and trailer through.  I really didn't think we'd make it...but they did!

Also, along our drive we passed a cow wandering in the road.  Not typical for Hawaii...in Oregon I'd expect it, but not Hawaii.

Amazing view and so quiet...we seemed to be the only ones on the road.

We finished the Road to Hana in time to eat dinner, return our rental car, and even catch a flight an hour earlier to get home at 6 instead of 7.  It was a beautiful weekend.  It didn't go quite as we planned with our "sunrise" bike tour, but overall we had a fantastic time together and we both have decided that Maui is our favorite island!

Kyle's BFF

In the Marine Corps, Kyle and I both make friends, but our friendships are a bit different.  My friends are wives who are always on island, never leave unless they go to visit family, and most of them are stay-at-home moms or in search of jobs, so we can usually hang out whenever we'd like.  I see the majority of my friends multiple times a week, which is very unusual for the civilian life.  I adore seeing my friends and being able to walk to their house on base at any given moment to say hello or just hang out for a bit or meet at Starbucks on base for a nice coffee and conversation.  I'm definitely going to miss that when we move and I start my teaching career.

Kyle on the other hand, the majority of his friends are Marines and they are all in different companies than he is so they are off training or deployed at different times as he is.  So needless to say, many of the times Kyle is home, his close friends aren't home.  Mike Gunther is one of those friends. 

Kyle and Mike met at OCS (Officer Candidate School) Juniors in the summer of 2007 and then we a part of the same platoon at OCS Seniors in 2008.  They became good friends and have remained close with one another since then. 

Look how young they are!

Both of Mike's parents are retired Colonels from the Marine Corps and they live in Arlington, VA.  Kyle got to meet his parents after OCS Seniors.  Here they are with "Colonel Gunther" as Kyle refers to him. 

Since OCS, Kyle has only seen Mike a few other times.  Kyle went down to California and met up with Mike to go to Catalina Island during Spring Break our senior year of college in 2009, then we ended up getting stationed in Hawaii where Mike was stationed.  The only problem was he was deployed to Afghanistan when we arrived.  When he finally got back from deployment, Kyle left a month later for 3 months of training and when Kyle got back to the island, Mike left a month later for United Arab Emirates for a year long deployment.  

 Here we are at his going away party before he left for UAE in June 2012.

Mike got back from UAE in mid July when Kyle was on the Big Island for training.  Luckily, Kyle returned on my birthday (the 26th) and Mike was here for a couple more weeks before he got completely checked out of the Marine Corps to start his next chapter in life.  Mike spent his last four nights on island at our house.  It was great to get to know him a little better and I know Kyle is going to miss him, event though they didn't spend that much time in person together anyway, but it'll still be different with him out of the Marine Corps and living in Virginia, until he begins to travel for a few months while he applies to government agencies.  

 Kyle was a bit jealous Mike picked up Captain before he got out...Kyle wants those two bars :)

I pray that Kyle and Mike can keep in touch and stay friends, even if we end back up on the west coast in Oregon and he ends up staying on the east coast in Virginia.  I'm gonna leave you with an excerpt from what Mike wrote in our guestbook, that I made him fill out and I'm glad he did!

"Some people are your friends because they're good for you at specific times in your life and some people are your friends because they're always good for you.  Thanks for being the latter guys."

- Mike Gunther

26 Years and The Stairway to Heaven

I am officially over half way through my 20's.  Holy smokes!  Time flies and I get older, but apparently to a man I met while giving blood the other day I look like I'm 17. 17!  Just to be clear, that is a junior in high school!  Seriously, guy?! I know it will be flattering when I'm 40 and people say I look like I'm 20, but right now it is not flattering and it's my feelings just a tad.  At least Kyle and I are in the same boat, we both look 17.  Just wait till we have kids, people will think we are high school kids with children! :)

My birthday was on the 26th and I was so thankful to have Kyle come home from 3 weeks on the Big Island on my birthday!  He's missed my last two birthdays, so I was blessed to have him home.  In the morning I met Mandee and her kids at Starbucks on base for a birthday coffee, then I went to pick up Kyle, later we met his friend, Mike, (who just got back from UAE from a year long deployment) for lunch at McDonald's on base, followed by opening up gifts, then onto the movie theater to watch The Wolverine with popcorn AND soda (we splurged!), finally we headed home and our friends Kyle, Aimee and their friend Holly came over for an all-nighter till we did the Stairway to Heaven hike where we left at 1:30 in the morning.

 Ready to open my lovely gifts from my lovely family and friends!

The gang hanging out watching The Dark Knight Rises (the girls are hiding/cuddling on the couch).  It's only 10:40...the girls fell asleep, but the rest of us stayed up till we took off for our hike!

Heading up in the dark!  The reason we had to start so early or late, depending on who you are, is because they post a security guard at the bottom to stop hikers at 2:30.  It's not unsafe, but the trail goes over multiple peoples property (private and government), so they don't know who is liable if someone is injured.  We all had head lamps on for the climb up.  This is a view of Kaneohe.

We made it!  It took us just under 2.5 hours to climb close to 4,000 stairs! We left at 2:15 and got to the top at 4:33.  This meant we had to wait for over 2 hours till sunrise...definitely not the fun part. This is the inside of the bunker at the top.  It's muddy and concrete, so we brought trash bags to sit on to keep clean, but it didn't help with the padding!

 My favorite picture!  The peninsula is the Marine Corps Base.

On the way down...we were fortunate to get the view from the previous picture, but about five minutes later the clouds rolled in. 

 Kyle leading the group back down

Another bunker on the way down with cool graffiti for another photo op :)

Can't get enough of these mountains!

The H3 (highway) down below amazes every time I see it or drive on it!

This is a picture our friend took and she edited it, so it looks different from ours, but I like this shot she got of us better than the one on our camera! 

If any of you get the chance and come to the windward side of the island and also don't mind getting up at 1:30 in the morning, then DO this hike!  It was definitely worth it! It wasn't as physically grueling as other hikes we've done because this one has hand rails to support you the whole way and the steps are really nice, actually!  It is a bit tough to find the trail head, but if you need help just ask us!

This was definitely a great beginning to my 26th year of life!