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!
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