Maui: Days 1-3

Sunday
We had a very long day on Sunday! We left our hotel in downtown Cincinnati at 7:00am and arrived in Salt Lake City around 10:45am local time. We then boarded our plane for Maui! A very long 6 1/2 hours later, we landed! It was a smooth flight and the baby behind us was pretty good, but it's difficult to sit in such a tiny seat for such a long time.

We picked up our Jeep Wrangler and headed for the Grand Wailea. When we arrived, the front desk informed us that we had been upgraded to a suite! And it's not just any suite...it's HUGE (I'll show you our video tour when we get back)! We have a living room, kitchenette, dining room, king size bed/bedroom, huge master bathroom, three balconies, and a half bath to top it all off. I feel like we're breaking the law or something, because we're getting such a great deal! I showed Dan around the pool/beach area and then we ventured out to find some dinner. When we returned, there was champagne and chocolate-covered strawberries waiting for us--what a romantic surprise :)




We tried to stay awake as long as possible to fight the jetlag and woke up around 5:00am--not too bad.

Monday
We made a wish list and booked our activities in the morning, then headed to the pool. We have a lot of fun things planned and we're looking forward to a good balance of activities and relaxing on the beach. Dan was very impressed with the two story pool, water slides, and water elevator (a fancy lock system)! We had lunch by the pool and caught up on some much needed sleep under the Hawaiian sun.

We then drove about an hour into Lahaina, an old whaling town, which has now become quite the tourist attraction due to its dining and shopping. The highway to Lahaina is beautiful and follows the coastline the entire way. We had dinner at Cheeseburger in Paradise and enjoyed some live music--so fun! We had to get to bed early, though, because our wakeup call was for 2:00am.
















Tuesday
The phone rang VERY EARLY this morning at 2:00am to wake us for our sunrise bikeride down Haleakala, which is a huge mountain/crater. We were picked up at 2:45am and made the drive up the mountain with our group (a 1.5 hour drive) to 10,023 feet. The sun started to rise ar 6:00am and it was SO COLD! It was incredibly windy and about 30 degrees--we felt like we were at home (well...except for the ocean and beautiful mountains...). We had all sorts of layers on, and we were still freezing.


We drove down to 7,000 feet where it's a little safer to begin riding and rode down the mountian for the next few hours--a total of 26 miles. It sounds like a lot, but we only had to pedal for a total of maybe 2 or 3 minutes. It was gorgeous! We rode through a lavendar farm, pineapple fields, and eucaliptus forests. I have never seen so much bright green grass all at once--it stretched as far as we could see and beyond. It was unlike anything we'd ever done, and we don't regret our 2:00am wakeup call for one second.

When we returned (at 10:45am) we were very tired, considering we had been awake for nearly 9 hours. We had some lunch and fell asleep for quite a while. It was a great nap! When we woke up, we went down to the beach to watch the sunset. We had dinner at a nice place called Cafe O'Lei and had a very nice steak and mahi mahi. Fish is so much better when you know it was swimming around less than 24 hours before it was on your plate!

Well, that pretty much wraps it up for now. More to come very soon. Thanks for keeping up with us!