Hawaii

This year for Spring Break we went to Hawaii! We went down with my boss, his wife Tara, Millie (another loan officer in the office) and her husband Dan. We flew out of Salt Lake on a Sunday afternoon and made it around 7:00pm Maui time.
We stayed in a condo in Napili that was right on the ocean. Napili does get more wind than the two small towns down the road, so we spent most of our time in Lahaina and Kaanapali. We had some trouble with our rental car when we first flew in. The original plan was everyone was going to rent their own cars so we could still do whatever we wanted to do. But, when I went to check in at Alamo, it was coming to $485!! In Hawaii they hit you with a $250 fee if you are under 25 and driving a rental car. One of the other couples we were with helped us out and we rented a 4-door jeep together. We left the Alamo around 9:00 pm (Hawaii time, 1:00 am our time). We got 15-20 miles down the road and the jeep started shaking uncontrollably. We had to go back to the Alamo and get a different car (they were out of jeeps) and start back towards the condo. When we checked in it was like 4 am back home. We were exhausted!!
Lahaina has some shops right on the ocean where the big cruise ships come in and we did quite a bit of shopping there. They also had a Hard Rock Cafe and a Bubba Gump Shrimp Restaurant that we ate at.







Tuesday we went out Snorkeling to a couple of the popular areas. On our boat ride there we saw quite a few whales along with a dolphin. They estimate that 10,000 whales are around the Hawaiian islands from the middle of December to the middle of May, and two-thirds of them are around Maui. The first place we snorkeled had lots of different fish with different colors. We had an eel swim right underneath us into his "hideout". He made us a little nervous so we kept on eye on him.
The next place we stopped at was popular for turtles. We saw quite a few of them and swam close by them. We did take some underwater cameras with us, but have not developed them to see how they turned out.




Wednesday we traveled for about an hour and a half to the top of one of the mountains there. We could see a lot of the island from up top. We did a little bit of hiking and did a zipline while we were up there. We did five different zips down the mountain. They also had an "Indiana Jones" bridge that we walked over. I was a little nervous at first on doing this adventure, but the first few zips are not as long as the last few. They said on the last zip you can reach up to 45 mph.










Thursday we went to the Old Lahaina Luau. I had been to one before last time I was there, but I don't remember it being as good as the one we went to. The food was great and the dancing was amazing. It was right on the ocean and the sunset that night was beautiful. We had such a great time and Shawn and I even danced on the beach together!!









Friday we decided to take the road to Hana. The road is made up of mostly turns and one lane bridges. If you were to drive all the way to Hana it would take about an hour and a half. It's all the beautfil sites along the way that take up most of the time to get to Hana. We heard that Hana is just a small town and there is nothing too excited there, so we didn't make it all the way to Hana. We did stop and hike in to a couple of different water falls and had a picnic.










The rest of our days were spent hanging out on the beach watching Shawn boogie board or watching the locals surf and windsurf. Shawn is such a fish and could not get enough of the water. I on the other hand cannot get enough of the sun. It was a much needed vacation and we enjoyed every minute of it. We were sad to come home to snow and put our sweaters and long pants back on :(