Maui

So. Vacation.

The Lovely Bride and I celebrated our 30th anniversary by fleeing Seattle for the (pleasantly) warmer and (reasonably) sunnier climes of Hawai'i.  And it was fun.

There's a lot more where this came from.

I'd show you all the photos, but to be honest, they are pretty much shots taken from our resort overlooking the ocean, with Lanai and Molokai in the distance. Here's a shot of the beautiful sea. Here's another one. Here's one with a rainbow. Here's a sunset. Oh, and see that dot? That's a whale.

We have been to Hawai'i before, and on previous occasions have rented a car, which spent the bulk of the time parked at the resort while we overdosed on sushi. So this time, no car rental, no traditional drive around the island and sudden realization that things get dark fast after that beautiful sunset. We flew out of Honolulu on a 9-person Cessna Caravan that had a ceiling of about 5000 feet (I know that because we were level with the top of Molokai), and came in on a landing field on western Maui, about four football fields long. We ensconced ourselves at the Napili Kai, an older resort (meaning it was closer to the waterline) and used taxis, buses, and long walks to get around.

What we did do for the bulk of the week was eat and snorkel. I have become a fan since discovering that you can get prescription snorkel masks (Thank you, Snorkel Bob's), and both Napili Bay and Kapalua Bay to the north were good snorkeling sites. A lot of fish, a goodly number of sea turtles (green and hawksbill - the former I usually found swimming, and they would immediately grass on the larger hawksbills by taking the tourists right to them). A school of tiny cuttlefish, handing head down in the waves, unfurling their tentacles to threaten interlopers. The agenda was breakfast, snorkel, lunch, snorkel, recover, sunset, dinner, sleep. Not a bad little schedule.

The local restaurant, the Sea House, was great for dinner, a little in the weeds for lunch. We also discovered a good joint, Merrimans, which was about 50 yards from where we were staying, which was the equivalent of learning that your hotel room overlooks Canlis. We had a wonderful anniversary dinner there, and then spawn-camped their patio for happy hour. Since we were on the west side of Maui, we had the islands of Lanai and Molokai in the distance, and whales in between. Humpbacks, in this case (We did get down to Lahaina for a whale watching trip, but to be honest we did well on the patio - better beer as well).

In short, it was a complete and total zoning out, which is pretty much what I wanted out of the deal. And it was a good way of celebrating thirty years.

More later,