Celebrating an Early Anniversary

It's been years since Travis and I have gone on a couple vacation, so when Travis had to go to Maui for work (don't you feel sorry for him?) we were excited to be able to work it out for me to go meet him for the last part of his trip. It was heavenly and the perfect way to celebrate 24 (in November) years of marriage.

I hope this won't be too distracting, but for the sake of saving time and effort, I'm going to link my Instagram pictures.

This was the view from our room. We opened the door to the deck and enjoyed the lovely view and the sound of the waves. It's not even legal any more to build hotels right on the beach like ours was and I'd hate to be there during a tsunami, but holy cow, it was spectacular.



Just outside the door from our hotel was the ocean. I loved that it got deep really quickly. It made for easy floating and swimming close to the shore. We watched the sun set as we floated in the water on two different nights. Someone told us later that we were in the water during the prime shark attack time of day, but we saw no fins and heard no scary music.


We went to the top of Haleakala, a dormant volcano to watch the sunrise and then bike down the mountain. The sunrise was a disappointing bust. Too much cloud cover. It was so cold and misty. Still pretty, but no spectacular, never-seen-anything-like-it-in-your-life experience like we'd heard. That was sad. But what followed was a blast!

We rode bikes down the side of the mountain--27 miles. Most of it was downhill, which would make it sound easy, but the few parts that were uphill were rough because our bikes didn't have gears so you couldn't start pedaling until you'd lost all momentum. We were in a semi-push-up state all the way down and after about the first two miles, the hard little slab they called a seat was just about killing us. We held ourselves up off the seat as best we could which helped our sit bones, but we sure felt it in our thighs the next day.


The scenery was spectacular. I can't even describe it. God was using his most colorful paintbrushes when he created that part of the world.


Get a grip on life at the Cowboy Church. This is one of the things we passed on the way down the mountain. See that bike seat? It wasn't soft. And it's narrow. It's the kind of seat that would be used by the North Koreans to coerce captured spies into giving up all their secrets.

We stopped in Makawao for a donut on a stick. Like my helmet? It made me go faster.


This church was beautiful--old, rock, stained glass. And there was going to be a dance there in the evening. We didn't make it to the dance.


Along the way were flowering trees and sugar cane. A couple of little fruit and flower stands sat unattended. If you left $4, you could take a bouquet. They were beautiful, but if I'd tried to carry a bouquet down while I rode, you'd have had to use the flowers to decorate my grave.

Leslie, this rubbish sign is for you. I guess they use that word in England and Hawaii.

This is Lavender Fields Cafe, where we stopped for some delicious french toast and to give our sit bones a little rest. Such a beautiful place.

I met Spike Mendelson on the plane. He was headed to Maui to cook at the Food and Wine Festival with Marcel. (They were two of my favorites on Iron Chef.) He said we should come and enjoy the food. We would have except that the tickets were $250 each. They really should have a food and wine price and a just food price. Those of us who don't drink get a bum deal on that.

Although we didn't get to go to the Food and Wine Festival, we had some pretty spectacular food, including braised shortribs with roasted farm veggies (not your typical Utah fare), swordfish, mahi mahi and shrimp. One night I was craving French Onion soup, so I googled it and found that The Fish House had a famous version, so that's where we went to dinner. It was perfect.



Leoda's Kitchen and Pie Shop was so cute. It has to be the inspiration for something I write someday--old reused wood, a painted antique hutch, fresh-baked bread for the buns and sandwiches, and homemade pie. Delicious!


My blogger is short-circuiting and keeps loading Leoda's over and over every time I try to load another picture, so I guess that's my cue that it's time to call it a night. My swollen feet and ankles would agree. They didn't much enjoy flying all night. I'll  post the rest of my pictures in a day or two, because we all know that travel photos of someone else's wonderful trip make for riveting reading.

Thanks for indulging me so I can remember the details. You're awfully nice!