The Pincock Post: Hawaii- Maui!, Whales, & Hike

I was lucky enough to get to go to Hawaii with my mom and sister for 8 days. Yep, that's right- I flew across the ocean to paradise and left my kids and my good hubby home. My mom and sister treated me to it and I am so grateful for the memories and a break away from non-stop life as a mom. It was amazing. Hawaii is truly beautiful, especially for us Idahoans in the middle of winter. All of the green everywhere and the sandy beaches were a welcomed site. It was wonderful to get to wear shorts and dresses. Sigh. I miss it. And it went way too fast.

This is one of three posts. We arrived in the afternoon, picked up the jeep, and headed to our condo on the beach. We spent the first day exploring nearby and going to Lahaina, a warf-like town with hundreds of shops lined up with an ocean view where I bought peace offerings for my kids and hubby for ditching them to head to sunshine-filled paradise.

Our first view of the ocean

This is the reason the Hawaii license plate has a rainbow on it. We saw rainbows every day. This one is above our condo.

The next day, we went on a whale-watching catamaran boat. There are so many whales off the western coast of Maui, where we stayed. There is a bigger concentration of whales here right now than anywhere else in the world. You can just look out at the horizon and see spouts, tails, and if you're super lucky a breach (an arch out of the water onto its back). So, we of course saw lots of whales. We saw mostly moms with their new baby whales, which was sweet. But unfortunately, we only saw dorsal fins and tails which was exciting in the beginning. But no up-close breaches (which is the home run of whale watching) or heads or tail slaps. But, it was amazing nonetheless to see these gentle giants of the ocean up close. And I loved the boat ride, especially when one of our hotty boat crew members sang "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" with his ukulele.
*We did end up seeing some close breaches and tail slaps from shore later in the week that were awesome to watch.

Our cute boat shoes

THE WHALES

Tails= Good Bye- That's when the whales deep dive and can disappear underwater for up to 45 minutes.

The third day, we went on a very adventurous drive in our sweet jeep (with yours truly as the awesome driver) and went on a hike. The drive didn't look very far on the map. Little did we know that we would be driving on a rough, one-lane roads along Maui's coastal cliffs. The scenery was truly incredible. It looked just like Jurassic Park. Our destination was the Waihee Ridge Trail that went through West Maui Forest Reserve with very lush scenery and great valley views. On our hike up, we hiked through the clouds. I thought it was cool to hike in the fog, kind of eerie, but we didn't have those cool valley views. But as we got to the top, we watched the clouds blow right off and we ended up having great views and sunshine. It was so nice to be moving outside in the warm sunshine in the middle of February. The adventure and hike were worth the crazy drive.