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Maui | Day 6 Heading Home

April 24, 2018 in Photography

Our last day in Maui was wholly dedicated to traveling back home to Oregon. We had enough time to sleep in a little and enjoy a slow breakfast on our balcony and soak in as much ocean air as we could. Just as we were finishing our meal, a rather large rainbow manifested off the coast right in front of us. How incredible to be sent off with such a beautiful site. After we were all packed up, we decided to visit the turtle beach one last time. To our delight, there were a few turtles out and about and another rainbow as well! On our way to the airport, we made one last stop to take in the epic view of the Puu Kukui mountains.

Maui | Day 5 The Road to Hana

April 23, 2018 in Adventure, Hike, National Park, Photography

For our last full day in Maui, we decided to make the long hard journey to the south side of the island by way of the Road to Hana. I can not overstate enough how winding this road is. For approximately half of the trip, you are more technically sharing a one-lane highway with blind turns every 100 yards. I was getting car sick, and I was driving...

Our first stop of the day's road trip was at Ho'okipa Lookout. It started as a bathroom break but turned into an exciting time watching the surfers below. I had never seen surfers like I did that day before. It wasn't like the waves were crazy big, but it was still exhilarating.

We ventured on making stops here and there at neat lookouts or exotic beaches, but the weather was starting to come in the closer we got to Hana. It must get stuck on that part of the island. To get out of the rain, we opted to explore the Hana Lava Tube. It was a pretty cool self-guided tour of a lava carved cave that also doubles as a private fallout shelter in cases of nuclear war. The cave hike was around a half mile out and back and was an excellent opportunity to experience total pitch black darkness when you turn off your flashlight.

Our last destination before making the long trip back, was the south side of Haleakala National Park to stretch our legs and hike up through the bamboo forest to get to the Waimoku Falls. The hike was stunning with all the overgrown jungle vegetation; it was a feeling like you just landed in Jumanji. The bamboo forest was incredible; I had never seen bamboo so thick. In Oregon we have bamboo, but it's about an inch thick at best, in the bamboo forest it was 6-8 inches thick and grew incredible dense together.

Once we got to the end of the trail, we were a little disappointed. The path abruptly stopped with a sign in the middle of the trail (no viewing area), informing us that we could not go any further and that if we did, we could get finned. The main reason for this, which I understand, is that the area can get dangrous quick with a rainstorm and the area flash flooding. In fact, we ended up heading back sooner than we though, because it started pouring on us pretty hard while we were there. I just wish there was a better viewing area because when there is a lot of people around, there is no place to go. Other than that, it was stunning. It was also kind of fun to because in a massive rainstorm in nothing but shorts and a tank top and have it be refreshing.

Maui | Day 4 The Blowhole & a Sea Turtle

April 22, 2018 in Adventure, Hike, Photography

Rested and ready for more adventure, we decided to head north and explore the area around the Nakalele Blowhole and the Ohai Trail. After a slow morning, we made our way out to the slow going winding road ready to stop and see whatever looked interesting. On the way out, we drove right past, then stopped at an overlook of Honolua Bay. The water looked so incredibly pristine; we knew we needed to visit on our way back and were happy we packed the snorkeling gear.

We finally made it to the Blowhole and started the hike down to the water. There were hand-painted signs all over the place reminding us how dangerous the Blowhole can be and how powerful the ocean was in that area. Being a bit more adventurous myself, I took the warnings with a grain of salt that I would momentarily regret later on. After exploring the Blowhole for a bit, I decided I wanted to get a closer look at the waves that were feeding it. I climbed up onto a rock ledge about 30 feet above the water and approximately 10-20 feet away from a no-return cliff from the sea.

As I was up there shooting the coastline and marveling at the massive power the ocean displayed, I heard a wave much louder than the rest and suddenly felt 60% wetter then I did a moment before. An absolute massive wave had just crashed and sprayed all over me. I wasn't fearful of falling in as I had planted myself reasonably well and being wet in that weather felt quite nice, but my camera didn't have it. It seems like massive amounts of salt water is no match for the weather sealed camera. Fortunately, it was just temporary, but my mode dial locked up comply giving me only the automatic mode. Before I was able to fix it by leaving the camera on the dash f the car to dry out, I felt like a total stooge.

After hiking the Ohai Trail and nearly having the area to ourselves, we decided to make our way back to Honolua Bay for a swim. One of the reasons we were drawn to the area was the thick jungle like section you had to hike through to get to the water. Unknown to us, re randomly stumbled across one of the best places to snorkel in Maui. After a bit of swimming, we were swimming amongst the coral and what felt like thousands of fish. The highlight of the swim was a massive sea turtle that showed up right before we came in. It felt magical; it was like being in a different world.

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Maui | Day 3 Relaxing

April 21, 2018 in Photography

After a busy day of adventure, today's task was to slow down and relax. We started off by waiting in line for breakfast for over an hour to get into a little beachfront restaurant in an open-air gazebo; it was hands down, the best pancakes I ever had in my life ever. The pancakes were made with macadamia nuts and some sort of magic, absolutely wondrous.

For the next part of our relaxing day, we wanted to spend some time on the beach, Brittany wanted some sun, and I wanted to experiment more with my underwater housing. We made the short walk down to the more spacious beach and set up shop. Nothing particularly exciting happened, but it was a lovely low key morning.

The rest of the day we just took it easy and ate a bunch of good food. Towards the late afternoon I was ready for another swim, so we headed back down to Turtle beach as I snorkeled and Brittany relaxed and read her book. That night's sunset was quite impressive as a massive storm in the distance over Lanai island worked its way across the sky chasing the setting sun.

Maui | Day 2 Haleakala NP

April 20, 2018 in National Park, Photography, Adventure

After taking it pretty easy on our travel day, we decided to make our first full day in Hawaii an adventure day to head into one of Hawaii's two national parks, Haleakala. If you're not familiar, this is the national park on top of the mountain with the telescopes, not the park with the lava. The thing I find so fascinating about this mountain is that we started out roughly around zero feet elevation and drove to the top of this mountain at over 10,000 feet, that's insane.

We left pretty early in the morning as we didn't know how busy it was going to be. The further we went, the more and more the scenery changed. I'd never been to this type of tropical elevation before, so this was a unique experience. It felt so familiar to what I've seen before, but upon close inspection, there was a world of difference in the plant life. Another note about elevation, it's a good idea to bring a jacket when you're heading up to 10K feet, it doesn't matter where you are, 10K is cold.

Unfortunately, there was a pretty thick cloud cover when we got to the top. There had been some massive rain storms and flooded in the week's pas, and I think the storm system hadn't entirely made its way out yet. Regardless, the landscape before us was stunning. We hiked around and explored what we could, but its a bit limiting on what you can do on top. The park makes it was all the way down to the ocean on the south side, but we planned to explore that area another day.

When we got back down to our place, we decided it was about time to get our feet wet and go for a swim. I recently bought a waterproof enclosure for my M6 that I was super excited and nervous to use. We decided to have our first swim right off turtle beach rather than hiking to the sandier beach down the way. We got down to the water and my stomach was in my throat, I was about to have an excellent time taking underwater pictures or was about to dunk an expensive camera in the water, but it worked, and I was in for some good fun!