Hawaii was great!

August 16-23 I enjoyed a wonderful vacation with my mom, Len, Ryan, Joshua, Tony, and Jewell.

I had a bit of an adventure flying to Maui to join the rest of the crew (they were flying in from Kauai). My flight from Seattle to Honolulu was delayed, and Maui has a curfew, so I missed the last flight. I ended up spending the night in Honolulu. To add insult to injury my connecting flight was on Aloha Airlines, which no longer exists. Luckily Northwest had control of my ticket and switched me to a Hawaiian Airlines flight. Eventually I made it to Maui, and it was beautiful!

We had a relaxing week with a good mix of activities. Sunday (when I arrived) we went to Lahaina and looked at some crafts under the banyon tree. Then we had lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise - very fun. We rented snorkel gear and went to the beach by the condo that afternoon. Monday and Tuesday we hung out by the pool, did some swimming in the ocean, went to an amazing beach where we snorkeled and saw turtles, and went out to dinner for Jewell's birthday.

Wednesday we did a set of 5 zip lines at Mt. Haleakala. The first 4 are to warm up and the 5th is the fastest zip line in Hawaii! We were a bit intimidated looking across the 750' line - especially when we learned that we would pass by the landing platform on the far side (continuing up the hill), zip back to the center of the line, and finally forward again to the platform where one of the guides would catch our feet. After running off the platform (we were encouraged to do so because of the slack in the line - to avoid hitting the platform), I closed my eyes and screamed. After that I just enjoyed the ride! Post-zip line we went up to the summit of Mt. Haleakala, but it was pretty cloudy. Then we visited Len, Tony, and Jewell's old home in Maui - it was fun to think that they used to live there! On the way home we visited a plantation that grew all kinds of Hawaiian produce - pineapple, bananas, guava, AVOCADOS (I thought of you, Danielle!), and more. There was a very amusing Hawaiian man leading our tram tour. He called me "little Husky" (he asked us about UW).


Thursday and Friday we did a lot of relaxing. We had a nice outing at Whaler's Village, including dinner in a restaurant with a sand floor. We spent more time at the beach and in the pool. All very nice! Saturday we went to see the Iao Needle in an interesting valley with high cliffs around it. Then we were killing time before the flight.

All went well on the flight back. My flight from Maui to Honolulu was 30 minutes after everyone else's, but then they got on my plane when it continued to Kauai! I was getting off to connect straight back to Seattle. Very silly.

I'm very glad to be back in the same state with Dave, though now we only have about two weeks until I leave for New York! Eeek!