Day 1
We spent most of our first day in the air. We flew from St. Louis to Dallas, and then from Dallas to Kahului (Maui). Other than having to change planes in Dallas due to a maintenance issue, all went smoothly. By the time we arrived, deplaned, and got our luggage and rental car, it was getting dark, so we didn’t see much. We went straight to our resort where we were greeted with seashell necklaces and escorted to our room with a partial ocean view (although it was too dark to see the ocean). We then walked to Whaler’s Village and had a light dinner at Cane & Taro. We then retired for the evening.
Day 2
The next morning I woke up early (most likely due to the time change), and couldn’t go back to sleep. I was anxious to see the view from our room, so I got out of bed. Below is a picture from our lanai.

Next we ate a lovely breakfast at one of the resort restaurants, and then decided to explore the hotel grounds, as well as Ka’anapali Beach, on which the hotel overlooks.



At 3:30, we had reservations for a sunset dinner sail on a Teralani catamaran. I didn’t bring the amazing DSLR I had bothered from my dear friend (thanks Misty!), but Nathan brought his camera, so I may get some from him and post them later. His camera broke while in Maui because he got too close to spraying salt water, but luckily he was able to load the pictures to his laptop (Don’t worry, Misty – I kept a safe distance with your camera!). The dinner cruise was wonderful. The food was good (though not great), but the best part by far was being out on the ocean, feeling the wind blow against our skin, and seeing the beautiful island of Maui (and Moloka’i, I believe) from the middle of the ocean. We also saw a full rainbow! It was much too large to take a picture as it stretched far across the sky, though Nathan did capture pieces of it on his camera.
Day 3
On our third day, we ate breakfast at The Plantation House, a place with beautiful views.

After breakfast, we went on a short drive and stopped here.


We considered going on a hike afterwards, but didn’t have any water or the appropriate shoes, so we decided to spend the rest of the day in Lahaina until it was time for our luau to begin. Lahaina consisted mostly of shops and restaurants. We wished we had explored Lahaina at night rather than during the day. We would rather have been enjoying the Maui scenery.
Our luau was at the Feast at LeLe. We had a 5-course meal served to us at our private table, accompanied by entertainment. We had looked into a few other luaus, but were ultimately glad we selected this one. It was pricier than the others, but the others involved sitting at a large table and eating from a buffet, and we liked having our own table.

Day 4
We decided to drive the Road to Hana on our fourth day. The Road to Hana is a curvy road through the rainforest of Maui, and is full of scenery including ocean and mountain views, waterfalls, steams of running water, and more. Below are a few pictures; however, they cannot do justice to the scenery we witnessed. We took so many, it will be hard to choose which ones I want to post!





Day 5
Our original plan for this day was to drive up the Haleakala crater. However, we decided to take a drive to Northern Maui instead. On this drive, we stopped at a beautiful piece of the coast with large lava rock on which we could stand and watch the ocean spray several feet into the air as big waves crashed against the lava. Rainbows appeared many times.



Next, we went to the Nakalele blowhole, a blowhole that has been known to shoot 70 feet into the air! You can get a better grasp of how tall it is by the pictures with people in it. The ocean near the blowhole is absolutely beautiful, and had some of the biggest waves I saw on the island, probably as tall as 10 or 15 feet at times.





Day 6
Day 6 was our final day, but since our plane didn’t leave until 6:30 p.m. Hawaiian time, we spent the morning back at Ka’anapali Beach, ate breakfast, and then checked out of the resort. Afterwards, we spent some time in the Iao Valley, which is a place that gets over 400 inches of rain each year!




That concludes the very brief version of our trip! We took over 800 pictures, so it was really hard to select the best ones. I also took several pictures of Madelyn’s name in the sand. They have my footprints all over them, so as soon as those are photoshopped out, I will share.