Girls' Days in Hawaii

The whole reason we went to Maui was because Kevin was invited to participate in a Leadership Class....well, that class started on Thursday morning and lasted 3 days. We saw very little of him once the class started. 

That left 3 days for the girls and I to explore and enjoy the island. Unfortunately, Kayleigh got sick and didn't feel like doing much. On Wednesday we drove an hour north to the town of Lahaina. Kayleigh slept the whole way and then we did a little walking around the town and went to see the famed Banyan tree that was planted in 1875. 

We also had a fantastic lunch and our first shaved ice - definitely a wonderful treat. They put a scoop of ice cream on the bottom (we chose coconut!), add shaved ice and flavors, then add cream to the top.

Then we drove back to our resort (and Kayleigh slept the whole way). The next day we decided to go south a bit and look for black sand beach. But first we ended up Big Beach, which had beautiful, turquoise-blue water. While we were there the lifeguard made an announcement informing everyone of the dangers of swimming at this particular beach. I guess they have had a lot of life-changing injuries and drownings here.

Then we found Black Sand beach....if you look at the rock formation in the background you can see why the sand here is black. It's a volcanic cinder cone.

The salt and pepper sand was cool, but the tide pools were even cooler! We had so much fun exploring and discovering.

We decided to drive back north to Lahaina for lunch and snow cones again...it's a beautiful drive along the water, and it gave Kayleigh the perfect chance to rest.

That evening, the work event Kevin was attending threw a luau and we were invited. It wasn't your typical "show", but there was live music, a great buffet and free drinks.

We woke up to rain on our final day and it rained non-stop until we left for the airport. We were scheduled to take a red-eye flight home, flying through Honolulu. We didn't experience any spectacular Hawaiian sunsets all week, but finally we caught a glimpse of one from the airport windows.

Our flight to Honolulu was short and then our flight home was wonderful. It was a huge plane with very few people on it so we got to spread out and sleep. I had 4 seats to lay down on, Kevin had 4 seats to himself and the girls each had 2 seats.