I posted a few tidbits from Hawaii over the past week, so this will be a brief catalog of our week, with photos. It was a terrific trip, a once-in-a-lifetime week of comfort zone-expanding activities (surfing, parasailing, snorkeling, ziplining), relaxation (in the pool or the ocean every day), lots of great food and quality time with Aimee’s family.

We arrived on Saturday morning after an uneventful flight from L.A. (though we did lose the “Halfway to Hawaii” guessing game on board), and after getting settled and stocking up on food at Costco, we had a nice barbecue at the house. The next morning, or rather, later that night, Aimee I and got up for the drive to Haleakala, where we saw the sun rise at 5:41 am. I posted about it that day, but it was spectacular enough to warrant another photo, where you can see the sun and moon in the same image, above an amazing band of colors.



I took off after the sunrise for what turned out to be about a three and a half hour run through the erosional valley of Haleakala, through some of the most beautiful and desolate terrain I’ve ever seen. There was not another soul for miles around, and I really relished the experience. I brought a little camera and a water bottle; a couple of videos (here and here) help capture what it looked like down there.

The next day, we took surfing lessons from the extremely helpful Kiva Rivers, who helped Aimee, Mark, Jack, and I get our arms paddling, our rails gripped, and our feet planted until we actually got up and surfed, for a few seconds, at least.

That night, we attended the Old Lahaina Luau, which was a lot of fun: informative and entertaining and with some delicious pork, straight from the Imu.





The next day, we split our day between snorkeling at Black Rock in Kaanapali Beach and a delicious dinner at Humuhumunukunukuapua’a at the Grand Wailea. It was a pretty amazing meal, and the surroundings were certainly luxurious, but at the same time, I was happy we were staying a little away from it all in a house, rather than a resort hotel.

The next morning, Aimee, Katie, and I set our sights on parasailing off the coast of Lahaina. It was a lot more serene than I had imagined, like being out on a deck very, very high above the water and very far from anything and everything else. It was a great experience, and we had a nice boat ride off the coast of Maui for an hour, to boot.

On Thursday, we went to Kapalua for an afternoon on the ziplines, crisscrossing hills and gorges in the 23,000 acres of land north of the road, owned by Maui Land & Pineapple (of which Kapalua is apparently a wholly-owned subsidiary, as we learned). As our guide informed us, getting harnessed and ready for a ride on the zipline “isn’t rocket surgery,” and we concurred: they had the setup down to a…science? Anyway, it was a lot of fun, and we enjoyed the views on the way down.

On Friday, Aimee and I took a drive down the Hana Highway, and went for a little hike to Twin Falls. It was nice to see a little more wild Hawaii to contrast with the resorts and beaches we’d enjoyed earlier in the week.



We ended the day with a barbeque, fireworks from Lahaina, and a dance party with the kids. It was a terrific week, with the only flaws being the abundance of mice and the continued bad car rental karma (incessant beeping and broken trunk latch, we won’t soon forget you…) – a great way to cap off my life-long tour of the fifty states.



See all the photos here.