Cloudy Weekend in Maui

I guess you can't have perfect weather every day in paradise, can you?

We hadn't been paying too close attention to the nightly weather reports, so when we woke up to a cloud-filled sky Saturday morning, we were a little surprised. We had planned on the weekend being somewhat of a downtime weekend and staying local to our hotel rather than fighting weekend traffic, and were counting on the sun to provide some fun by the pool and the beach.

Saturday

Aside from the clouds, we did spend quite a bit of time outside on Saturday. We started off with a walk to Whalers like usual, but instead this time, we kept walking south all the way past the Hyatt. Back and forth, it was about an hour long walk, and it was neat to see the different hotels and condo units up along the beach. We noticed a few of them (more south on the beach) actually didn't have that much sand and beach of their own. The sand was only 4 or 5 feet wide between the lawn or walkway and the ocean, and usually not the golden sand you see on the postcards. It made us appreciate our choice of staying at the Sheraton that much more.

After grabbing "junk food" for lunch by the pool, we cooled off in our room and then actually headed north of the Sheraton and walked the beach towards the Royal Lahaina and other hotels along the beach there. We actually didn't know that was still considered Ka'anapali Beach until reading a few things while we're here this trip. It was definitely a different scene with less shops and booths along the beach as there is south of the Sheraton, and it was a little less crowded as well (but again, it was cloudy).

We finished the evening with a small dinner of Chinese food at Whalers, taking in the free Hula demonstration they had there at 7pm, and getting our ice cream fix at Haagen-Dazs once again. As before, the only way to head back to our hotel from Whalers at night is on the beach, and that's what we did.

Sunday

There were still lingering clouds on Sunday, but we already had planned on doing laundry anyway, so we didn't have too many plans. Yes, laundry in paradise. That's what happen when you vacation for two weeks and don't want to bring four suitcases with you. It wasn't that bad, actually, as I stayed near by and worked on the site while Cindy sat out by the pool.

It did consume a few hours, though, and after that it was time to get ready for our dinner cruise with the Pacific Whale Foundation. At least that's what we thought. We drove on our to Lahaina, found parking near the Banyan Tree and went to check in. Little did we know, the ship we were expecting to board for our dinner cruise was sent out to Oahu two days earlier for scheduled maintenance. They were pretty nice about it and we got a refund on the spot. Cindy was actually able to pick up a few pictures and other souvenirs at their store while were there, so it wasn't a total loss.

Seeing that we were already in Lahaina and paid for parking, we thought we'd make the best of it. We walked down Front St. and decided to have dinner at BJ's Chicago Pizzeria (maybe feeling a little homesick). It wasn't exactly the deep dish pizza that we were used to back home, but it was still good none-the-less. The drinks were pretty good, too.

After walking around, watching the sunset from Lahaina Harbor and doing a little bit more shopping, we called it a night and came back to our room to say Aloha to the weekend.