Trip Journal entry for Sunday, February 22nd.

The second week of our trip and we finally make it to the beach!

Awake Before Dawn
Sunday was another early start for me, and this time, I was attempting to do more than just catching up on my journal entries. My goal was to put together another time lapse sequence like I did last year. While the one last year was of the sunset, this year’s goal was to capture daybreak in action.

You might think it’d make sense to try and shoot the sunrise as a time lapse. Well, the problem with that, in my situation anyway, is that we were staying in West Maui and the sun rises in the east. I could have tried to get a shot of the sun breaking over the West Maui mountains, but I couldn’t find a good place to set that up and it’s also hit or miss because of the makua clouds, too. Besides, the best place to shoot the sunrise as a time lapse would be from Haleakala, as one of my fellow bloggers demonstrated last month.

The only real oversight I came across was trying to nail down the manual focus and leveling the horizon with the tripod in almost pure darkness. Note to self for future attempts, set those two settings the night before or sleep in a little later. I ended up with 3 different sequences of photos, mainly because I couldn’t find a set of exposure settings that would cover the span of dark to light very well. I’ll share the results here once I get time to process them into video clips.

The Laundry
Perhaps one of the few downsides to a two week vacation, you either have to pack two weeks worth of clothes (no way) or do laundry. We’ve always made a tradition out of doing laundry on vacation (future topic for our Travel Traditions), but this year was a little different than in the past.

Previously, we’d save the laundry for the weekend (no change there) and we’d be able to do it right there at the resort. The Sheraton didn’t have a large laundry facility, but it was enough to get the job done. Cindy would spend the time down by the pool while I hung around the machines and switched the loads, hammering away at something or other on the laptop. All was good.

As it turns out, part of the spa renovation at the Sheraton Maui Resort this winter replaced where the laundry facilities used to be. Bummer. So we had to pack things up and head to the laundromat. We found one in Kahana not too far north, and while we still finished in about the same about of time, Cindy missed out on her pool time. No biggie as today was our beach day anyway.

Going South
Just like last year’s beach hopping, we were headed down to South Maui to do some exploring and finding new stretches of sand to visit (another one of our traditions). We had gotten a later start on the laundry than we had hoped, which sort of threw off our other plans for the day. For example, we didn’t make it to lunch until almost 2pm, which should have been the 2nd hour of our beach and sun time.

Anyway, we ended up at another great local place for lunch, Da Kitchen Express in Kihei. Just like the deli tip from the night before, this one came in from another one of my Maui Twitter friends, and he was right on (no surprise there). Shortly after finishing our plate lunches, we hadn’t far to go for our first beach of the day, Kama’ole Beach II.

Kama’ole Beach II

Kama’ole Beach II is one of 3 different beaches in Kihei that make up the Kama’ole Beach trifecta. We visited Kama’ole Beach I last year, and found beach II to be even better. If memory serves, beach II is just a little smaller than its predecessor, yet we found it was much less crowded. There wasn’t an abundance of parking, but we managed to find a spot nearby on S. Kihei Rd. If there’s one thing I hate more than driving over-sized rental cars on vacation, it’s trying to parallel park them.

Our beach hopping is usually comprised of about 60-90 minutes at each beach, and consists of Cindy getting her towel, water, and book all setup in the sand while I wander off and take a crazy amount of photos. Almost on cue, we were packing things up again after about an hour or so and we were movin’ on. Next up, Ulua Beach.

Ulua Beach

Up until last year, the majority of the beaches we visited were popular spots in West Maui. But after we found Maluaka Beach in Makena, we fell in love with these tiny little crescent treasures. Ulua Beach was just the ticket this year. Located in Wailea and one of at least four beaches along the Wailea boardwalk (also a first for us this year), Ulua had all the charm for us as Maluaka did last year. The skies were perfect, the sun was still pretty nice for later in the afternoon, and I had more than enough places to walk, climb, and photograph. So nice.

By now, we had pretty much lost all track of time. Next up on our beach hoping list, the popular Wailea Beach.

Wailea Beach

This beauty was one of those nice, long stretches of sand that you can also find at Ka’anapali Beach or Big Beach. And while we love the charm of the small, hidden beaches like Ulua and Maluaka, the shutterbug in me simply can’t pass up the opportunity to spend hours strolling up and down the bigger beaches on Maui, filling up my memory card faster than a visitor piling on the poi at their first luau.

Although we were pretty unaware of the time at this point, it was late enough in the afternoon where the sun wasn’t going to be burning us very fast. By now, a fairly brisk wind was picking up, which sort of spoiled Cindy’s chance for stretching out and enjoying the sun here, but it didn’t stop me from snapping a bunch of photos.

It was our first time visiting Wailea Beach, and the first time I really got to see just how huge the Grand Wailea was, other than driving passed it on the way to the Shops at Wailea. From the beach, you can see the towering buildings (which we were able to see from our helicopter tour), the chapel they have on the grounds of the resort, and the giant cabanas they have facing the ocean. It was pretty impressive to say
the least.

On the Boardwalk
During our tweetup the day before, one of our new Maui friends had mentioned the Wailea Boardwalk that was down where we ended up Sunday evening. While it wasn’t part of our original plans for the day, we found ourselves checking it out shortly before the sunset. Boy, that sure was nice. Not only did we see a few whales having fun away from all the boats that stalk them in West Maui, some of the houses and views along the walkway were breathtaking.

Had it not been so late and already into the evening, we probably would have walked the entire path. Something certainly to save for the next trip, for sure. We did stick around for the sunset, which, as you’d expect, was just as spectacular as some of the homes we were standing next to.

Where Did The Time Go?
Crap, it was 6:30pm already? This is where getting that late start on the laundry I mentioned earlier really came back to bite us. You see, the day before at our tweetup, Liza had extended an invitation to Cindy and I to stop by her place Sunday evening. I had gotten to know Liza and her ohana online via Twitter (@AMauiBlog) and her blog, A Maui Blog, and we were very excited to say Aloha to all of them in real life.

It’s always a big deal when a local resident on the islands invites you to their home, and needless to say, we were really, really bummed that we had to take a rain check. Had we not gotten the late start on the laundry that morning, we would have already been packed for our Hana trip the next morning, done with our beach hopping 2 hours earlier, and toasting the sunset with Liza and her family. Mahalo, Liza, for the invitation and for accepting our rain check at the last minute. I promise we’ll make time for a visit on our next trip!

The Mad Dash
So there we were, all the way down in Wailea just before 7pm and we were leaving for Hana in less than 12 hours. While we actually made good time driving back up to Lahaina, the evening was far from over. We made a stop at Barnes and Noble at the Lahaina Gateway to grab a guidebook for our Hana trip, and then Safeway for a few groceries and things to pack for a picnic lunch on Monday. It wasn’t until 8:45pm when we finally made it back to our room, and we still had to pack! We didn’t even have time to eat dinner, either.

When it was all said and done, after packing for our overnight in Hana and all my techie preparations (camera batteries, memory cards, etc.) it wasn’t lights out for us until after 10pm. That 5:30am alarm for a 7am start to Hana sure was approaching fast.

Tags: aloha09, sunset

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 5th, 2009 at 4:22 am and is filed under Trip 4 Journal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.