Saturday was a fun filled day with a parade, live music, food, friends, and whales.

Saturday’s plans were pretty simple, spend the entire day in Kihei living the local life at the Pacific Whale Foundation’s Whale Day Festival in Kalama Park. And that’s really what we did all day, enjoying some wonderful Maui weather outdoors all day, spreading some shopping Aloha for some local merchants, great food, live music, and meeting up with some local Twitter friends. It can’t really get much better than that for a Saturday. All told, it was just another great day in our trip tradition of live and local entertainment on vacation.

Although the parade was scheduled to start off the day’s celebration at 9am, we were pretty confident that we’d be able to make it down to Kihei in time. We skipped breakfast and had it not been for the now familiar amount of whale activity off shore at our resort, we would have been okay. There was something mesmorizing and slightly addicting about just sitting on the lanai with your binoculars, scanning the waters and chasing water spray after spray out in the distance.

As we made our way down to Kihei, we were cutting it pretty close. We had our photo shoot in the same general area the night before, so we had add a strong idea of where we were headed. In all honesty, it is afterall, an island, which makes it pretty hard to get yourself lost once you know the general areas.

Anyway, we arrived at one of the designated parking lots (2 miles away) just in time to grab the shuttle, there was still a delay until we arrived at what was the starting point of the parade itself. The timing wasn’t perfect, and we only saw the last half or so of the parade. Still, we did manage to see the Maui Hockey float, which was cool for me, and we even saw some mean looking roller derby girls. I wouldn’t want to run into them in a dark alley, and as I would jump at the chance to lace up the skates with the roller hockey group, Cindy didn’t seem as likely to grab a helmet and roller skates for the derby.

From the time we made it there, the parade lasted only about another 20 minutes. Part of the parade included a float decoration contest in various categories, but we weren’t there long enough to get all the details and see all the participants. There were a number of floats that were tossing candy to the keiki, just like we’re used to at a July 4th parade back home, so that made us long for warmer days in the summer. There were also a lot of little dogs, and even a baby goat, in the parade dawning leis and some alohawear, too. Darn cute.

The sidewalks on both sides of the street were pretty full for the parade, so I’d have to say it was a success. Later in the day, it was announced that 10,000 people attended the festival that day, so it was nice to be able to be included in such a nice crowd.

With the parade over, it wasn’t quite time for some lunch yet. Instead, we walked arounds some of the tents and booths that various local merchants had setup on one of the lawn areas at the park. Not an official count, but there had to be at least 40 different booths setup, with everything from handmade jewelry, art sculptures and paintings to t-shirts, apparel, soaps, toys, and anything else you can think of.

The first time around, we were just browsing and getting a feel for all the different wares people were selling. Just about everything there was made in Hawaii, with most local to Maui itself. We made a number of trips to where the booths were setup during the day, and all told, we left with some great gifts (albeit for ourselves). It felt pretty nice to be able to contribute a little more to the local economy on Maui. And when I say local, I mean directly to the many little mom-and-pop shops and not just the large tourism-driven organizations. Although the tourism groups did get more than their fair share of our money, too.

One such merchant I had a lot of Aloha for was one small outfit known as 808 Clothing Company. They had some really cool designs that I really liked, and had to pick up a few shirts for back home. They also had a store directly across the street from the park, which I unfortunately didn’t get a chance to check out. The good news is, aside from all their work done right there on Maui, is that you can also order their stuff online. I’ll be hitting them up at least one or two more times this summer, that’s for sure. They were also just featured in this blog post from Essense of Aloha, so be sure to check that out for more info on these guys.

This was the 29th year that the Whale Day Festival was being held, and you can tell that they had this shindig down to a science. The live music was great, and it started early and could be held from just about anywhere in the park. The notables that we had looked forward to and really enjoyed included well known acts George Kahumoku Jr., Uncle Willie K., and John Cruz.

By the time Willie K. hit the stage, the large group that had setup on the lawn in front of the stage were all on their feet. We watched him on stage for a little while, but then decided to mosey on back to the shoreline behind the park. There is a rock wall separating the park grass area from the sand at the beach, and throughout most of the day, it was crowded with people. Among them, there were folks playing fetch with their dogs in the water, peering into the ocean looking for whales, or just enjoying the bright sunshine. We were still in earshot of the bands on stage, so it made for a nice atmosphere.

The friends aspect was another great part of the day for us. At around 2:30pm or so, we met up with 2 of my Maui friends on Twitter. Often referred to as a “tweetup” among Twitter users, it was my first time talking to any of my fellow tweeps IRL (in real life) as well as the longest conversation we’ve ever had with folks that have been living on Maui for extended periods of time.

We talked story for over an hour and the conversation covered various topics. The best line of the afternoon had to be from Dave (@raatz) when he said he picked me out of the crowd because I was the only one fiddling with his phone every 2 minutes. Too funny! And here I was thinking we’d be easy to spot because we still looked like visitors.

The original hope was to meet up with even more Twitter friends that day, but it was still a great time for just the ones that made it. That type of interaction with Maui locals really made this trip special, and something I look forward to repeating on future visits
.

After a full day in the sun, and a some last minute shopping at the Whale Day booths, we decided to pack up and head back to the resort. Not feeling like going out for a full dinner, we followed a tip from another one of my Maui tweeps to checkout a takeout place called Honokowai Okazuya & Deli. It’s a small little takeout place that reminded us a little bit of a few of the small eateries back home.

From what we were told and read up on, it’s a pretty popular place with the local residents in the area, and you could certainly tell who they were because they were in and out in a hurry. I guess some might call it charm, but the woman running the place (or at least the register) is a little harsh and pretty intense. It didn’t bother us a bit, and was somewhat entertaining to witness, but I could see how it might upset folks more sensitive to those types of things.

Regardless of the service, the food was still great. I mentioned it was takeout, so we took it back to our room at the resort and ate dinner on our lanai. It was still a little chilly around that time than we remembered back during the summer months, but dining under a moonless sky full of stars was still a nice touch.

It wasn’t even halfway through dinner that I had decided I was heading down to the beach for some stargazing afterwards. It was already a little late, so I wasn’t planning on making a full event out of it. I did pack up my camera gear, though, and did a little shooting like I do every year. While I wasn’t able to capture anything as spectacular as the Milky Way like in the past, my attention was soon drawn to this little beauty in the sky.

That bright object in the middle of the frame is the planet Venus, and I was impressed with how bright it was shining without a moon in the sky. So bright, in fact, that you can see it was casting a pretty strong reflection in the water, just like the moon would or the sun during the early part of a sunset.

It was only an hour or so (I honestly lost track of time) while Venus continued its decent down towards the horizon, and after it had all but disappeared for the night, so did I.