More Site Updates

I hope everyone had a lovely Thanksgiving with all of your loved ones. I don't know about you, but I wasn't going to let that delicious Thanksgiving meal slow me down this weekend, so to follow up on the new site updates from last week, I'm happy to announce even more updates from this weekend as well.

Shopping Updates

Possibly relevant to those participating in Black Friday over the weekend, the long overdue Shopping section here at the site has finally been updated. It now features notes on some of the major shopping centers on Maui, including Whalers Village, the Shops and Wailea, and of course, Front Street in Lahaina. There are still a few others in the works, including the Queen Ka'ahumanu Center in Kahului and the newly opened Lahaina Gateway Shopping Center across from the Cannery.

While working on the details for these Shopping pages, I also thought it would be helpful to write up details on the individual stores that we frequent often when on Maui, so I put together a list on the main Shopping page and hope to have most of those completed before our next trip in February. Stay tuned there.

News Updates

To compliment the updates to the Weather pages last week, I decided to update the News pages this weekend as well. I added new feeds to include additional news sources for Maui and Hawaii, including some of the television stations in Hawaii. I also changed some of the plumbing behind the scenes, so hopefully switching between different feeds will be a little bit faster than it was before.

I'm really excited about the other half of the News Updates. I just added a seperate News Articles section, which features different news articles that I've found online and am sharing here at the blog. It's a great opprotunity to keep tabs on different things happening on Maui, and in Hawaii in general, as well as a chance to talk story with you and other readers who like to follow news in Hawaii throughout the year. Sounds interesting? Head on over there and browse through the articles, and don't be shy. Add your comments and let us know what you think about the different news stories from Maui.

This is a section that is surely going to continue to grow. And the best part is, the News Articles page is driven by the activity on our blog, so all you need to do is subscribe to the blog feed and you're guaranteed not to skip a beat. You can also check out the Keeping Tabs on Maui post to learn more about tracking different feeds and other great blogs and sites that we read regularly. And if you find something you think is worth sharing, tell us.

'Tis the Season

One other seasonal note, now that Thanksgiving is behind us. One of our things still to do on Maui is to watch the tree lighting ceremony for the Lahaina Banyan Tree, which is happening this upcoming weekend. More details on that coming this week, but for now, you can check out the Lahaina Town Action Commitee's event calendar for more details.

Instead, we'll be in Wisconsin this year, so I thought I'd share a little something I put together yesterday while Cindy and I were setting up our own Christmas tree here in Chicago. It's sort of off topic, but I thought it was a fun little idea.

Mahalo for now, and have a great week.

Spas, Stores and Stars

Aloha,

Tuesday in Maui was pretty relaxing and low key, with us just hanging out locally and not having to drive anywhere.

Cindy's day began after breakfast with her spa day at the Westin Heavenly Spa. After dropping her off, I took some photos of the Westin and along the beach before stopping at Whalers to pick up a few things. My day of relaxing was hanging out at the hotel, shooting video of the sea turtles from our lanai, and working on the website.

When Cindy called me on her way back from the spa, she sounded a lot chipper and energized, so I think the spa treatment is probably something she'll be adding to her regular regime back on the mainland. She was trying to talk me into going next week, but right now, it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

A light lunch was next at the Lagoon Bar, only really consisting of nachos and some pineapple wedges (nice combo, eh?). We didn't stray too far from the beach because we were heading out to Leilani's for dinner, which was around 6:30pm. The sun set while we were waiting for our food, and we got to watch about two dozen people scramble for position along the grass lawn outside of Whalers Village to snap a picture of the sun just over the horizon. We enjoyed it just fine from where we were.

We finished our ono eats at Leilani's a little after 7pm or so, and enjoyed a nice stroll on the beach all the way back to Black Rock. It was nice taking our time and teasing the waves as they ran up the sand. As much as I tried, however, I could not get any good shots of the torches lit on Black Rock with just my camera and no tripod, so that will have to wait for another night this week.

As we were watching the sunset, the clouds started to roll in over Moloka'i and we thought for sure that the stars would not be out to play tonight. Luckily, we were wrong, and they were just as incredible as the night before.

And my luck didn't stop there, as far as the stars were concerned. Not having any success with photographing the stars on Monday, I went back to look at some of the photos I took of the stars last year on my laptop. Man, do I love technology, because all the camera settings that I used to take those photos last year were all saved in the photo files themselves, so I was able to dial in my Canon and point my tripod to the sky once again.

That's where I came out big. I must have gotten over twenty good shots of the stars from all different parts of the sky. Most of them were 30 second exposures, so you can pretty much guess how long I was out there. :) My next task is to try to identify have those stars and constellations after I post them on Flickr and make them available here. That's my kind of homework.

That pretty much wrapped out our Tuesday for this week.