Haleakala Crater

Saturday brought another adventure for the gang.  Last weekend, we drove around the Haleakala Crater, this weekend, we drove up it.  A windy road from Sea Level to 10,000 feet (which was also 90 degrees to 50-60 degrees in an hour).  Not for the weak of stomach, but then again, all of Maui is like that.  Instead of being able to drive across the island, you must drive around.  This drive up the mountain brought us through the clouds and up top, where we had a spectacular view to the insides of this dormant volcano.

It was nice to be up there, above the clouds, feeling cool for once in Hawaii.  This island truly is remarkable how diverse the terrain is.  After the climb up the volcano, we ventured to Wailea, which is the main resort area of the island, and scoped out a few beaches.  We ate lunch at the uber-yuppie Shops at Waliea at Tommy Bahama's restaurant (who knew they made more than clothing?) which was decent.  We drove home apparently at just the right time as later that night a crazy fire broke out on the one highway that goes around West Maui causing it to close.  

On Sunday I ventured more around the area I'm in.  I went to the beach at the Ritz-Carlton, yes, fancy, I know, and decided to finally get IN the ocean.  I was biding my time, taking all the views in and slowly walking into the water when a GINORMOUS wave ate me.  I'm serious.  I was standing and it just clobbered me.  This is when I decided that I will never try to surf, because I would die.  I'm still cleaning the sand out of my ears....  It really was beautiful, and thanks to sunscreen, I was able to explore most of the morning on the rocks and sandy beaches of Kapalua.  The one major drawback of this adventure was that it was a very windy day and sand was whipping around everywhere.  Despite its discomforts, it really made my skin soft haha.  Apparently sand lodged its way into my camera's inner-workings and fried the poor little s.o.b. so that when I turn it on it zooms all the way in and will not take a picture or let me look at anything.  All I can do is change the settings.  So.  RIP little Panasonic.  Welcome $100 Kodak with 3 times the megapixels.  I bought it today at Walmart (yup, drove an hour and bought basically the only one they had that was cheap with many megs...didn't even try it out cause they didn't have a display, and it just happens to be a green camera ;-)).  New pictures to come soon.  

This week is all about last minute details at work and much data entry.  Snore.  I'm still working out a lot, and have been filling my weeknights with at least two episodes of LOST (except last night when the Bachelorette was on, and holy moly what a train wreck of a show that is!) and of course while I'm watching LOST on abc.com, it taunts me with commercials for Target when the internet KNOWS there isn't a Target on my island!  Yikes!  It's almost as bad as being suck on an island..........well, they filmed it on Hawaii, so who knows?