FLASHBACK: Maui 2015 Part 6

Hello there. It's the 6th part of the Flashback to Maui adventure. And (I promise) this was the best day of the trip.

The day was sunny. The rain from the previous day was gone (but there was a chance of rain that afternoon/evening).

Erich and I headed to Lahaina for today's adventure. Zowie! What a difference a day makes...or, in this case, two days. When we had last been in Lahaina, there had been a cruise ship there with a million tourists in the streets. This Monday morning was quite with comparatively no one there. This afforded me a chance to get some better pictures. Here is the park with the banyan tree. Remember, it looks like many but it's actually only one tree.

I checked out the old Lahaina Courthouse at the back of the park. It's kind of a visitor center with a small museum on the upper floor.

In the center of the upper floor, in the hall, there is a scale model map of the island. In the picture below it, I've plugged in names of places I've mentioned so far. It's kind of hard to see. From left to right there's Hana (the small town we had visited the day before with the crazy road to get to/from), Haleakala the volcano, Hali'emaile (where the restaurant is we've been trying to go to), Wimea (the ultra resort town I checked out), Kihei (where we were staying), Kahului (airport town), Lahaina (where I was at that moment) and Ka'anapoli (the slightly older --than Wimea--resort area where the poolside tiki bar is). At the very northern most point of the island (extreme lower right corner) you'll see a dot with a "?" by it. That was where we were headed later in the day (you'll see... Hang on!)

The view from the upper landing of the old courthouse looked out on to the marina area. To the extreme left of the courthouse is the remains of an old fort.

This day's adventure started from this boating birth.

Once our ship arrived and we loaded aboard, we headed out to sea, leaving Lahaina behind us.

Our destination? A rendezvous with this submarine!

We loaded up and went on board. Zowie!

The inside reminded me of the submarine ride at Disneyland, but this sub actually goes underwater--unlike the Disney ride.

Down, down, down we went. We went as low as 131 feet under the water (I botched it and only got a shot of the depth gauge at 130 ft, but we actually did go that extra foot down! Ha!). It was explained to us that once you go so many feet below the surface (like 20?), the water filters the sunlight and washes out the color spectrum (or something like that), so unless you have a special filter on a camera, all you can see is blue.

We saw sharks and fish and there was even a sunken ship...

It was a pretty cool little adventure. We were under for about an hour.

I took some video clips of the adventure and made a quick-o video, if you'd like to see. It's here:

Back in Lahaina, we wandered around a bit before finally hitting the Shave Ice place we had spotted on the previous visit.

You can see it happen in this super short video clip here:

Once we left Lahaina, we headed for the northern most part of the island to see one of the things I really, REALLY wanted to see. Except for gas and time, it was totally FREE too (and that certainly fit my budget).

We drove and drove. There is nothing out that way, so there was no Google maps to help us find our destination. We didn't want to go too far because there is a section of unsafe road somewhere up there that car rental places forbid you to travel on. We encountered one of those scary one-lane sections of road and pulled off at the next big turnout we came to. It turned out to be the trail head for the Ohai Trail. Was this our destination? If not, maybe someone there could tell us where it was?

We found out we were close to where we were going, that we had actually driven past it. I got some shots from the trail head while Erich decided to walk the trail (it was only a mile or so loop). I then waited in the air-conditioned car (it was hot) with my bum knee.

The people who told us we had gone beyond where we were headed also pointed out you could see it from trail head. And there it was in the distance, the blow hole! Can you see the plume of seawater coming up from the rocks?

We went back the way we had come. There was a bunch of cars parked in a large turnout next to a fruit stand. There was a small sign for the blowhole which we did not initially see as we drove by because some jerk had been parked in front of it...kind of like I accidentally did when I pulled in. Oops.

As we made our way to the blowhole, there was a warning sign and a little memorial marker for someone who had evidently been killed in the blowhole. SCARY!

The area around the blowhole was so other worldly. There was all of this pitted and scarred volcanic rock. The geyser itself was just awesome and when we climbed up onto the small cliffs to the left of the blowhole, you could really hear it when it shot out---so powerful and scary.

It was all up/down hell to get to/from the blowhole (see the people in the photo?) which played havoc on my knee somewhat, but it was totally worth it!

The blowhole was probably my favorite experience of the whole trip! (I think Erich said he really liked it too.)

Like the submarine trip, I took video footage of the blow hole and made this short video. Watch or DON'T (but if you DO watch, I apologize for the one swear word...). Here it is:

That night we did finally make it to the Hali'imaile General Store for dinner. Ricki & Ted graciously treated in honor of a late birthday dinner for Erich. (THANK YOU Ricki & Ted!)