Back to life, back to reality.

Well here we are, all weddinged and honeymooned! We spent such a long time planning and waiting and being excited and nervous, and everything went by quickly and splendidly. We can’t thank our wedding guests enough for making it such a fun and special evening, and we also thank you for putting up with our block of Beyonce songs during the reception.

As most of you know, we went to Maui for our honeymoon. It was absolutely breathtaking, and a welcome change from our midwest, landlocked state. Since I’m sure you want every single detail, I’ll give you a run-down of our days exploring Maui. If you’re not ready to read a long post about our adventures, click here. If you are, then continue…

Day 1

When we arrived in Maui, we picked up our super sexy silver Ford Mustang (we totally didn’t look like tourists at all!) and checked into the Maui Sunseeker. Then we drove up to Lahaina to eat dinner and watch the sunset. It was so ugly that we closed our eyes most of the time. Just disgusting.

When walking back to our car, someone started talking to us about tattoos, and gave us a business card for a nearby tattoo shop. This may or may not have been the point in which we decided what we’d be doing on the last night of our vacation.

Day 2

We went on a swinging bridges hike, which was challenging but awesome. There were 2 swinging bridges, both of which were frightening (at least to me). I imagined they’d be more like the Capilano Suspension Bridge that we went across in Vancouver.

Recently, we had to have an intervention for Jim to stop wearing his Capilano Suspension Bridge t-shirt in favor of wearing a new shirt from Hawaii.

But the bridges were actually a bit less safe than that.

I sense a lawsuit coming on!

But we braved the scary bridges and rugged terrain, and made it to the waterfall at the end of the trail. Win!

After braving the bridges one more time on our hike back to the car, we drove to Iao Valley Park, where we saw some chickens, roosters, and the Iao Needle.

Afterwards, we checked out a gay clothing-optional beach that had been recommended to us by our gay clothing-optional hotel. It was called Little Beach, but was only accessible by going to Big Beach and climbing (loosely speaking) over a wall of lava rock. We wanted to check the spot out before Sunday, because we heard that Sunday evenings are when a bunch of homos, hippies, locals, and weirdos hang out on the beach and partake in libations and form drum circles and dance with fire, among other things. The beach was pretty barren on this particular afternoon. We tried to take a swim in the ocean, but the waves were too big for my midwest sensibilities, because we both got completely knocked down. Baby steps.

Day 3

We wanted to have a lazy morning and afternoon lounging on pretty beaches and swimming in a not-so-hostile ocean. Someone recommended we drive up the west coast of Maui, but it was so packed with touristy resorts that there were barely any public swimming beaches. We called our hotel, and they recommended a nearby beach that was mostly just known to locals. We went, and it was exactly what we were looking for. Not crowded, calm waves, and no sharp things to cut our feet, which would surely lead to getting eaten by sharks.

We then drove back to Lahaina to make tattoo appointments, and our tattoo artist, Jason, recommended a local restaurant nearby. It was delightful, despite the fact that a drunk guy at the table next to us asked if I wanted to get drunk with him. I felt morally obligated to order fresh, local seafood at least once during the trip, so that’s what I did. And it was deeee-licious.

Day 4

This was an incredibly exciting day for Vanderpants, because she got to spend some quality time with her favorite non-Mogwai animals. Yep, that’s right, we went to the Surfing Goat Dairy. We got to take a tour, feed some goats, and sample some goat cheese. I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

This dog's name was Trottel, which is German for "moron". I dunno, he looks smart to me.

I think Vanderzee likes goats so much because they're always smiling.

Okay, enough with the goats.

After the goat dairy, we went to the Maui Ocean Center, which was a totally rad aquarium showcasing gorgeous Maui ocean life. Vanderzee made some new friends!

Oh hey, Mr. Stingray wants to tell you a secret!

The turtle wants to know Mr. Stingray's secret.

That night, we went to Whaler’s Village in Kaanapali, which is a super classy outdoor mall. We had dinner at a restaurant overlooking the beach. The views were beautiful, but the food was expensive and not great. I guess that’s what we get for going to a beach-front restaurant in a super touristy part of Maui, eh?

Day 5

We decided to make the drive to the top of Haleakala, a 10,000 foot volcanic mountain. We both tend to get carsick, so the incredibly windy 1.5 hour drive to the top left me feeling a little cranky by the time we got to the summit. It was insane to drive through clouds on our way up, and then be above clouds at the top of the mountain.

After we got back from Haleakala, it was time to check out Sunday evening madness at Little Beach. It was absolutely packed with people! And I will just say that the people-watching was some of the best we’d ever seen. We put our towel down, and just sat and took in the surroundings. We even (unwillingly) made a new friend. An old, semi-toothless man wearing nothing but a straw hat came over to talk to us. He broke the ice by saying that he met us last week (not true), and he gave us a business card for some gem shop. He said a lot of things, including:

• He’s friends with B.B. King and has known him for many years (I heard 45 years, and Vanderzee heard 25 years).
• He studied “opticals”, and has Prada sunglasses.
• He has 50 cats.
• He used to train race horses.
• He built the whale statue in Kihei. He asked if we new of a way to save the whales, and he suggested that to save the whales, we need to not throw rocks at them.
• He knows half the people in Indiana, but has never been here.
• He offered Vanderzee a massage.
• He took a piece of driftwood and told us he loved us as he touched the driftwood to our big toes.
• He gave us each a marble. Vanderzee pointed out that she didn’t think he had any to spare.

He finally put on shorts and went on his merry way. For obvious reasons, we did not take any pictures at Little Beach…

That night we got delicious pizza and relaxed in our hotel room. We realized we’d been doing a lot of running around in the first part of our trip, so we made the executive decision to book a room at a super fancy resort, the Grand Wailea. We’d heard awesome things about their pools, and we thought that a honeymoon was a great opportunity to spend a night in a ridiculously fancy hotel.

Day 6

We spent the morning browsing around local shops and stands, and had an amazing brunch. We checked into the Grand Wailea as soon as we could, went to our room, and then went straight to the pools. They were absolutely fantastic. It was a series of little pools, all of which were connected with mini water slides and “rapids” (which weren’t all that rapid). The pools were right by the beach, so when we felt like swimming in the ocean (i.e., when we had to pee), we could just walk over to the beach and jump in the ocean. We swam all afternoon, then got dinner (which again, was too expensive and not all that good), then swam a little longer, then got DELICIOUS desserts and took them up to our room.

Day 7

We got up in the morning and went back down to the pools. We even stood in line for the “world’s only water elevator” (which ended up being totally lame). Some punk kids tried to butt in line, and Anna laid down the law (“Hey kid, we have been waiting in line for 20 minutes”). We played in the pools and went down the water slides until we decided we’d officially gotten our money’s worth out of the fancy hotel experience.

The hotel was so fancy that guests are required to use valet parking. When the valet pulled our car up, the rear driver’s-side tire was completely flat. But good thing it happened at the Grand Wailea, because Anna and I don’t know how to change a tire (how did this happen? Jim, why don’t I know how to do this?), and the valet did it in just a few minutes. Luckily, the airport wasn’t far away, so we drove the car to the rental place and exchanged it for a dark grey Mustang.

It was our last night in town, so you know what that means! Tattoo night! Our appointment was for 5 pm, and we thought we’d be out by 10, but between many versions of our tattoo designs and the inability of our tattoo artist to stop talking and telling us stories, we were there past 1 am. They were the most painful tattoos we got (I even shed some tears, which I’ve never done while getting tattooed before), but we are SO happy with how they turned out.

Anna got a goat tattoo because, well, she loves goats and has very fond memories of the goat farm we visited. I got a rooster tattoo because I loved all of the chickens and roosters we saw hanging out in Maui. And my mother loves both tattoos equally!

Day 8

Packed up, bought a ukelele, ate lunch at the beach, temporarily lost the car keys in the post office, drove to the airport, said our last goodbye to Maui, and boarded our plane back home.

 

Whew. Congrats if you made it through this whole post. Thanks again to everybody who helped make our trip so awesome! To see all of our pictures, you can look at the whole set on Flickr.

There were a lot of things we wanted to do on Maui and didn’t get around to, but that just means we need to go back ASAP, right?

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