Maui, Hawaii

I love Maui... loved it.  Want to live there when I retire.  Really, truly.  I loved the laid back island feel, the small number of tourists, and the very kind, wonderful people that live there.  It's a wonderful island.  I have many pictures to share of our adventures on the island, so many it could take many months to share them all; however, I'm going to try and limit them to just two postings.  Here's the first.

While in Maui, we stayed at the gorgeous Wailea Marriott hotel.  It was incredibly beautiful.  It was situated right next to the ocean and had beautiful landscaping throughout the property.  This is the front part of the hotel, right next to the open lobby.  Nothing was enclosed except the hotel rooms themselves.  It's very different from cold Utah.

This is the driveway to the hotel.  Every time we drove down this tree-lined road I would just stare in wonder at the beauty.  The picture does not do it justice.  I'm not sure what kind of trees these were but they were gorgeous.

So, the first beach we visited was called Big Beach.  It was very close to the hotel and it was lovely.  Amazing how such a lovely, fun beach could have no one around.  One of the many reasons I loved Maui.

Did some snorkeling while visiting Big Beach.  Here's my hot husband carrying all our gear... so very helpful as usual.

It was hard to leave Big Beach but we had many, many more beaches to explore.  This was just our first day afterall.

Bye beautiful beach.

After dinner our first evening, stumbled upon a gorgeous beach with no name and no one around but us.  It was incredible.... the beach and the solitude.

After a few days of enjoying the sun and fun on Maui's many beautiful beaches we decided to do a little exploring around the island and take in a luau.  If you're in Hawaii, you've got to take in a luau, right? 

So we drove around the top part of the island, enjoyed the gorgeous coast line and stumbled upon something fun for us to explore.

What fun!  A blowhole!  We took many pictures because it was actually pretty cool.  This one is my favorite of them all.  Cute little, Tori and Todd.  It was really quite incredible to watch the powerful waves slam up against the coast line and see the water come crashing through the blowhole. 

We stopped at this cove on the way to our luau and spent a good hour watching snorkelers and taking in the beauty of the beautiful blue water.

Just as we arrived at the luau it started to rain, really just a sprinkle of rain.  As soon as it cleared up we were treated to a beautiful rainbow over our luau gathering.

The luau was awesome.  Great food.... mmmmm... yummy, yummy food and incredible dancing.  They show was so much fun and well worth it.  Gorgeous ladies for Evan and some hot fire dancers for Tori.

I'll take a break here but plan to share many, more pictures of our fabulous trip to Maui.  Did I tell you I want to live there?