daily slice-of-life photo blog of a Gen-X dad
Our trip to Southern California has come to an end. It was so much fun visiting with family and friends, eating yummy food, and making more memories (and escaping the Arctic freeze that hit Texas), but it’s time to go home. Until next time!
Today we went camping with some friends at Guadalupe River State Park. We enjoyed a fun evening eating yakiniku and laughing until late into the evening. I think the dinner at the campsite is the main focus for this particular group of friends, which is just fine with me. 😄
We woke up extra-early today to catch our 6 am flight from Kahului to Honolulu. We were worried about the availability of an Uber or Lyft at 4 am, but luckily, there were cars available, so we arrived at the airport without problem. But guess what… the airport workers don’t start until 5 am, so we had to wait (with a few other travelers) in the empty airport for a bit to check in our bags. But I was just happy we made it to the airport. 😌
We made it to Honolulu to catch our flight to Austin, and found the Li Hing powder for sale at the airport store, which was funny because we searched quite a bit in other stores in Wailuku and Kahului, before finding it in a small store in the town of Haiku. But I guess we just weren’t looking in the right place? Anyways, we didn’t have to buy it at the airport.
The flight back to Austin was fine, and I watched Top Gun: Maverick and wrote a bunch of blog posts. A good 7-hour flight.
Now it’s time for sleep. Oyasu!
Today’s our last full day on Maui and of our October vacation as we are leaving early tomorrow morning. But we still had one thing we really wanted to do: visit the Lavender Farms.
But first we drove back over to Kihei to get some bread and pastries at Maui Bread Company. It was really good, with some German-inspired breads. There were also some nice-looking Hawaiian breads as well. Too many to try, so we have to come back some day!
After that we went back up-country to the Lavender Farms, The grounds are really well-kept there, and we wandered around the trails enjoying the amazing views and pretty flora. I can’t imagine working there and getting to enjoy looking out over Maui and the neighboring islands ever day. Must be an amazing gig!
The lunch options back in town are limited on Sundays, so we ended up going to Pearl’s Korean BBQ at the Queen Kaahumanu Center. We got a couple of plates with kalbi, “mean Jun”, and “Fish Jun”, as well as plenty of side dishes like kimchee, glass noodles, bean sprouts, etc. It was enough for lunch and dinner, and we even had more leftover! A good deal. It seemed expensive at first, but when you realize how many meals you can squeeze out of one plate, it’s a nice value.
The rest of the afternoon we spent cleaning the house a bit, doing laundry, and vacuuming the car. Then a quick visit to Costco at closing time to pick up some coffee to take home to Texas. I saw these bags of salt, which I remember seeing in the pantry at home growing up. So nostalgic!
On the way home, we stopped at Iao Valley again to catch the last bit of light over the valley mountains… A nice way to finish our trip to Maui!
I hope you had a great day!
It’s Saturday, which means it’s swap meet day at the college! Admission is only 50 cents and parking is free, so it’s a nice, inexpensive activity. And pretty fun! besides shopping for souvenirs and fresh veggies and fruit, there is a great shave ice truck run by Maui Girlz. We got the “Hapa” shave ice, which was half vanilla, and half coffee mocha. It was a delicious way to cool off because, dang, it was hot under the sun!
We then decided to head over to the west side of the island since that’s the only part we haven’t been to this trip. We walked around Whaler’s Village, got our toes wet at the beach there, and then went back to Lahaina for lunch at Cool Cat Cafe.
One of the Yelp reviewers said it was the best burger they had ever had, so I thought we should try. Honestly, the burger was maybe a 5 out of 10. A pretty big disappointment. But at least the fries were good, and the beer was tasty and cold.
After that we went to the Baldwin House since we had never been inside before. It was fascinating to see how people lived back in the 1800s. Baldwin was a doctor so there were some medical instruments there which made me a little queasy, but I thought this medical price sheet (re-creation) was pretty neat.
We walked around Lahaina for a bit and took a photo in front of the dive shop that Mariko used maybe 30 years ago, then made our way to Kohola Brewing Company. The beer was great, but it was a little warm inside so not the most comfortable that day. However, I’d definitely come back to try more beer in the future!
Last on our list of Lahaina attractions to visit was the Ku’ia Estate Chocolates. We had a chocolate tasting and chatted with one of the workers there about chocolate, cacao, and the chocolate business. A neat place to visit and enjoy some sweet treats!
On the way home, we got hungry for more Thai food for some reason, so we stopped by the Aloha Thai food truck which was also near Costco. We got the drunken noodles, at spiciness level 5 (out of 10) and it was very good! We liked it better than the food we got at Thai Mee Up. We both felt it was more flavorful.
I hope you had a wonderful day!
