January 5, 2006

Maria had gotten up at 4am and walked over to what she thought was our room, knocked on the door and man came to the door. She was at the room before ours! oops. She and Kathy were going to watch the sunrise, but sunrise was not until almost 8am. We all got up early, dressed, gathered our travel gear and went to breakfast. It came with the room and was a buffet of omlets, eggs, waffles, bacon, sausage and pastries along with a table full of fruits. We each filled our plates and relaxed in the patio seating area enjoying the view and the food. A shuttle came and took us to the Dollar car rental where we picked up our jeep, a white wrangler. We piled in, Kathy at the wheel, and took off for the Maui experience of a lifetime. Four sisters deciding which way to go, where is the road map, everyone giving direction and then we settled in. We found our way to Haleakala, traving in the narrow road wiggling and waggling up to the summit at 1023 feet aove sea level. Getting in and out of a jeep is no easy task! Sueann slipped once and scraped her whole arm leaving a big red line down it. Tour busses, fog and rain happered out drive, but white knuckled and all we made it to the top. We found out that Hawaii is the most isolated group of islands on Earth; they are 2400 miles fom the nearest continent. The highest elevations, the alpine zone apeared barren; we looked down along the lava rock into the red crater below. We ate our snacks from the airplane. Back down the mountain we went to the rain forest. The town of Paui is a cute little hippie kinda town. Poinsettas grew along the fence lines. We stopped and shopped then made our way to Hana Highway. At Twin Falls we took the short walk to the falls, they were ceertainly muddy with the winter rains, but still people were jumping in the pools. Maria wanted to, but it was just too muddy. Then we stopped at a roadside coconut stand and overlook. Maria treated us to a real fresh right off the tree coconut.It slid into you mouth all slimy, but it sure did taste good. We turned around and headed back toward our hotel. After dropping off our jeep we got the shuttle back to our hotel.Sueann treated us to dinner at our hotel. While having dinner Sueann pointed out the gecko walking on the ceiling. Walking back to our cottage Sueann felt something drop onto her arm- a gecko. She jerked, yelled oooh and stepped into a big puddle. We all laughed ourselves silly. We said good night and went to our separate rooms in our separate cottages and went to bed.