Moving to Paradise: May 2012

Source: http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=292035

Jon's parents paid us a visit last week, well mostly paid MAUI a visit, and said hi to us while they were here :) We hadn't seen them since Thanksgiving so it was nice to catch up and hang out. It was a quick trip but we managed to spend some time together.

There is a volcano crater on Maui called Haleakala. It's 10,000ft above sea level and is a view that everyone should see eventually in their life. The top is so high, that it is usually higher than the clouds! And therefor awesome to look down through the clouds at the beautiful island of Maui. One well known "must see" in Maui is Haleakala at Sunrise. Because you are higher than the clouds, when the sunrises in all of its glory and the sky lights up with fantastic colors, and colors reflect onto the clouds all around you. Like you are literally in heaven cruising on pink clouds looking down at the world. Sounds amazing right? Why are there still people left who have never done that? Like me and Jon... :-/ Well because you have to get up at 3:30am and it's like 4-jackets-3-pairs-of-pants-plus-your-comforter-from-the-hotel-room temperatures up there that early in the morning. Source for the side picture (not taken by me unfortunately): http://gohawaii.about.com/u/sty/mauiphotos/user_photos_of_maui/Sunrise-at-Haleakala.htm

So we thought, what better time to get these fantastic tourist views seen than when we have our tourist family or friends visiting. Honestly everyone who lives here may talk down about doing the tourist thing and snorkling or hiking the famous hikes/ziplines/waterfalls/ etc and refer to them as 'touristy' and expensive while living their every day life here. But once a family or friend comes to town they are pretty stoked to go engage in such behavior. I'd love to do more tourist things, just got to get my errands and schedule to work around it. We do have a life here you know. Not all just beach tannings, and waterfall hiking, and fancy dinnering every single day. I have appointments and groceries and house cleaning and laundry and bills to pay... with the island as my background. And I wouldn't want to spend my errands in any other surrounding :) And I do admit, those errands don't get done quite to the completion as they would on the mainland when my day off is 78 degrees, sunny, with a light breeze, and I'm already wearing my suit under my clothes (beacuse that's just how I live now). Groceries may get pushed to the side as I over pull to the beach along the highway for an hour of beach lounging when such conditions tempt me to do so...

Anyways, beside that view into the island lifestyle, Jon and I thought let's hike Haleakala while his parents are in town, and why not go a few hours before hand for the marvelous sunrise Haleakala views that our customers tell us so much about (and we pretend that we totally did that too and wasn't it just so amazing...) We had great intentions to do sunrise. Until the night before when we went to bed at midnight... I roll over to Jon and say "hey baaaabe... I don't know if I want to wake up in 3 hours to be freezing cold and then hike for 2 and half hours after that... :D :D" and he replied..." yeah, me neither." Haha, so we drove up with Tracy and Bill and met my hiker buddy Warren, who was leading the way, having hiked Haleakala many times. Except when we got up there, driving upwards through the clouds, the clouds never cleared, and we were immersed in them. It's like driving in the morning fog in Sacramento where you can barely see 5 feet in front of you. I kept thinking, nah it'll clear. But we reached our starting hiking point and still couldn't see much in the distance.

A horseback riding tour into the crater. they don't look very happy...

Bummer dude. Well we drove up 2 hours, no point in turning around, so let's do this! I got outside of the car and SHIIIZA! Ya, Warren told me to bring a jacket but I though it was a beginning jacket then you get hot from hiking so you take it off kind of hiking weather. Nope. The next hour or so was honestly the most cold I've been in years. A constant ice cold heavy wind, rain and mist in the air, and at points it was fully raining on us. We hiked down into the crater hoping the wind would lighten up further down into the crater. Which it did. Better than at the top, but then it tended to rain when the wind wasn't so harsh. The hike seemed pointless beacuse usually you hike to go SEE something, a great view, a waterfall, a beach, some secluded wonder, but if we got to our destination, we wouldn't have been able to see view of the island that the point was beacuse of all of the clouds. So we hiked back up. This trail was referred to as Sliding Sands because the ground is loose like sand. so hiking back up to the top from inside the crater, it was literally like hiking in sand. So the amount of effort you put into hiking at an incline was cut in have with the what you'd get out of it. The hike back up seemed to never end. But a few times the clouds cleared and I saw a glimpse into the beauty of what we would have seen on a better day.

Darn clouds are in the way of this really cool multi-colored valley down into the crater here

What you would see on a good day.
Source: http://www.citypictures.org/r-central-america-145-hawaii-225-haleakala-crater-haleakala-national-park-maui-2749.htm

Finally back into the wind shielding car

Stoked to almost to be warm finally

Yes it was cold

Yes it was raining

Yes it was tiring

Yes I was not properly dressed (with shorts and tank and bikini top on under my sweater)

Yes I was sore the next day

Yes we couldn't see anything

Yes the views were blocked by clouds

but NO I don't regret it. I enjoy every adventure I'm taken on. I made a game out of staying warm. Just keep running in place and sing yourself a song. How cool is it that I was inside of a cloud?! I love clouds. The beautiful white soft pillows in the sky? I love slicing through them in airplanes. I've always been fascinated by them. Maybe I wasn't prepared for the weather inside of one, but now it makes more sense to me how rain is created and the impact clouds have on our environment. I felt like it was one check off of the bucket list. ~~Be inside of a cloud~~

The next evening we went down to Front Street in Lahaina for dinner and the art walk. The art walk is where all the fancy schmancy art galleries host live musicians and give out free wine as you peruse their million dollar priced art. Little did Jon know after this evening we had planned to take him to Warren and Annabelle's Magic Show. A popular comedy magic show that locals and visitors love and that Jon and I have wanted to go to for months. Jon's birthday was the 12th of May so with his parents in town the week before they wanted to get him a gift that he'd like. I recommended us all going as a family to this show we've heard so much about. Needless to say, we surprised him and he and all of us LOVED the show. So funny. A good clean act. Actually a Christian guy who doesn't do dirty jokes or crude humor at all. Before the show we were asked if we would volunteer to be apart of the front row to help out the magician in his act. We said sure! It was basically his row of people he'd make fun of during his show. All in good fun. It was awesome.

The sunset during dinner at Kimo's

Inside the lounge at Warren and Annabelle's

Front Rowers

We spent a few nights at home cooking for home meals and playing cards. Of course Jon cooked his parents some Italian dishes and we sipped on scrumptious wine.

Over the weekend my Hula Grill family and I put on a car wash fundraiser for our beloved coworker Cristina who was in a horrible head on car accident about 2 months ago and has many outrageous medical bills to pay. The previous blog has more information about all of that. But our restaurant sponsored the car wash by providing supplies, employees brought in home baked goodies for a bake sale, and some employees went out and collected donated prizes for an awesome raffle! That same night Hula Grill participated in the Maui Onion Festival that takes place in Whaler's Village (the outside mall that we are located in) by selling our own recipe of Maui onion rings, and all of the proceeds went towards Cristina as well. The car wash raised about $3,700 and the Maui onion fest minus labor and cost raised almost $3000 as well! So in one day our Hula Grill employees raised over $6,000 for an employee who needed help. Now that's a family.

Bake Sale. What sold the most? Spam Muzubi. Locals love their Spam

Raffle had T-shirts, gift certificates to like 10 diff restaurants, cruises, paddle board lessons, etc

Working the corner

Caught on camera testing the goodies hahah

Our general manager even came out to wash cars all day!

Miss Toni, she worked so hard to get all the raffle prizes and promo the event <3

Reading of the raffle prizes (those not present put down their phone number to receive their prizes later)

All in all, it was definitely a success! We will still work hard to help Cristina out as she has a long road toward recovery. If you'd like to help out let me know, an easy way to give is donate $1 by downloading the song we wrote, sang, and produced for her. Kokua Cristina by the Hula Grill Hulagans on iTunes

::Randoms::