We made a oops setting the alarm, but Sandy woke up at 4:30 anyway and tried unsuccessfully, to wake me at our agreed upon time several hours later. Finally, a little after nine she was able to break the snooze cycle and we had a relaxing ABC store bought breakfast on the lanai. It's slim pickings since we stopped at the smaller ABC store yesterday; all I have is a can of POG juice, a yogurt and some caramacs.
It's drizzling, but Sandy proclaims it should be dry in Lahaina, because it's almost always dry there so let's go on a whale watching adventure anyway. Yay, whales!
Parking is a bit of a hassle so when we get to the Pacific Whale Foundation kiosk at the harbor they let us check in there, then we huddle under a dockside tree with all the other folks who think it's always dry in Lahaina. So glad I brought the rain cover for my camera bag, plus our rain jackets.
The crew informs us they haven't wiped down any of the seats on the upper deck since it's still raining "pretty bad" and most people head for shelter on the lower deck so we get lucky and snag two of the few covered seats on the upper deck.
The upper deck during sunnier times:
After we leave the harbor we're free to move about the boat, but there's not much going on and the rain and wind make it harder to see them spout. Still it's nice being out there, although I'm worried Sandy will not be too happy about spending two hours on a boat for no reason. If nothing else the weather clears up a lot and it stops raining.
Luckily, we find a calf, its mother and a male escort and the calf is just having a ball slapping his tail and throwing himself around, even breaching a few times. Lots of pictures today, so I'm only posting smaller versions of most of them. Click on picture for enlargement.
Pectoral fin
Baby breach ... so cute!
Mother & calf diving down together
Just missed it, but I love how gloomy this picture came out
They look like battle ships
Towards the end of the tour we find yet another mom & baby with a male escort and a small pod of dolphins. So strange to see them hanging out together -- why they do this is still not entirely known, but one theory involves the dolphins trying to steal milk from mom, while another argues that it's for protection.
So we sit and bob around, but no one's really noticing because incredibly they keep advancing, until finally mom and baby veer off the starboard side ever so slightly while the male swims directly underneath the boat!! Talk about amazing!
Mother & calf veer to the left
The male escort keeps getting closer ...
And closer ...
... until he dives down under the boat.
Unfortunately, all the rocking in place was a bit rough on some of the other passengers and they ended up feeding the fish over the back of the boat, but amazingly Sandy wasn't one of them! Bonine does the trick!
All too soon we're back at the harbor again.
Back on shore we walk to the Pacific Whale Foundation store where for $20 we're able to find two cute shirts in their clearance section, plus pick up our free poster.
Can't walk past the banyan tree without taking some pictures.
Banyan tree panorama
We'd planned to have lunch at Costco, but they don't start the race day packet pick-up until 4pm so we have some time to kill before driving to Kahului. My stomach is growling so food is the #1 priority. We walk past Fleetwoods, where we'd planned to attend their whale watching session tomorrow, but the menu is a bit too fancy for my kindergartner taste and seeing whales from their oceanfront Lanai is not going to live up to what we just saw.
Tripadvisor has a couple of nice options, but in the end we gravitate towards Moose McGillycuddy's (or simply Moose's). It's not oceanfront, but their deck has a great view of Front Street and it's a very casual place where wind-whipped whale-watching hair blends in easily.
Wow, I'm now so hungry I want everything on the menu, but we manage to restrain ourselves by splitting an order of fish tacos. Note: although the menu doesn't mention it, the fish taco's are super spicy! Quite tasty though and they are just loaded with fish.
Next up a visit to one of my favorites: shave ice at Ululani's! There's quite a long line and Sandy checks out the activity desk next door while I'm waiting. As expected the unbelievable deals are part of a timeshare program so we won't be booking any of those.
My "small" cone is a mix of lilikoi (passion fruit) and my all time favorite melona with vanilla ice cream on the bottom and mochi balls on top. He warns me beforehand that even though it tastes fine the mochi has a strange texture so if I want it he'll give it to me free of charge. Can't say no to free mochi, right?
Even better than I remembered!
We sit down on a bench along the water and soak up the vibe and unfortunately the sun -- we look like little tomatoes now!
Random things spotted on our way back to the car:
As seen on a SUV ... oh to be a Hawaiian baby!
The historic Baldwin Home Museum ... open tonight so maybe we'll get to take a peek inside later.
Kamehameha Iki Park, just past the harbor
Little banana grove on the way to the beach
Suddenly it's a lot later than we expected so I set the GPS for Eddie & Carey's Hideaway in Kahului where we'll pick up our race day packet and snooze while Sandy does the driving. When we get there I have to laugh: this is the place we had dinner last year after coming back from the Road to Hana! Of all the coincidences!
They're super organized and a few minutes later we're back outside with our new T-shirts (where are we going to put all this stuff?) and bibs.
We'd planned to have lunch at Costco, but neither of us is very hungry after our late lunch so all we do is pick up a new underwater camera, a spiffy neon yellow Fuji Finepix XP70 to match my snorkel gear. If it's as good as its predecessor I should have a blast with this thing!
Our first rainbow of the trip!
Jet lag starts kicking in again so we head back to Lahaina for dinner at Penne Pasta for some pre-race carbohydrate loading. Nice little place with lots of tasty options.
A waitress walks by with the thinnest of thin crust pizza's and it is so hard to restrain myself for gorging on pizza, but; I came here to have spaghetti. Must say they have very good meatballs and the no-frills pasta was perfect!
Friday nights the Baldwin Museum is open for candlelit tours so when we see the candles flickering in the windows I momentarily snap out of my fatigue and trudge up the front steps, only to find they charge admission. This really should not have come as a surprise, but $7 seems a bit steep for a quick visit so we'll save it for another year when we can really take our time.
All we need is some groceries for tomorrow morning so swing by Safeway to pick-up my breakfast of champions: bagels & nutella, bananas and because this is Hawaii: POG juice instead of my usual OJ.
Time to get some sleep!
Breakfast: ABC store breakfast on the lanai
Lunch: Moose's
Snack: Ululani's
Dinner: Penne Pasta
Mileage for today: 63 miles
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