THE FAST AND THE MAUIEST: SURF'S UP MOTHER FUCKERS

Alright, so.

Our second to last day in Maui was a lovely one in the am. Derek slept in, I had some coffee, Derek made us a breakfast that was scrumptious and full of things I don't normally condone the ingestion of, and we debated on doing something spectacular that turned into not a debate:

We booked a helicopter tour over the island.

We would take it at 7:30 in the morning the next day. Our last day in Maui was going to kick off with a helicopter tour, and Derek upgraded our seats to the primo seats right next to the helicopter pilot, and I was so fucking elated, Derek was so fucking elated, we just needed to figure out how to fill our time until then.

A friend of mine recommended going out and photographing a place called Dragon's Teeth. It wound up being a five minute drive from our villa, the day was gloriously sunny on our side of Mai, so we headed out for it. Finding it was a little confusing, because you have to walk along the edge of a golf course that has signs telling you to stay the fuck off the grass, you god damn pleb, keep your foot traffic to yourself. A couple pointed us in the right direction, though, so off we went.

This was literally the sunniest day we'd seen all week, so we were pretty fucking stoked to take advantage of it. And I got to wear my hat! A solid win in my book.

Wearing a hat meant having to continuously turn it backwards and wear it like a date rape fan to take photos, though, which was admittedly fucking annoying. Especially because it was unbelievably windy out. I was very worried I was going to lose my precious hat. So worried, in fact, that I did not notice when I lost my precious pink aviators that I have had and cherished and abused for years. Sorry about the incidental littering, Maui. :/ I didn't mean to.

Derek made his way down to Dragon's Teeth proper, and I hiked down this little crag down to the beach. As always, I wanted shots other people weren't looking to take. That is not to say that Dragon's Teeth is not cool as fuck, and that pictures of it were beneath me or something, quite the contrary. I DID go up there to take photos of it properly after exploring other avenues first, because it most definitely is worth photographing head on.

Pro tip: If you're ever traveling with me and I step away and disappear, just rummage about in the foliage for me in low-lying areas. I'm usually trying to get creative with the flora. I hope that helps.

I would say I ran around the area trying to find interesting things to photograph, but in reality, I kind of jump-stepped my way around, clutching at photographic straws. Since I am editing on the fly as I blog, I just looked through all of my wandering photos and I'm far from moved. I'll post some just to have them for posterity, but you wouldn't be missing much if I didn't.

DO YOU LIKE ROCKS? I HEARD YOU LIKE ROCKS. I HAVE SO MANY PICTURES OF SO MANY ROCKS.

Let's be honest with each other: I am not the photographer for landscapes. These are neat for posterity, but they're nothing photos. BUT WAIT THERE ARE MORE ROCKS.

And there are rocks...with wood!!!!!

So here are more rocks, but these rocks lead up to Dragon's Teeth. By this time, I was hot as fucking balls. I hadn't expected to be dancing my way through a menagerie of bad landscape photos for over an hour in the blazing heat, and I had lost my husband and somewhere among these photos are my gone forever pink sunglasses, rest in peace.

In case you had forgotten, there are these things called rocks, and they exist in the world.

So all of that is Dragon's Teeth. Jokes about superfluous rocks aside, this place was pretty fucking cool. It for sure looks like the jaw of a long dead dragon, it was not named poorly. I didn't edit the photos because I was most blown away by how fucking FOREIGN it looked there. I had gone from a golf course to a rock beach to an area that made me forget what planet I was on.

There was this really fun labyrinth, too. It was hard to take a good photo of the entire thing, but I tried.

I really wanted to get deep down in there and catch something interesting, but I was schvitzing like crazy, and I still hadn't found Derek and I was thirsty and I thought I was going to faint from being so needy.

Derek and I finally found each other, collectively bitched about being hot and thirsty and so ready to not do anything else for the car ride to wherever it was we were going next, and then we set out for where we were going next. After, of course, stopping to get me a new pair of sunglasses and us some liquids for our parched, parched bodies. That little strip of land in the distance is the island of Lanai, bee tee dubs.

Next stop was Ho'okipa beach, and I had been so excited about coming here. We get turtles out here all the time, but I had read that you could get like, eleventy threeve thousand at once on this beach.

YOU GUYS.

The beach did not fucking disappoint. There were so many fucking turtles!!!!!!!

You bow your god damn head to your new turtle overlords!

My favorite thing about these amazing critters was how hard they mean-mugged me and generally distrusted the cut of my jib.

That is the look of a turtle who doesn't trust me near its purse.

I don't know what the fuck I did to these turtles as a whole, but I mean, they haven't forgiven me and it doesn't look like they plan to any time soon.

How cute!!! It's sleeping too solidly to shoot me hate eyes!

This turtle just wants to be part of your world.

There was even a little baby turtle!!!!!!

When that wave crashed over it, a little girl freaked the fuck out and cried to her mom that the baby turtle was drowning. I laughed, but just to myself. It was cute that she cared and also cute that she didn't know how sea turtles work.

After Ho'okipa, we went back to Lahaina. We had been at turtle beach for a really long time, and we hadn't really done much that day. I think We ate at Paia Fish Market that night and ran into a retoucher with some serious fucking weight in his CV, and then we tried to get into Haiku Mill, buty I was depressed to discover that it was a wedding venue and not one that I could just wander into. For all of my research, I really biffed that.

All the way home I would take photos out of the window, hoping to catch some of the cool mountain landscapes with the warm sun making them lusciously golden. I took pictures of them, that's for sure, but don't expect anything magical and you won't be disappointed.

There's Molokini! I don't regret for a single moment not going. This picture is enough Molokini for me. 

And a cute sailboat cruising between Maui and Lanai.

I know that pictures of the shit you see by the road probably isn't what most people consider worth photographing, but so much of the world looks like a strange planet if you take it out of its full context. Maui is no exception, and I really fucking love that.

This is it for our second to last day on Maui. Next blog covers the last day, and our helicopter tour, and I am so excited to FINALLY look through those photos.

True fans of MAUI THE RETURN: THIS TIME IT'S REALLY MAUI are flocking to theaters to see MAUI IV: MAUI YOU SEE ME, MAUI YOU DON'T

I had the brilliant idea to buy myself a Hawaii hat while we were getting lunch from the little breakfast deli on site at our villa compound. All of my local female acquaintances have Hawaii hats, or Aloha hats, or something that looks super fucking touristy, so I felt confidant that having a hat that said HAWAII on it would not make me look like an asshole, as my husband went out of his way to insinuate it might.

I had been shielding my eyes from the sun while were were hiking the last couple of days, a hat would solve that problem, plus I wanted the usual kitsch to announce that I had traveled to another island. I kept kicking myself over buying tourist shit as a person who actually lives in the archipelago, but I didn't let my own shit talk stop me! Check it:



I am aware that I am deeply uncool, but also I love my hat.

We set out relatively early this day because we wanted to get to Wai'anapanapa Beach while it was still empty. We grabbed our food and got into the car to make the long ass drive to the beach park, which is pretty much the last stop on the road to Hana. There are other things to see past Hana, and we wanted to do those, as well, so having a stacked itinerary meant eating the car.



Derek, seen here in his natural state.

I had read a travel blog that I would link if I could remember where this girl said she always headed out to Wai'anapanapa before sunrise because she liked having the beach to herself for optimal photos. I wasn't willing to do a Haleakala type morning again, but if I knew for sure then what I know for sure now, I would have. Wai'anapanapa is an incredible looking beach. I cannot even begin to imagine the kinds of photos I could have taken on it with an hour or two to myself and Derek before the crowds really arrived. I snapped my first shot at 10:00 on the nose, and there weren't many people there, but it was still too many. Had we been there at 6? Incredible. It would have been incredible. As it stands, the beach park is absolutely fucking AMAZING. Derek and I hung out in this cave and watched huge waves crash in, and it kept us dry from the downpours that came every few minutes, lasted only a few minutes, and then went away. There was so much more to explore there, but the downpours were quite fierce, and they were enough of a deterrent that we opted to keep heading toward O'heo Gulch to see the Seven pools. I really really wish the weather had been better. The photos I have won't look as good as a sunny day, and I'm worried the fucking awe inspiring beauty of a black sand beach just won't shine through like it would if the sun had been out and the sky had been blue. Well. You have to work with what you have.

So before I headed down to the beach, I took a few shots at the overlook.

I mean, it's not like it isn't fucking incredible to look at. I've never seen a black sand beach before, and the effect is striking. Unfortunately, the weather was doing me no favors. Update: I just tried to do an HDR merge in photoshop, and I won't lie to you, it was fucking garish. So it'll just be regular photos, no perfectly merged masterpieces that make me look more skilled than I actually am.

It started pouring pretty immediately after I took those, so I ducked into a lava tube cavern almost directly underneath where I had been standing to take the photos. I found my delicious husband had set up shop in there ahead of me, and it was just us in there, which was nice and surprising. I attempted to bracket again, but as I am no whiz at the software, these two photos will just have to do.

I lied, you have to make do with one photo. I said one, Debbie. I had such grand ideas about how I could make this look, and unfortunately, well, unfortunately that was what I ended up with.

The best thing about Wai'anapanapa beach is getting to see all of the instagram photo shoots. There were so many. They ranged from tame family shoots to far more risque shoots with girls writhing around in the sand, smearing it all over themselves. A real grab bag of genres. Derek and I laughed about a lot of it, a lovely young family asked me to take their photos for them (I hope I got them a good enough picture! They had the cutest little boy, and they were all just so adorable), it was definitely the place to be photographed, it seemed.

And I get it.

The beach is amazing, and I feel very lucky that I got a shot where I didn't have to edit out footprints. There's something off about the color there, but I had to lift the shadows so hard to even get the rocks to show up. And there was so much rain on my lens that I had to dehaze and edit to shit, so if it looks crap, that's why.

We left Wai'anapanapa beach and headed forth towards O'heo Gulch. It kept dumping rain down on us, so when we passed by another incredible waterfall, we didn't bother getting out, because there wouldn't be a good opportunity to take a photo through the onslaught of rain. It was about a 40 minute drive to Haleakala National Park, though, so we chatted and listened to music and chatted and then, once we got into the park, I talked Derek into skipping the pools altogether. We hit up another beach along the way, and this one was a red sand beach. I mean it wasn't, but it was trying real hard to have red sand. The cliff walls had red sand, and about a mile or two down the way was the really real red sand beach, but we didn't stop there. We thought about it, but it was absolutely pouring out when we drove by the exit, and we opted to not.

Instead we took the offroad to Koki Beach. Its sand is trying really hard to be red, and in the rain, it does an alright job.

There's the old ball and chain, holding all of my lenses and being really fucking irritated by it. I can't say I blame him. Thanks, honey! I love using you as a pack mule!!!

I think the coolest thing about stopping at Koki Beach was Alau Island. I couldn't find much about Alau island other than the palm trees on the very top of it were put there as a way to commemorate loss. If you look around the top of the island, you can see the massive fuckin' grip of birds swarming all about the thing.

See? So many fucking birds. There were little boys collecting crabs in these little shallows that I parked myself in to grab these shots. Again, this was meant to be part of a photo stack, but I cannot manage those successfully yet. So the middle exposure in a set of six will have to do. 

SO MANY GOD DAMN BIRDS! Tippi Hedren would be freaking the fuck out. 

Another in the middle of a series of six meant to be stacked to end up as a stronger photo. Welp! I'll learn one day.

We were getting chewed alive by mosquitoes, so we got back on the road and made our way back to Hana Highway proper. As we were making our way to Haleakala National Park, we passed Waimoku Falls, and it was breathtaking. Seriously amazing. I marveled at it as we drove by, and Derek told me he was waterfalled out but he'd stop if I really wanted to, and I opted to not tell him to stop for two reasons:

Reason one: that parking lot was congestion central. It literally caused a five minute traffic jam from people waiting for a parking spot, trying to get out of parking spots, and just trying to drive straight through;
reason B: I had dictated everything we did the entire trip, and it didn't seem fair to make Derek wait for my slow ass to do something he didn't really feel like doing.

I told him to drive on, that it was fine.

Now.

I couldn't stop thinking about that fucking waterfall. It was so fucking pretty. I vocalized to Derek that it was fine to skip it, it was really just the Maui version of Manoa Falls, and I could always just go back and photograph them again if I felt inspired. The reality was the look of that falls was sticking in my craw. The entire drive through to O'heo Gulch, and the entire drive to Koki beach, abnd the entire drive back, which was no short amount of time, probably about an hour and a half plus the hour we spent photographing there, I was thinking about that waterfall. I had to photograph it. I just had to.

So when we passed it again, I saw a spot and I shouted with ferocity that Derek HAD to stop, he could stay in the car, but I was photographing that waterfall. So Derek stopped and parked, I jumped out and waited my turn for the right spot. I knew exactly where I wanted to shoot, too. I didn't even need to scope out other angles because I had the shot already. I dreamed it up and mapped it out and there was nothing else I wanted. I waited my turn behind a family that was very polite, I discussed drone prices with the dad/young grandpa (I wasn't sure which he was), and then I went up to the bridge, set up my tripod, took two shots, and left. That was all I needed.

Those are the two shots I took, I edited one a little darker than the other one, but I got it right the first time and the second shot was overkill. I won't lie, I felt boss as fuck just standing there for a minute and a half for these shots and then leaving. Like a really cool guy not looking at an explosion. I just did the damn thing.

As I was leaving, a VERY harried looking Derek fast walks up to me with extreme purchase and says quite pointedly, "WE HAVE TO GO." Since I was finished, I was like, ok, what's wrong?

Here's where Derek's afternoon fell down.

While we had been driving, Derek had been snacking on some Lay's Potato Chips. He loves them, they are his favorite, and because of that he forgets that they are not very kind to his tum tum. I asked him before he ate them if he wanted a Lactaid because sometimes Lay's fuck with him, and he said no, he doesn't remember ever having a reaction.

Bad news from the future.

While I had been waiting to take my two photos and walk away with all of the chubby tourist coolness I could muster, Derek was hiding in the woods, shitting off the edge of a precipice. Like the world's most desperate bear. I did not want to laugh in his face, but I didn't let that stop me from laughing in his face. We got in the car and booked it the fuck out of there, and I was seriously expecting Derek to have to pull over and shit somewhere again, or to explode in the car, because these are the places my head goes. The necessity to evacuate his bowels again in a densely packed tourist attraction subsided, though, and we just kept driving back toward Lahaina.

We stopped again for the view back to the black sand beach of Honomanu Bay, and we found the spot we think the app dude had been telling us existed for a perfect view of the bay. However, it was quite overgrown, so the view wasn't AS unobstructed as he promised. But it was good enough to get a shot or two.

I'm not sure how obvious it is that it's fucking pouring, but it is fucking pouring in those photos. I grabbed those two and got back in the car with the quickness, and we left Hana Highway. The drive back to Lahaina was mostly uneventful, but that side of the island was sunny and looked like it hadn't seen a single spot of rain all day. No surprise there for people who live on the islands.

The highway runs by the mountains, and the crags from all of the mechanical erosion are absolutely magical to me. I fucking love them. I had spent every single day trying to get a photograph of them, and on this day, I asked Derek to stop so I could get out and attempt to photograph them properly. We stopped, Derek parked and took a nap, and I rushed to the other side of the road to try and make a construction site look pretty enough for at LEAST a posterity shot.

It may look silly because I mean, it's just...scenery. But I am so taken with it. I didn't get the shot right, but I got it close enough. There is a really dramatic section of this, but there was no good vantage to get it from, so this was the best that I could get. I'll take it.

I went to go back to the car, but Derek was napping, and I figured he could use a little rest, so I crossed the street and tried to find a good place to set up shop to photograph the sunset. I was on this really cool pebble beach, and I had it almost all to myself. There were people about a quarter mile up the beach from me, but on a beach, I feel good about saying I was alone with distance like that.

I found the head of a lobster, and I was unsure if it had been destroyed by people or had been eaten by something in the ocean, but either way, you have to see its head, too.

I am sorry about your head, little dude.

I found this really cool, really huge piece of driftwood...or just...wood. I have no idea if it was driftwood, I will let you be the judge of what kind of wood it is.

I was trying to figure out the best way to photograph the driftwood and the sunset properly. I rushed back to the car, yelled at Derek to wake him up so I could do my due diligence in making sure he wanted to sleep through the sunset, grabbed the eight stop ND and left my tripod because I didn't fucking need it. Well, no. I didn't fucking WANT it. I wanted to play with propping up my camera on the driftwood and getting a closer shot. I do this a lot, and it's always a gamble. Sometimes it works, more often than not it doesn't. You may disagree, but I think it really paid off. \

I was so excited about these. I really had to do a lot of work for them. I had to clean my lens every single shot because the waves kept crashing up on the log and spraying all of the sea water onto it, but it gave the log such a pretty, glossy finish that really reflected the sun exactly like I wanted it to.

Here's a regular, unedited shot of the beach, just so you can see what the beach itself looked like.

And that is the end of that day. I tried to take a cool shot of our Maui rum, but I think the best shot of it is on Derek's camera, so that will have to wait for another time.

Stay fucking tuned, shit aint over yet.

Did you have feelings about MAUI: THE RETURN? Then you may or may not have feelings about MAUI AGAIN: THIS TIME, IT'S REALLY MAUI

Alright so, heading into day three, I woke up and it was cloudy and dismal. I hoped against hope that the other side of the island would be sunny and nice for our third trip on Hana highway, but no such luck, fuckos.

We drove the hour from Lahaina to Paia, the little town that's kind of the entry way to the Hana excursion. We got there at about 7:30, and the bleak weather did not stop the droves of tourists milling about the town. We made it to Twin Falls early enough that we were able to snag a parking space. We grabbed our gear and hiked in. It was wet and drippy and the light was all wrong for what I wanted, but I took some shots of the bamboo forests, anyway.

I won't lie, I am very disappointed with them. I got this great shot of bamboo in a bayou in Louisiana, and I have been chasing that aesthetic for all of my bamboo shots ever since. I can never appreciate them for what they are, I always compare them to that shot, and they always fall short.

People had carved just about every inch of all of the bamboo. It made me sad, but Derek loved it.

The hike to the base of Twin Falls is pretty steady and uneventful, but it was quite fucking moist out, and it didn't make the hike down the rocks to the first set of falls very easy.

I would say this shot wasn't even worth the effort, but I made the effort god dammit, so the shot is going up. Pretty obvious that it had been pouring out, the falls aren't normally that intense. Derek got a better shot of the falls a little down the way, but I don't have access to that shot. You CAN go up further on the rocks, but the sheen on them doesn't do justice to how very slippery they were, and I didn't feel like falling and breaking my god damn face that early in the morning. I had read that the really real falls were a short climb up the rocks, but that just wasn't in the cards. We hopped back in the car and made our way further than we had the days prior.

One of the things the app was all too pleased to point out was the ingenuity of the people who diverted the water, heralding them as masters of engineering, and regaling us listeners with descriptions of their brave exploits to dig these ditches where they were. The app completely glosses over that they were effectively robbing Hawaiians of their water in order to grow crops on land they stole, but you know. Can't be right all the time, I guess. The drainage areas were pretty in their own right, though. If you ignore the implications of their existence, they're lovely.

I really do love the bridges on the highway. They have the year they were built on a lot of them, but mostly, they just look cool. They remind me a lot of the overall appearance of St. Augustine. Weathered and beaten down, but still statuesque and entirely unnecessary.

Hana Highway has so many fucking waterfalls, I lost track. I meant to geotag them on my camera so I could accurately name each one, but I am a fucking failure of epic proportion.

That being said, I'm a failure that gets in good with the local wildlife. Check out the most handsome friend I made:

I have plans to make that photo pop, but I legitimately have 2k photos to pick and choose through so I can upload them here with details about the trip before I forget them. And I want to have it all done before Gabriel gets here so I can clean up his room and deep clean the house before he and his grandpa arrive. My house is clean right now, but I feel like having Allen's dad here means I've got to be presenting the best version of everything. I'm not sure why.

We moved on from that waterfall and chicken/rooster area and came to another one of the white man's genius water ditches. This one was proper hidden from view, though. We really had to earn the shots of it we got.

See? You can barely see it. You can see this dark cut out in the face of the wall, but other than that, you can't see what's going on beneath it. Derek was curious, and I'm so fucking glad he was, because admittedly the colonizers made something that looks real god damn neat. 

Look at my husband, doing the fucking most to get the shot. But he didn't do as much as I did (well, hang on. I didn't stand on the railing of the bridge like he did, and ladies and gentleman, that is no small distance down if he had fallen). I made the slippery hike to the very edge of the ditch and did the dirty work of meandering down the wall a bit, hoping to whatever benevolence was in the universe that I didn't drop my camera down the embankment. I think the effort more than paid off. 

It reminds me of Watkins Glen, but smaller. I will never tell the Wutang Secret of how I managed this shot, but it was an ordeal. I will disclose that much. I almost lost my camera, and I almost fell down the wall. I didn't, and I got a good shot out of it, but it was a hairy situation for sure. 

 I noticed this lovely little leaf I think it's some kind of colocasia, but I can't be sure at all. I know there's a plant that mimics that same look, but I can't fucking remember the name. I didn't have the macro on me because of COURSE it was in the car in my bag, but I tried for a close up shot with my wide, and I'm not mad at the result. Nothing special, but I liked it.

 THIS, on the other hand, had me dead to fucking rights.

 This probably looks like nothing at all, and you may be wondering why I took this picture. But the perspective to me looked like a bunch of really fucking tiny people standing on the railing, trying to peek over another railing that's too tall for them on their wee little legs. I was cackling in the car while Derek was out taking his photos.

We drove back through Kaenae, because we wanted to take another stab at the biggest lookout. For me, the upward mobility of my photographic success was zero. Derek may have been more successful, but I won't know until he gets a chance to look through his photos.

Here he is, taking what I assume is some approximation of this shot that I took later on:

It's boring, but I'm pleased to have a well exposed view of the undulating cliff edges. 

After you get back on Hana Highway proper, there's a spot where you can properly look over the Kaenae peninsula to see all of the kalo patches. They are unviewable in this photo for the most part, because my vanity will not allow me to post the overexposed shot I DID get of them.

Derek was kinda peckish, and I had been telling him he needed to get some Kalua pork, so we stopped at this little food truck so he could try some.

I asked him right now how he felt about the kalua pork tacos he got from Uncle Harry's, and he said "quite delicious", so that settles that. 

The next spot we hit was Three Bears falls, so named because there is a big one, a medium one, and a tiny one all next to each other. The bridge across that area was my favorite one. 

How can you not love that?

Here's Three Bears. I really was hoping I could pull off something moody and intense, but instead I just got these:

The diffuse lighting due to shit weather doesn't make it obvious, but these were taken at about 11 in the morning. There had been so much rain that the cliffsides were turning into waterfalls themselves.

Here's a better view of the entirety of Three Bears ravine:

I had to stand on the very edge of this little rocky bump out to get that shot.

Of course, not to be outdone, Derek had to be extra as fuck when he took his photos:

What a fucking overachiever. 

The next place we stopped at was, I believe, where we turned around for the day. I can't remember the name of the actual park as it became known as "Titty Shaka Park" because of the Rolling Death Maui sticker I saw on the back of a Yield sign. I knew Derek would go apeshit for it, but he hadn't gotten out to photograph the waterfall at this park because it was pouring. I had a lens hood on, but there's still a lot of water droplets on my lens. 

I couldn't decide which photo I liked of each angle. Believe me when I say I have six more of each angle. 

I was wrong before when I said we turned around for the day at Titty Shaka Park. We kept going through to Nahiku, stopping for a bit of lunch, and it turned out to be a very eventful stop as Derek got stung by a very large bee or wasp, we are unsure. Derek said he pulled a stinger out, and as far as I know, wasps don't lose their stingers. But wasps DO love being around meat, and there was a fuckton of meat being grilled at the food stop in Nahiku. Derek was getting himself some grilled chicken and ribs when he swatted at a bug feeling on his neck. He still has a large welt with a dead spot in the middle on the nape of his neck. It got really swollen, and he said it really hurt, and I was really worried he was going to have an allergic reaction to the sting. But it was all good. I had some smoked fish in a bowl with a splash of lime juice, and it was quite fucking bland. 

I'm getting ahead of myself, though. Before we hit Nahiku, we came upon this just stupid beautiful little valley full of waterfalls. 

What you can't see is the way down to the waterfalls that I would have traveled down in a heartbeat if it hadn't been a mudslide. I would have broken something if I had done it, and as much as I wanted down for a better view of that secret little dude in the back right, it wasn't worth my camera. Or a broken leg. 

This is the view outward from the waterfall valley. It was so lovely. I know it doesn't translate, but I had to try. 

So in Nahiku, Derek got stung by a bee, I got a very bland lunch, and I got a few photos of the coconut candy vendor's stall. 

I really wanted to try his coconut candy. It smelled so good, and I had heard that coconut candy was divinity, but due to no sugar, I did not. 

Nahiku wasn't our turn around point. We were pretty close to the lava tube, and I had been absolutely aching to get some shots of that. The lava tube was our last stop of the day, and I was cranky and tired and Derek and I got into an argument that culminated in me not viewing the rest of the tubes because I didn't want to be around such an uppity, arrogant shit smear. Which happens. We're married. We were arguing because I left my bag in the car and only brought my tripod and wide angle, leaving the flash behind. Derek couldn't believe I had forgotten the flash when we were going to be in such a low light situation (which is a fair thing to be flabbergasted by. As I have mentioned many a time, I am a forgetful asshole almost always. Adderall helps, but only so much), so I went and grabbed the bag. When I returned, I asked for the ten stop and the flash, and there was a miscommunication somewhere, because Derek wanted the flash and I didn't hear him ask for it, I wanted to try something with the flash and the ten stop but it was pissing him off because he said that the ten stop and the flash canceled each other out and what I was doing didn't make any sense, and it all ended with me being fucking pissed about Derek talking down to me without thinking that maybe I had an aesthetic in mind with my set up, and also that he could suck my butt. I went and sat in the car for the rest of the 45 minutes or so that he explored the cavern. While I do enjoy exploring caverns, I also enjoy not feeling claustrophobic, so when all was said and done, I wasn't THAT upset to not see the rest of the tube. AND, I got the shot I wanted EXACTLY how I wanted it. 

Now it really was time to drive back, though. Derek and I argued for like, thirty minutes, we got over it, and enjoyed the golden-y light spilling all through the nooks and crannies of the drive. 

There was a little bump off...Hana Highway is full of them, so my noting them should never be a surprise, and it will never pinpoint us to any specific area of the drive...that we stopped at on the way back because I wanted to try and get a photo of the crisscrossed edges of the canopy. I didn't do a very good job, but in fairness, I do remember Derek and I having a conversation about us not being able to make the view translate. It didn't make it any less amazing to view, though. 

Seriously, I do know that these are lackluster, there's nothing terribly interesting about them, and the photo just doesn't capture how warm the late afternoon was, and how silky gold all of the green looked. It was like a fuckload of treasure just hanging out in the wilderness. I wish it translated. I really fucking do. Derek had to take his turn up at the top of the bump out (which, like all of them, had a real fucking nasty drop. Getting onto the areas where I took a lot of my pictures really curled my vagina sideways), so I decided to play around with the macro lens and get into the small of Hana Highway. I found a tiny little grasshopper thing that I photographed completely out of focus, a lot of little spiders that I also photographed completely out of focus, and then I found a single water droplet resting on the kinds of ferns where if you touch them, they fold in on themselves. I couldn't hold my camera steady enough, so Derek grabbed my tripod for me, and I captured these:

Just one perfect little drop of water in the weeds on the side of a bump out in Maui, but it was so pretty to me. I was getting frustrated because I couldn't get the shot right, Derek gave me a pointer, and then I just leaned in to cranking my ISO so I could get a deeper DOF. I can't say I'm all too unhappy with the result. I quite love them, honestly. The first one is one I did by hand, without the tripod. It's the steadiest macro I've ever gotten without the stabilizing assistance of a tripod, and I am quite chuffed over it. I shoot with my weak arm, and as much as I carry my camera, it is still heavy and bulky to hold, and I still shake quite a bit. The second photo is with the tripod. 

I had read that Maui was the island for spectacular sunsets, and so far, the sunsets had been lovely, but nothing I hadn't seen rivaled here at home, or in Colorado. The drive home on this day was a truly lovely sunset, though. Unfortunately, we were on the long stretch of road from Hana Highway to Lahaina, and we couldn't really stop to photograph the splendor, so I had to make due through the windshield. 

There are two pull offs on the side of this highway where you can look out over the ocean. Perfect for sunset. Derek asked if I wanted to stop, but I said no, because I was dirty and hungry and I was ready to be done for the day. So I grabbed these (plus a shitload of shots on my cell phone that are not worth putting in here because they are essentially those two photographs from different angles in the car with varying windshield haze and visible car parts) and made do. 

We ended up at Maui Brewery that night for dinner before going back to the hotel. 

Look here.

I am not the kind of person that's going to shit all over a brewery charging brewery prices for food that is not brewery food. You want to boast yourself as a gastro pub, fuckin' have at it. But god damn deliver, mother fuckers. The food at Maui Brewery was fucking AWFUL. Seriously upsetting. Derek ordered two different beers, and they were both surprisingly lovely (I hate beer, as many historians have said. But I would have had one of each of those beers. He ordered the Imperial Coconut Porter first, and then he ordered something else that he cannot remember and I cannot remember, but we both remember it being delicious), but the food for real. Fucking gross. 

 

Here's the selection they offered. Nobody is here to dump on the brewery part of the brewery. 

Derek ordered the Moco Loco, and he seemed to enjoy his meal. The portion looked right for the price, the quality was good enough that he ate all of it, Derek wasn't bothered by his offering. I, however, was very fucking bothered by my offering. 

Now. I have a really really really REALLY strict diet. Because I spend a lot of time sitting in class or sitting in my office doing homework, I have my keto plan set to sedentary, and my dietary breakdown for the day is as follows:

20g net carbs

97g fat

78g protein

1257 calories

As long as I stay within those parameters, I've done a good job for the day. I don't always hit them, and I tend to go most over my calories by one or two hundred, but it's alright. Because I also have huge bouts of activity from going adventuring, or swimming, or biking to and from school, my macro tracker is connected to my Garmin and it tells me when I've burned a fuckton of calories and I need to compensate for what I've burned versus what I've eaten and what I need to eat to keep fueling my body and not keeling over. I was deeply under everything when we got to Maui Brewery. Maybe -39g carbs and -1450 calories, so I had a lot of space to play with, but I also learned from Cane and Canoe that I can't trust places to not have sneaky sugar. I ordered a salad with tuna and then I added shrimp to it so I could get caught up on my protein. Here is what I ordered:

I was supposed to be happy about that salad, but let me fill you in on why that wasn't happening.

First, that tuna was maybe five pieces, thinkly sliced, and it was lukewarm and broken. Nobody wants to eat warm, broken tuna. Those tomatoes were also warm, and I also asked for them to not be on my salad because I can't eat them, and yet there they are, three fat, warm tomatoes taking up a shitload of salad real estate. The shrimp were ALSO warm, and perhaps half an ounce of them, and that half an ounce of shrimp cost 5 extra dollars. The goat cheese, a furikake concoction from a local goat cheesery, was the best part of the salad. I don't have a single negative thing to say about the goat cheese. Moving on to the egg, which was sliced, but not all the way through, and covered in paprika, was an afterthought. The avocado was the three tiny little slivers, very thin, very nothing. Two tiny slices of radish, and then the actual greens themselves. They were hailed as local, which is great and exactly how I wanted to eat, but there was MAYBE a half ounce of greens. That bowl the salad is served in? Barely even an inch deep. 

This was a 22 dollar salad. 

I was so fucking upset with the salad because I could have paid 22 dollars to go fuck myself on my own time and saved myself the heartache of being presented this fucking madness. I wanted to complain. I really fucking did. I came awfully close to saying the salad was a fucking disappointment, they need to take it off the menu or scale down the price while adding more greens. I came close to complaining that the dude who served the salad to me had his fucking fingers all up in my bowl and that's just not very hygienic, don't put your god damn fingers in my food holder. I didn't, though. Because I hate complaining. Derek always complains on my behalf and I always feel so bad because I don't want to make anybody feel bad, or make anybody angry, or give anybody a reason to spit in my next meal, or my next drink. I just want people to be pleased they served me and think I'm a nice person. I kept my mouth shut, and resigned myself to never ever ever ever EVER fucking returning to Maui Brewery. I fucking miss Phantom Canyon. 

And that was our day. We went back to the villa and watched Good Omens, resigning ourselves to not waking up balls early to do the snorkel trip to Molokini, which ended up working out because it fucking poured like crazy the next day.