Remember the post about the incredibly long travel day Julia and I experienced on our way home from Vermont last winter? It paid off in a big way with a ‘free’ trip to Maui for me, Ray and Julia. Free in the sense of free flights – the rest? Not so free. Haha.

We really had a great time, spending eight days together on Maui. Here is a brief recap with (too many?) photos!

Great condo for relaxing – which we did plenty of! Don’t worry – they weren’t staring at screens much of the time. They were researching places we wanted to visit.

The views from the lanai were wonderful. We were entertained my many, many sea turtles swimming in the waves. Also, lots of surfers – most mornings there were great waves out front and lots of people playing in them.

We walked a trail one day in Iao Valley State Park which was lovely – it was quite warm that day (really every day we were there!) so we were thankful it was just an easy walk and mostly in the shade.

Our favorite trek was up to the Haleakala Crater. We chose to do this in the evening so we could watch the sunset from the crater. The elevation is over 10,000 feet and we were literally above the clouds. The only time I have looked down on clouds is from a plane so this was spectacular.

Doesn’t this crater look like something on another planet? It was a challenge for me to be at that elevation. I was a bit dizzy and my stomach was very queasy – high elevation and I do not mix well. I really wanted to see this even though I was fairly certain it would trigger a migraine (and it did!). Gotta make choices, right? It was worth it.

The week we spent on Maui was unseasonably warm. Just our luck! The temps were in the mid-90’s and of course soooo darn humid. That was really unfortunate. Ironically, the temps at home that week were unseasonably cool with temps in the mid-70’s. Ah well, we got unlucky there.

Food, glorious food. Vacations always mean trying lots of different foods, right? Ray and I love wandering the grocery stores and looking at the differences between home and the destination. We went to a couple of farmer’s markets and bought different locally grown fruits. After a week of eating guava, papaya, mango, dragon fruits, pineapple, custard apple and star fruits, I would have to say that while they were fun and different, I am not a huge fan. They were too sweet for me. Plus the textures weren’t the best. Mango and pineapple are fine – and we eat them here at home all the time. The local pineapples were much nicer than what we purchase here but that makes sense as I am sure they pick them early for shipping here.

As we were driving around the island, we saw this road side stand several times. Finally we had to give it a try. Oh my gosh – it was exceptional. Fantastic rotisserie chicken and the best ribs. Smoky and tender, we brought quite a bit home to our condo and made a few meals with it. Seemed very strange to see a huge (really huge) bbq on the side of the highway but it was delish!

Much to Julia’s dismay, I spotted this quilt shop one afternoon when we were out in search of a shave ice treat. It was tiny and carried a good stock of Hawaiian fabrics, batiks and summery novelty fabrics. Lots of patterns and samples were everywhere.

I was very good and just bought a couple of pieces to bring home as souvenirs of the trip. I look forward to making a little something summery that will serve as a fun reminder of the trip.

When we were getting to the end of the trip, I asked Julia to choose what she wanted to do on the last day. I was not even surprised at her decision. We went to Surfing Goat Dairy. (Of course we did!). They had a fun tour, goat cheese tasting, lots of goats to pet and the best part – we learned to milk a goat by hand.

It was quite fun and the goat cheese was truly amazing! There was an incredible assortment of chocolate truffles with various flavors and you know we sampled several of them. We bought some frozen Quark to take home. We wrapped it well and it was still very cold by the time we got home. The flavor we chose was Passion Fruit and yum!! The usual goat cheese I buy here at home has a fairly strong, distinct flavor. But the Surfing Goat Dairy cheeses don’t have that harsh taste at all. We learned this is because they use vegetable rennet and not animal based rennet. This made such a nice difference in the flavors.

Overall, we had a lovely trip. Once home, it was back to business. My friend Sophia shipped orders for me while I was away and I am so grateful to her for the help. I had four custom orders for Chemex and French Press cozies to make and those are all finished now. There were also three boxes of fabric to deal with – I have listed some of it but still have a ways to go with that. Vacations are wonderful and it is a good for everyone to get away and enjoy a change of pace and scenery. But for me, I do love coming back home! I am such a homebody.

Looking forward to the first bit of piecing for the Mosaic Mystery QAL. Also I am just about done with the hand sewing on my friend Susie’s memory quilt. I also want to do a bit of big stitch hand quilting on it so that will be my project for evening time. Julia moves into her dorm on Saturday so she is busy packing and I am busy realizing she is growing up and leaving the nest! How about you? What does your week look like? Tell me in the comments. Happy Monday all. 🙂