Maui Trip - Day 3 (Part 1 of 4)

 

Today's main adventure goal was to drive over to the north side of Maui and down the coast on the Road to Hana and find a bunch of awesome things to do.  However, we first made a pit stop at Maui Ono Donuts.

This place provides fresh, hot, old fashioned cake donuts decorated with your favorite toppings on order.  They were absolutely amazing.  I could not recommend them more and I think the kids tore into them quite ravenously as well.

After filling ourselves with sugar, the drive from Kihei takes you across the middle of the peanut shape of the island.  After passing the Kahului airport, the road to Hana basically hugs the beach and winds through the cliffs all the way around the island.  We didn't exactly know what we would end up doing because it was hard to gauge the traffic and what would be accessible.  Our first stop, though, was at the Ho'okipa Beach Park.  It looked like this would be our first opportunity to see some big turtles and we were not disappointed.  Behind us (in the roped off area of the beach) lay about 20 huge turtles.  

Here is a clearer view of them.  They seem to crawl up on the beach and suntan for a bit and then head back.

This is one of the ones that had enough and was slowly making its way back to the beach.  It was good to see them move occasionally, otherwise you could mistake them for being dead.