Visit to Lahaina Town

On the way to Lahaina, we stopped off to attempt to see some whales.  But it was exactly the wrong time of day to see them, and the water was super choppy.  Whale season goes through February, and I will see one before then!  :)

No whales, but there were beautiful views of the ocean.

Next stop was to check out the Olowalu Petroglyphs.  There was only one other fellow there with us, and he seemed to be stoned out of his mind...lol.  He walked right past the "do not cross" sign, shimmied up the hill, and then laid his face on the rock for awhile.  Anyways, the petroglyphs were ancient Hawaiians way of telling stories and recording history.  Unfortunately, time has worn away a lot of the drawings, and others have been grafittied over.  :(  But the ones you could see were really cool!

Hawaiian Petroglyphs

Don't mind the blonde guy...lol

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Next, we drove into Lahaina, and found a parking spot almost right away.  (Which, according to our guidebook at least, was a miracle...haha).  We happened to park next to the old prison, so we headed over there first to check out a little history.  My favorite part was the list of reasons people were arrested.  (See pictures below.)

Furious riding of whom?  lol

seaman...haha

The prison yard

The other side of the prison yard.  Seemed like a pretty nice place to hang out!  :)

A 1932 Model T that was donated to the museum in 2002.

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Next stop in Old Lahaina Town is Banyan Tree Park.  This tree is, well, epic.  According to hawaiiweb.com, 

"This Banyan Tree was first planted in April, 1873, and marked the 50th Anniversary of Christian missionary work in Lahaina. The tree was imported from India was only 8 feet tall. It now stands over 60 feet high, has 12 major trunks in addition to a huge core. It stretches over a 200-foot area and shades 2/3 of an acre."

 Sweet, right?  I took a whole bunch of pictures of the difference parts of the tree, but my camera isn't big enough to capture the enormity of this tree. 

Me standing in the middle of the core tree trunk

Justin goofing around in the middle of the tree

Next, is the walk down Front Street.  Lahaina is the only city in Maui to really have a "downtown" area, and its filled with restaurants and shopping (yay!).  Andddd!  its quite literally right on the water.  (Awesome!)

Hello beach!

A glance down the boardwalk

A ship that capsized just off of the boardwalk in 2004.  It was just a bad storm, but I guess if you ask people around town they make up all kinds of crazy and funny stories about how the boat got there.  (An escaped convict from South Africa? What?!)

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Then, because we were feeling quite parched, we stopped at Moose's McGillycuddy's for their happy hour, which came highly recommended by Justin's brother Andrew.  Specialty cocktails for $4?! Thank you Andrew!

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After Happy Hour, we continued on down the boardwalk (quite a ways, might I add--gotta burn off those calorie filled Bahama Mama's!), and went to a restaurant called Aloha Mixed Plate.  (Also highly recommended by Andrew).   And again, we were not disappointed.  The food was great, and the view was A-MAZING.  Justin got the dish the restaurant was named for, which gave him chicken, teriyaki beef, AND ono, as well as rice and mac salad.  And for 10 bucks too!  I got a chicken veggie stir fry, which was also amazing.  Because we weren't ordering any alcohol, we got to sit on the lower deck right next to the water.  (Apparently you can't drink on the beach, and the lower deck of the restaurant is considered "on the beach.")  The sun was just getting ready to set too!  Beautiful!  Definitely worth the walk there, and the walk back was cool, pleasant, and allowed me to walk all off those extra calories from the day.  :)

AND!  When we got back to the car, we didn't have a parking ticket either.  Success!  We were parked in a 3 hour lot, and according to our guide book, the Lahaina parking nazi's are usually on top of things.  Yay!  :)