Earth Wind Fire and Water

Bizarro is brought to you today by Maui Dude.

This is my last day in Maui, CHNW and I are taking an overnight plane to Austin, Texas where we will visit my daughters and attend the wedding of the elder one on Saturday. This is my first shot at being father of the bride, I hope I don't mess it up. I haven't used a shotgun in years.

So much for my plans to blog every day while I was here. There was just too much to do to get motivated to make time for it. The snorkeling is best early in the morning when the water is most calm, then the rest of the day we puttered around the island doing various things. A couple of mornings ago we swam with giant sea turtles and a couple of octopuses in the morning, then drove up to the summit of Haleakala, the dead volcano that makes up the larger part of the island, in the afternoon. The summit is 10,023 feet above sea level, which made my head 10,028 feet 8 inches above the ocean. This is several thousand feet above the clouds, so it is identical to the view out of a commercial airliner, but you're outdoors. The landscape is lunar, of course, all volcanic rock with a few small, dry plants poking out here and there. It was around 80º on the beach when we started the drive but at sunset on the crater's rim it was about 38º with a 40mph wind. I don't know the mathematical formula for figuring wind chill, but it was about as cold as we've ever been, even though we were wearing jackets, pants and hats. Very surreal.

Downloading and resizing the photos is something I've not gotten to yet, but I'll post some later.