We had a beautiful day for the first kayaking trip of 2018 and I was all fired to quickly get the boats loaded up and to start the day.
Roger and I decided we would get back on The Etowah River and tackle the Lake Allatoona Backwaters section as it will only get slower as the summer gets closer. With the recent opening of Canton's Etowah River Park, we decided to push the put-in two miles upstream from the riverkeeper's previously suggested start which made our eight mile season opener a 10 miler!
I noticed a path heading down to the launch, but I got a surprise when I got near the end of this little trail!!
We survived the 6-8" of mud (with a few falls and mud on a LOT more than just our feet!) and we finally pushed off.
That's Roger and Kyle on the right and you'll notice that Kyle had to use the "yellow submarine" (aptly named as it likes to go underwater!) as we had a special guest with us on my Trio 11; David!! As you can see above, and in ALL of this trip's photos, the water looked like a bottle of Yoo-hoo which is because of all the rain we had this past week. The good news for The Etowah River is that it was up quite a bit and the good news for us is that for the first half of the trip we had a nice current pulling us towards Lake Allatoona.
The park had a nice pedestrian bridge connecting trails on both sides of the river and they made sure you knew what city you were in!!
And yes... more Yoo-hoo as this is mostly what we saw on this relaxing trip down the river. Maybe it isn't beautiful to everyone, but to me it is magical.
As for wildlife, I only saw one turtle the whole day and we had a trio of birds of prey above us a one point – I was just too slow (or lazy!) to get me camera ready. There was some debate as to if they were hawks or buzzards. 
Either way, they were pretty soaring above us. We also run under a TON of purple martins and I was only able to snap off this photo. You will have to click on it to get the full-resolution to see anything.
We were also treated to a single blue heron today.
As with the picture above, you can click on the ones below to see the full-resolution images. These next two are my attempts to capture it flying.
Since this was David's first outing with us, I'm "honoring" him with a couple of pictures in my (exciting) blog post! Thanks for coming out with us, David!!
As you can see in that last picture, the river got very wide (and still) as we approached the beginning of the Allatoona Lake. After about 3.5 hours on this 10 mile trip we were past Knox Bridge.
Then it was short paddle up to the boat ramp where we shuffled our cars to earlier in the day.
This is the same spot Gretchen and I visited recently when we were Powering Through the Lake Allatoona Section of the Etowah River. This trip puts me past the half-way point of traveling on this river as I have now completed 9 of the 16 sections documented on the Etowah River Water Trail. I'm so looking forward to see the rest!
Today we boarded a Pacific Whale Foundation vessel for a humpback whale watching tour which I would highly recommend. This is close to the end of the whale season around Maui, but we were blessed with many sightings of a cute calf and several adult whales. There are many better pictures available on the internet of these magnificant beasts, but here are some of the highlights from my photo shoot.
I hope you enjoyed these and like always, photos rarely due justice to seeing something with your own eyes, so again, I recommend taking an opportunity like this if it ever presents itself. For an encore, we visited the Maui Ocean Center's Aquarium right next door. Here are few highlights from this decent aquarium.
On the drive back to the resort, we pulled over to take some pictures of all the cool kite surfers and old school wind surfers, not to mention of the beautiful beaches here on Maui.
We decided we deserved some time at the infinity pool for all of our "hard work" today! 
While on our walk to dinner back at the resort, we were treated to another pretty sunset.
We also saw some sea turtles playing right in front of us. Even more than with the earlier whale pictures, it was incredibly difficult to get any good pictures of these beautiful animals, so I will leave you with a single image that has THREE seat turtles in it. Can you see them all?
What a great day full of marine wildlife. Isn't Mother Nature incredible?!?!
When planning the driving trip for The Road to Hana I realized this would be a great opportunity to see some Waterfalls. As advertised, this road trip was full of over 600 turns, but we made it without having to pullover to, well, "feel better".
According to our guidebook, our first waterfall was at MM 11.5 and we found the bridge and the turnout mentioned. It then said that the waterfall we were looking for as a short 30 second walk. To our surprise, we found an old historic cemetery instead!!
This really got us worried that our planning was for not, but thankfully we found out a bit further down the road that we were actually on Hawaii Hwy 36, not 360 which is the fabled Road to Hana. Doh!! Soon thereafter (MM 2) we saw the pullout for the most popular waterfalls on the trip, Twin Falls, but our plan was to see them on the return trip due the expected crowds that would be there. Finally, at the real MM 11.5, we found Haipua'ena Falls as advertised!!
There was much more than waterfalls on this trip – so much beauty to see such as Honomanu Bay around MM 12.
At MM 17, we veered off Hwy 360 and made a short visit to the Ke'anae Peninsula where we got to see the Lanakila Ihiihi O Iehova O na Kaua Church. Well... AFTER we bought an incredible $6.50 load of banana nut bread from Aunty Sandy's Banana Bread shop on the way – YUMMY!
We also saw a bunch of lava rocks with water splashing over them!!
Between MM 22 and 23, we stopped at Pua'a Ka'a State Park to see the Pua'a Ka'a Falls. It has an upper section that you can see best from walking up the hill where the picnic tables are.
The middle section is seen best from the west side of the bridge and then a lower section that starts underneath the bridge and does not offer much of a vantage point. The reviews were pretty brutal on this waterfall, but I thought it was nice. Also, plenty of folks were enjoying a nice swim in the upper section's pool; some even went "Survivor Style" (i.e. stripping down to their underwear to go swimming).
MM 24 presented us with the very beautiful Hanawi Falls and we got to watch a couple of folks jumping into the splash pools. Yep, NOT for me!! The upper section was nice ...
... but the real treat was the lower section!
From this point, we drove all the way to "downtown" Hana by way of a quick drive through Hana Bay Beach Park. I put the quotes around Hana because if you ever went there you would know that while there is technically a "business district", we are really talking about a few food trucks and some brick-and-mortar restaurants. We opted for a nice lunch at Hana Ranch and would recommend it to anyone who finally reached the end of the line of this road trip.
Well... the "end of the line" really is only HALFWAY through your road trip since you have to backtrack the 600+ turns to get out of this remote town. I didn't know there where places in the US where people actually lives that I couldn't get cell service!!
Wai'anapanapa State Park is at MM 32 and presented itself as beautiful just getting to the parking lot.
A beautiful view of a hidden cove presents itself after leaving the parking lot.
At its center is a very popular black sand beach.
So much more beauty presents itself by just following the path.
AND LAVA TUBES!!!
The only bummer was that the water wasn't activating this park's famous blow hole, but we got to see a bunch more of the famous black lava rock shoreline.
I decided to not stand in the middle of the bridge at MM 25 to see Makapipi Falls, but capture it the best I could from the east side of the bridge.
Upper Waikani Falls (Three Bears Falls) between MM 19 and 20 was so crowded on the way to Hana that I absolutely had to stop and get some pictures on the way back, despite the rain that was falling. This was one of the prettiest falls on the trip.
Coming back to the start of the journey I got out of the car one last time at MM 2 to see Twin Falls. Check out the crazy fella taking a HUGE jump into the plunge pool.
The lower falls were very pretty, too!
There are MANY other Waterfalls on The Road to Hana, including the closed Seven Sacred Pools, and I'd love to hear about ones that others who took this journey were able to see. Additionally, there was just so much beauty and since I focused on the falls so much, I'll leave you with a small indication of the color you can see along the way on this awesome Hawaiian road trip.
Our flights had us landing in Maui a bit after 4:30pm and it was more like 6pm when we finally made it to the Wailea Beach Resort which was as expected – incredible! Looks like saving all those Marriott Points paid off as we're staying for free!! Our room has a great view, too!!!
Being Easter Sunday, the sand artists made a special treat in his sand pit for everyone.
Most important was that we made it back in time for our first sunset.
Monday, our second day, was all about getting our bearings. We spend a bit of time in the little town to the north of us, Kihei, but of course, we check out the beaches that are within five minutes walking distance from our hotel room. To the south is Wailea Beach.
To the north lies Ulua Beach.
But, back at the hotel, we only have some lava rocks in front of us, but we are sandwiched between the two great beaches shown above.
After only a few minutes of checking out these informational plaques, we spotted a small group of humpback whales way out at sea. Don't worry, we have a whale sighting cruise on Wednesday so pictures are coming from up close and personal.
The planned highlight of the day was to head over to Maluaka Beach (aka Turtle Town) and get some underwater images of some sea turtles, but the sea was too rough to allow for this.
We did get to enjoy watching and listening to the intense surf and we also found a little wildlife to check out!!
We ended the day back in town enjoying a meal at Fred's Mexican Cafe which I hope we visit again. All in all, a very nice first full day and fired up about the rest of the week here in Maui.