Day 2 in Maui - Whale Watching

With everyone still waking up early, we decided to book a sunrise whale watching cruise. So all 10 us had to be in Lahaina at 5:45am. Not a big deal we were up at 3:30 again with the kiddos. We took some pictures under the Banyan tree. This tree was planted in 1873. It was imported from India and was only 8 feet tall. Now it's over 60 feet high, has 12 major trunks, and stretches over a 200-foot area. It's a crazy tree.




We took the Pacific Whale Foundation's sunrise whale watching cruise. As we were leaving the harbor we got to see the sunrise over Haleakala. Beautiful.




We didn't see much at first. But the action picked up. We saw a lot of whales. Too bad I never saw a breach. I saw the splash from a couple of whales breaching. (Breaching is defined as a whale getting at least 2/3 of their body out of the water.) The best part of the trip was seeing a baby whale. Because it doesn't have the lung capacity of a full grown, it had to come to the surface a lot more to breathe. So we saw it a lot. The adults hold their breath for 15-20 minutes. So if you spot one....it might not come back up for awhile. There is a law about getting within 100 yards (I think I got the distance right) of the whales. But the whales don't always follow that rule :) The baby came right up along the boat and actually went under the boat and came up behind us. Steve had the zoom lens on the camera, so he had a hard time getting a picture. Here's what he got.


Here's the tail of another whale. We had a great time spotting whales!


After that we headed to a beach called Baby Beach. It's just on the north side of Lahaina. There weren't many people there when we arrived. It was a perfect place for Edee. The water was shallow and there weren't waves. It was more like a lake. Malory could go in and not have to have us there to keep a hold of her. The sand was nice and fun to play in. Edee walked up and down the beach with Papa following along.

Steve even got Mallory's kite up in the air. She got it from Uncle Chase and Deanna for Christmas. They bought it with the intention of us bringing it to Hawaii. Here's the kite with Edee below oblivious to it.

Edee loved playing in the sand.

Mallory loved playing in the water.

After the beach we headed to lunch at a little Mexican food place. Mallory got to ride in the convertible that Aunt Tina and Uncle Brian rented. The restaurant wasn't anything special, but we were hungry.

Then it was time for naps. Too bad the girls didn't take good naps. So we got our suits back on and headed down to the resort pool.



Chase and Deanna cooked dinner for all of us....brats on the grill and potatoes and zucchini from a farmer's market. Yummy! Here's Mallory with Aunt Tina and Uncle Brian.


Then Edee was a mess and it was time for bed. So everyone left our condo to hang out at the other one while we got Edee to bed. I went to change her diaper and found the worst case of diaper rash! She was actually bleeding. It must be all the swim diapers we've been using over the last couple of days. Poor thing. So we let her run around naked for awhile before bed. The rash looked better, but still not good

We decided no water activities for her for at least the next day.