2018-1-29  hanging around and heading to OGG to pick up the Fischers:

No snorkeling today.  Today was a different sort of vacation day, but one I looked forward to.  Today our friends from St. Louis arrived. We hung around and waited to head to the airport.  On our way we decided to have lunch at another place we'd not been to---Leoda's.  I'd read a lot of good reviews about it. 

 Interesting little place.  Unfortunately I was not impressed with my Ruben sandwich.  I imagine the pies were great, but I wasn't going to spend $8 or $9 for a little 4 or 5 inch pie. 

We still had a lot of time to waste, so we drove up a residential road up a mountain.

  their views are pretty awesome

 both directions.

looks like another cruise ship is heading to Lahaina

 more views towards the mountain.

after killing 30 minutes or so riding around that neighborhood,  we went across hwy 30 to the park there.  Wish they had made the rock pool bigger like the one on Kauai.  I love snorkeling there.  This one looks a bit too small and shallow.  But I guess it's meant for little kids to play in.

 It was another beautiful day.  High in the low 80s again.  Lots of sunshine today.

Then we spent some time at the overlook looking for whales.  Saw a couple spouts way off in the distance.  Neatest thing we saw there was this bug---

When we came to the sunflower farm near Kahului, I made Ken let me out to take pictures of the sunflowers while he rode around in circles waiting for me.

 Still had time to waste, so hit up Walmart.  I was sad to see Kmart was closed.  But we stocked up on snacks and picked up a couple leis.  Hadn't decided if we were going out to dinner or having a picnic.  I thought I could get a deli sandwich from Costco just in case we did the picnic route.  Wrong---Costco didn't have them.  I'm sure they do at the Costco by us on the mainland!  By now it was almost time for their plane to land.  It was suppose to get in at 3:45, but flight tracker said it would be in at 3:03.  the plan was for me to wait at the airport with the leis and  surprise them when they came out of security.  Unfortunately when I opened up the container with the leis, they were pretty rank and rotting.  Decided not to make them wear the smelly leis.   Soon we were on our way---but to where?   They really weren't hungry so we headed to the West side.  Stopped at the overlook and saw quite a few whales.  None were breaching, just a lot of spouts and a couple tails up.  They were pretty far out.

 views from the overlook

 a couple whales a little closer to us

 Turned out our friends had brought a bunch of snacks, too.  So we had a picnic of snacks! 

  Even watched the Blue Moon rising.  On the 31st we're suppose to get a full Blue Moon and a Lunar eclipse in the middle of the night.

 The sun going down over Lanai.

 Not a lot of color tonight. 

 But it was still a pleasant evening to be outside.

 Got to watch a couple more whales.  Then vacated our picnic table and headed on our way.

Straight to the grocery store to buy more snacks---and a couple lunch meats.  With the 4 hours difference and 10 hours of flying today, our guests hit the sack early.  Hope they like Maui as much as I do!