Just an update on the life - in my summer of awesome vacations, I've been in Alaska for two weeks then without internet for a while then my lovely fiance came home for good so I've been lax on blogging.

And, instead of posting pictures here, I uploaded them to Picasa and you can find them here.

Today we left Wailea and did the Road to Hana. Yep, survived it. I think the bigger feat was baby Connor…well, wouldn’t want to give away a big part of the story, now would I?

7 am – Joe and I go running. We run the same route along the cliffs as I did yesterday. Joe and I enjoy the scenery and enjoy running together. The silent companionship is something I’ve never found before.

8 am – Joe and I are tasked with loading the cars. We’re the only two engineers, so this is probably the logical solution. After I’ve crammed my suitcase, three golf bags, and a set of folding chairs into the trunk of a Pontiac G6 I begin to think this is unfair. We also have a cartop carrier and the two back rows of a Saturn Outlook to fill up. We barely make it. I probably regret missing these pictures the most as it shows what we were up against, but still…people…pack less stuff. As I cram Joe’s dad’s third suitcase into the car, Joe reminds me that his family is chronic over-packers. Uh, yeah honey, I noticed.

10 am – We hit the road!

11 am – We arrive at Joe’s grandmother’s house. We step outside and meet her goats, Coco and Jellybean. They are happy to see us because we have food.

1 pm – We start on the Road to Hana. The road to Hana is a 30 mile twisty road along Maui’s northeast shore. It runs through cliffs and rainforest. It is quite beautiful. We stop for lunch and accidentally surrender some of our lunch meat to some feral cats. We stop in Ke’nae where Papillon was filmed as well as at a very nice waterfall which was infested with mongoose. Apparently the mongoose were imported to eliminate the rats except the mongoose is diurnal and the rat is nocturnal. Gotta love the logic.

5 pm – We arrive in Hana. We are staying in a house known in Feehan family lore as “The Pearl Jam House” as they were unable to rent it one year because Pearl Jam had rented it for the entire summer. Pearl Jam was not actually present the week they were there which was especially crushing to Mike as Pearl Jam is the only band he actually acknowledges.

After getting to Hana we play a long game of Apples-to-Apples and retire. The house is rather rustic for the Feehans as it doesn’t have air-conditioning but it does feature lots of fans and running water. But we all survived the first night.