Early August brought Tyler and I to the beautiful island of Maui, Hawaii. While this trip was mainly for my job-we still tried to have a little fun and take some great photos. Tyler's main goal during this trip was to get as much skimboarding in as possible. My goal-while less enjoyable, was to plan an event for next January.
I could show you the 'work' pictures I took of empty ballrooms, restaurant dining areas, and multiple souvenir items for purchase...however I want to remember the fun parts of this work trip. It will also be much more enjoyable to my readers as well.
First of all, it started out VERY stressful. Upon going through security at the SLC airport, we found that Tyler's drivers license was expired. If Tyler's was expired so was mine, but since mine is the newer version with the electronic photo, I got through just fine. Tyler's however, was the same one he received 10 years ago when he first turned 16. Luckily they let him through still.
We arrived in beautiful Maui, hopped on the shuttle to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and while in line-Tyler whispers to me that he doesn't think they'll let us rent a car due to no valid DL. Needless to say...they didn't. We had to take the shuttle back to the airport and get call a lady I was working with out there to give us a ride. We felt like 15 year olds again.
Well long story short, our trip was very disrupted by not having a rental car or drivers license. Tyler was depending on it very much. We were staying in a very nice, upscale resort where you couldn't' find a sandwich for less then $10.00. Tyler's whole plan while I was working was to visit Big Beach in Makena, however that was about a 10 minute DRIVE away. He tried walking it a few times, tried taking the bus, and even forked out the $20 ONE WAY cab ride there.
Well we tried to make the best of things during the trip. Each day after I worked, we were able to go to a few nice restaurants in Wailea.
One of the mornings, we went on the Molokini Snorkel Cruise. We had a great time swimming with the fishes.
After the snorkel trip we were lucky enough to get a helicopter ride around west Maui and the crater Haleakala. It was gorgeous seeing the crater and the beautiful Hana Coast from the helicopter.
So what happened to the driver's license issue? Had we forgotten the problem at hand?? No way! However we racked our brains and were constantly on the phone with ANYONE who could possibly help. We called the HI and UT DMV and they gave us options like overnighting our SS card, then retaking the tests in HI for HI DL, but that would take about 4 days. Instead we finally convinced Enterprise to accept our International Driving Permits (even though they're not supposed to). Lucky we got these for our recent Greece trip. So now, we had to get them to HI. They were still on our desk at home. Tyler's BF Steve came though for us though. He works for FedEx, so he broke in our house, picked up the permits (and our passports just in case) and overnighted them to us. We received them just in time for the next busy busy day. We headed straight to Enterprise to pick up our car. I can't explain the wonderful feeling. Thank you STEVE!
The next morning was jam-packed with activities to try out for my event. Luckily all Maui activities are fun, so we had a good time. First up was Kayaking-bright and early. However first, we had room service breakfast. As you can see, our room had a gorgeous view!
After the labor-some (but fun) kayak snorkel trip (where we saw quite a bit of turtles). We went back to the hotel for a little R&R by the pool. It was very nice!
That afternoon we took the 1 hour drive to the north side of Maui to Lahaina to do a little shopping and go on the Atlantis submarine. This is a real submarine (not the Disneyland kind) that took us about 120 feet down into the ocean. We saw a lot of fish as well as a sunken ship (that they told us was put there just for the tour, lol).
After the submarine, we hung out around Lahaina for a few hours in wait of our next activity-a Sunset Cruise Dinner. I was excited for this. What's more romantic than having a nice dinner, on a beautiful boat in the middle of the ocean during sunset? Until the next post...
I could show you the 'work' pictures I took of empty ballrooms, restaurant dining areas, and multiple souvenir items for purchase...however I want to remember the fun parts of this work trip. It will also be much more enjoyable to my readers as well.
First of all, it started out VERY stressful. Upon going through security at the SLC airport, we found that Tyler's drivers license was expired. If Tyler's was expired so was mine, but since mine is the newer version with the electronic photo, I got through just fine. Tyler's however, was the same one he received 10 years ago when he first turned 16. Luckily they let him through still.
We arrived in beautiful Maui, hopped on the shuttle to Enterprise Rent-A-Car, and while in line-Tyler whispers to me that he doesn't think they'll let us rent a car due to no valid DL. Needless to say...they didn't. We had to take the shuttle back to the airport and get call a lady I was working with out there to give us a ride. We felt like 15 year olds again.
Well long story short, our trip was very disrupted by not having a rental car or drivers license. Tyler was depending on it very much. We were staying in a very nice, upscale resort where you couldn't' find a sandwich for less then $10.00. Tyler's whole plan while I was working was to visit Big Beach in Makena, however that was about a 10 minute DRIVE away. He tried walking it a few times, tried taking the bus, and even forked out the $20 ONE WAY cab ride there.
Well we tried to make the best of things during the trip. Each day after I worked, we were able to go to a few nice restaurants in Wailea.
One of the mornings, we went on the Molokini Snorkel Cruise. We had a great time swimming with the fishes.
After the snorkel trip we were lucky enough to get a helicopter ride around west Maui and the crater Haleakala. It was gorgeous seeing the crater and the beautiful Hana Coast from the helicopter.
So what happened to the driver's license issue? Had we forgotten the problem at hand?? No way! However we racked our brains and were constantly on the phone with ANYONE who could possibly help. We called the HI and UT DMV and they gave us options like overnighting our SS card, then retaking the tests in HI for HI DL, but that would take about 4 days. Instead we finally convinced Enterprise to accept our International Driving Permits (even though they're not supposed to). Lucky we got these for our recent Greece trip. So now, we had to get them to HI. They were still on our desk at home. Tyler's BF Steve came though for us though. He works for FedEx, so he broke in our house, picked up the permits (and our passports just in case) and overnighted them to us. We received them just in time for the next busy busy day. We headed straight to Enterprise to pick up our car. I can't explain the wonderful feeling. Thank you STEVE!
The next morning was jam-packed with activities to try out for my event. Luckily all Maui activities are fun, so we had a good time. First up was Kayaking-bright and early. However first, we had room service breakfast. As you can see, our room had a gorgeous view!
After the labor-some (but fun) kayak snorkel trip (where we saw quite a bit of turtles). We went back to the hotel for a little R&R by the pool. It was very nice!
That afternoon we took the 1 hour drive to the north side of Maui to Lahaina to do a little shopping and go on the Atlantis submarine. This is a real submarine (not the Disneyland kind) that took us about 120 feet down into the ocean. We saw a lot of fish as well as a sunken ship (that they told us was put there just for the tour, lol).
After the submarine, we hung out around Lahaina for a few hours in wait of our next activity-a Sunset Cruise Dinner. I was excited for this. What's more romantic than having a nice dinner, on a beautiful boat in the middle of the ocean during sunset? Until the next post...
