Today we pretty much decided to just take at easy in preparation for our early rise tomorrow for our Molokai trip.

We decided to take a drive over to Central Maui to explore the Makawao and Paia areas and then move over to explore the Iao Valley and the area south of Wailuku.

It was a cloudy and rainy day over much of Maui. For the tourist rain is not a good thing but for the people of Maui, rain is welcome anytime in these drought conditions.

One thing that has struck me over the last few days in driving around Maui is that many of the county parks are in very poor condition. Yesterday we stopped at Sun Yat Sin Park in Upcountry Maui. It was very badly neglected. Today we decided to make a return visit to the Heritage Gardens at Kepaniwai Park near Iao Valley.

This park was one of our favorite stops on our last visit, but we were sad to see that all of the buildings were locked, some even boarded up. The paint throughout the park was peeling and overall most of the areas were in disrepair. Clearly funding for these county parks has been lacking.

We decided to take the tram tour of the Maui Tropical Plantation.

While clearly designed for the tourist, the 40 minute tour is a fun experience in that you get some close up views of many of the types of flowers, plants, and fruit trees found in Hawaii.

The prices for many items in the gift shop are actually quite reasonable. If you're looking of Mauna Kea macadamia nut products they have some good prices here.

We returned to our home base in Honokowai and decided to spend some time snorkeling which was quite enjoyable. If only we had remembered to coat our masks with that anti-fog liquid that they have us at the Maui Dive Shop! We were actually able to see many colorful fish within just a few yards of the beach.

We enjoy watching the sun set over Molokai to the west. Tonight our new friends April and Colin whose dad, Gordon, is originally from Scotland joined us.

We had a nice discussion in which we were able to give Gordon some tips on Maui.

Tomorrow, we're up early and off to Molokai.

Have a great day. Aloha.

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