Pouring My Art Out

And then I spotted this place…

Posted on May 24, 2014 by pouringmyartout

As soon as we threw our bags in the room of the hotel, we walked over to check out the beach. Which was like 30 feet from our front door… and over to the right, I spotted this place…

The Sea House… restaurant and bar. From the inside, it had this view of the beach…

Oh, we enjoyed many tropical drinks in this place over the next week…

So many colors… so many flavors…

I admit, these are not the most manly looking of adult beverages…

But you have to make some allowances when you are visiting a tropical paradise…

They also served some awesome pu pu platters…

If you do not know what that means, I feel sorry for you…

There were also these cute little red-headed birds…

They looked a little like Cardinals, but I am not sure about that…

I do know that they never checked with the hostess before being seated…

Posted in dogs and other animals, My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged alcohol, drinking, hawaii, humor, maui, paradise, photography, pu pu platter | 44 Comments

Why yes, it is possible to drive on Maui in a monster-vomit-green convertible Mustang and not look happy about it, thank you very much for asking!

Posted on May 23, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Okay, I admit the lack-of-smile only lasted for a few minutes… I mean, I was on my second honeymoon… on Maui… It was just the shock of leaving that beautiful, green jungle and being back in civilization again…

So we left the very furthest tip of the island heading for the other end, as this map will clearly demonstrate…

We went back past the airport and passed these huge sugarcane fields… with a freakin’ volcano in the distance behind them…

We will get to that volcano sooner or later…

Then were cruising along beside the ocean on one side, and hills that looked like the old West on the other…

I mean really, I expected to see John Wayne being chased by Apaches…

Technically speaking, these hills are part of an old volcano… there are, I believe, two of them on Maui. In fact, on this same side of Maui, the dry side, there is even a desert, but we didn’t go see it… we live in a desert. But these rolling hills will show up later in an awesome way. We had a little adventure on our last night on the island, and it involved some animals that you might see in a Western movie… hint, hint…

The beaches to our left got nicer and nicer, and then… we were there… the hotel that we would spend the next eight days at…

Okay, as I hinted at in earlier posts, it wasn’t like a regular hotel… and I guess that ’boutique studios’ doesn’t really explain it to you… but just stick with me… because this place had a beach like this…

And like this…

And our rooms… that’s right, I said rooms… there is another funny story about that coming up soon… but our rooms had views like this…

And this is where we stayed for the rest of our trip… and went on crazy adventures… and where I met all those lizards and the praying mantis… and took quite a few of those flower pictures… and we ate and drank and loved to the best of our ability… and I am pretty darn good at all of those things…

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged hawaii, humor, john wayne, maui, paradise, photography, romance, travel | 22 Comments

We had a dream… but, you know… stuff happens…

Posted on May 23, 2014 by pouringmyartout

There was a thing on our wish list of stuff to do on our second honeymoon on Maui… and it didn’t seem like it would be too hard to achieve… No, not that, get your minds out of the gutter… We wanted to swim under a waterfall in the jungle, and maybe even get behind it… And we sure found a lot of waterfalls…

Some of them were too dangerous because the rivers were swollen by the heavy rains and threatened by flash floods. Some waterfalls were just wrong for swimming under. That one right there is just too close to the rocks…

But that waterfall, which fed another waterfall on the other side of that pool, had more waterfalls further up the stream… so we walked up that way… and I took a picture of the top of that waterfall…

And then, we saw this…

There it was, luring us towards it, the waterfall of our dreams…

It had a perfect pool below it to swim in, it fell gently, like a spring rain… hey, seriously… that is what a spring rain is like on Maui…

Ahhh… stupid camera… or cell phone… or whichever does the pictures with the faded colors… but look at that sexy waterfall… oh yeah… we could get behind that one…

Our dreams were going to come true… I was all ready, I had my goofy adventure all-terrain shoes on… and swim shorts… You might remember the following picture from my funny post about my feet on vacation… I was actually starting to wade into the water… I was going for it…

I turned around to see what was taking my wife so long… she had stopped to take some more pictures… (which reminds me that when I go through her photos, we might have to start the whole vacation all over again… HA!)… and I took this picture of my wife crossing the stream behind me…

Okay… simmer down… I am not married to Big Foot… but if she refuses to be in my blog, I have to cover up the pictures of her somehow, right? Well, right after I took that picture, she slipped and skinned her knee. And we had been warned about parasites and jungle germs and not to swim in the rivers with an open cut… so we couldn’t do it.

We cleaned her up with stuff from the first aid kit and then, somewhat reluctantly, we left the jungle. Don’t feel bad for us. It wasn’t a bad scrape, and you aren’t really on vacation unless you get some action/adventure minor injuries… like those sores on my feet from the swim fins I showed you in my funny foot post.

And this means that we have to back someday, right?

Posted in My travels, Stories of my life | Tagged hawaii, humor, maui, photography, romance, second honeymoon, vacation, waterfalls, writing | 33 Comments

Just driving through the jungle in a monster-puke-green Mustang with the top down… on Maui… oh yeah…

Posted on May 23, 2014 by pouringmyartout

It was sad to be leaving the jungle. I love that crazy jungle. On the way back to civilization, we stopped at every viewpoint and waterfall. We found a small hill we could climb, just to see what we could see from up there…

On one side the view opened up on this big valley disappearing into the distance… I climbed a bit higher…

I could see tiny waterfalls in the far distance that looked very tall… I tried to zoom in on them…

Well, that almost worked… I really need to get a better camera…

That waterfall has to be over a hundred-feet-tall… and there was another one even farther away. The view in the other direction from the top of the hill wasn’t bad either…

And this is me… with the same goofy look on my face… for miles and miles… like a dog with his head out the car window…

We stopped at so many views…

So many incredible views…

Okay, those last two pictures are actually of the same view… it was just too wide to get the whole thing in one picture… but you get the idea…

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged current-events, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, outdoors, photography, romance, second honeymoon, travel, waterfall | 26 Comments

On the road again…

Posted on May 22, 2014 by pouringmyartout

So there we were, after a brief stop at our hotel to pick up our stuff, driving the monster-vomit-green Mustang back down that crazy Hana road…

We said goodbye to that wind-swept, wave-pounded, jungle covered spot where the river fed into the sea…

And headed towards the other side of the island and the next part of our adventure on Maui. We were leaving the thick jungle where everything looked like this…

But we did stop quite a few times on way… like when I spotted this strange little cave beside the road…

When you drive on a road like this with your convertible’s top down…

You end up with a look like this on your face…

Wait… that’s too dark… let me try that again…

Oh yeah, that’s the look I am talking about. You really do have to love that road… even if driving on it is a little frightening…

Well, I just have two more short adventures on this road to share with you, and if I get through those today, that will take us on the next stage of our journey. I hope you stick around.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged adventure, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, photography, romance, travel | 6 Comments

What would a series of blog posts about a second honeymoon on Maui be without some pictures of my wife?

Posted on May 22, 2014 by pouringmyartout

Before we begin with the pictures taking us back through the jungle to the other side of the island, I would like to share some pictures of my wife…

Unfortunately, she has no interest in appearing in this blog… quite the opposite, in fact. But I have figured out a way to get around this problem. I am going to conceal her identity… you know… like they do to with Mob informants…

Well… sort of like they do with Mob informants…

I mean, I could have just drawn over her with black in Photoshop, and made her look like a big stick figure. But that seems wrong… and too easy…

Oh yeah… I turned her into the Stig! You know, from the British TV show called: Top Gear. That was actually quite challenging to do, just so you know…

There she is on the lava rocks in front of our hotel in Hana, near that black-sand beach…

And there she is on the same rocks. Remember the crazy fishermen I told you about, the ones that were fishing late into the night and we watched their flashlights moving around on the rocks? There they are behind my lovely… and formidable.. wife.

And here we are together in the jungle…

Don’t we look good together? Here is a picture of us near a waterfall… remind me to tell you the story of what happened there… later on today… or not… depending on how many more pictures of jungle you can stand to look at. I do know that I am looking forward to figuring out more silly ways to disguise my wife.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged art, current-events, hawaii, humor, maui, nature, photography, romance, travel, wonder woman | 18 Comments

The park at the end of the island… part 3…

Posted on May 22, 2014 by pouringmyartout

We left the waterfall and followed the river back down, down to where it fed into the sea…

I love that picture… the jungle, the river, the ocean… it really captures the power and beauty of that part of Maui. The river was swollen with rain. As I have mentioned they are having a record-breaking rainy season this year…

The good thing about the extra rain, and the fact that we didn’t go to Maui at the height of tourist season, is that we didn’t see any other people on our hike. The bad news is that the seven sacred pools that this river is famous for were way too dangerous to swim in…

They had signs posted warning people to stay away from the river because flash floods could make it even more dangerous at any moment…

Ha… those two pictures are the same, except I turned my phone on its side…

And that one is the same picture, only the colors are brighter… hey… okay, that’s it, I am taking some pictures of my backyard with my cell phone and my camera and seeing which one takes the better pictures…

Oh, we also saw this… growing in a tree…

What the heck is that? It looked a little like a pineapple, but those grow on the ground, don’t they? It was the same size as a pineapple. Do they have pineapple trees? I am so confused…

Oh… wait… I always look a little confused, don’t I?

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged hawaii, humor, maui, nature, outdoors, photography, travel | 16 Comments

The park at the end of the island… part 2…

Posted on May 22, 2014 by pouringmyartout

So there we were, on our second honeymoon, on the island of Maui, after a hike through the jungle, looking at the most beautiful waterfall I have ever see…

Hey, get out of the way you idiot, we are trying to look at the waterfall!

Thanks… that’s much better… I don’t think the pictures really do justice to how deep that gorge was… or how green…

Hey… wait a minute… that is the same view as the picture above… but the colors are different… I really need to figure out which is my cheap camera and which is my cell phone, because I like the one above that one better… but any way you look at it…

That was one nice waterfall. When we started hiking up the side of that mountain, the river looked like this…

You can really tell how swollen the river is from the heavy rains that had been setting records this year. And maybe that just made the waterfall even more spectacular.

Tomorrow, I will show you the other end of this river, where it empties out into the sea.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged hawaii, humor, maui, nature, outdoors, photography, romance, second honeymoon, travel, waterfall | 13 Comments

The park at the end of the island… part 1…

Posted on May 21, 2014 by pouringmyartout

As I said before, if they go to the trouble of making part of the island of Maui into a State Park, you know it is something special…

And, oh yeah, it was…

We started off hiking uphill through a dripping forest of twisted trees…

On our right, a river valley kept getting deeper and deeper as we climbed…

At first, the river was not very far below us, and it was raging, thanks to a particularly rainy rainy season…

You could catch glimpses of the ocean far off through the jungle canopy…

This was some serious jungle, let me tell you…

Ha… I just noticed that those last two shots are basically the same view, but one is clearer than the other. I wish I could figure out which one was my phone and which was the camera I got for Father’s Day, because one definitely takes better pictures. Sort of… I mean, the one with the better colors is just a bit too dark on the trees in the foreground… I should really figure this out… but for now, all you need to know is that when we rounded a bend after a few more minutes, this is what we saw…

You’re welcome… I know you love looking at pictures of me… HA! Just kidding. I will share some better pictures of that waterfall in just a little while.

Posted in My travels, Pictures of me, Stories of my life | Tagged hawaii, humor, island of Maui, jungle, maui, nature, photography, travel, waterfall | 10 Comments

We interrupt these pictures of the jungle on Maui to show you some pictures of a beach on Maui…

Posted on May 21, 2014 by pouringmyartout

I realize that many of you are getting bored looking at my pictures of our second honeymoon on Maui. I will make a small confession: I am not really doing these for you. I am doing them to help me relive my vacation. To keep the memories fresh. And so that I have all the pictures on my blog, along with the stories, so that I can come back in the future and relive it all again.

I also have another confession: I know that the first picture in this post is not a picture of a beach. But it was right across from the beach… and it really reminds me of Northern California…

Look at that. An old cattle-loading ramp nestled under eucalyptus trees. If it wasn’t for the jungle-covered hills in the background, I would swear we were North of the Bay Area somewhere. We only found this spot by lucky chance. They were doing road work on the main road… which is still just a small two-lane road… and we got detoured to this spot… which was right across the street from this…

Yup yet another awesomely beautiful beach… which we would have missed if not for the detour… wait… is ‘awesomely’ not a real word, Mr. spellchecker? It ought to be.

It was the kind of beach that takes your breath away…

I really wanted to grab my face mask and jump in the water, but we had a lot to do on that second day in Maui…

And the ocean on this side of Maui is pretty rough…

But as you can see from these pictures, it didn’t rain on us every minute were on the wet side of the island… just most of the minutes…

I might get a little carried away with the number of posts I do today. When we found this beach, we were on our way to a state park around the Northeastern tip of the island, and you know if they made a part of Maui into a park, it has to be awesome… so I took a lot of pictures of that park… and the hike we took… so… uh… sorry.