Adventures in ParaDyess: Maui, Hawaii

My husband and I finally made it to a place I’ve been dreaming of going pretty much forever. I mean, can you really look at a picture of Hawaii and not want to go? We spent two weeks in one of the most beautiful places on the planet. And if you’re wondering, yes, it really is as beautiful in person as it is in pictures.

Thanks to a combination of COVID uncertainties and Ryan being in the paramedic academy at work, we weren’t able to take an anniversary trip last year (the only “gift” we do for our anniversaries). But I’ve been dreaming of going to Maui for years. As a matter of fact, a few years ago when we went to Europe, I was deciding between Maui and Europe. Obviously we know what won that but only because we have been to a lot of tropical places, but neither of us had been to Europe before. So Europe won round one but I’ve never stopped checking prices of flights to Maui. I actually tentatively put this trip on my work calendar late last year praying we could make it happen. And here we are! We spent the last two weeks on the beautiful island of Maui, soaking up the sun while Virginia was in the dead of winter. 

I had been casually checking flights to Maui for the dates I had set aside on my calendar and my eyes about popped out of my head one day because they were less than $500 per person round trip! If you’ve ever flown/tried to fly from Virginia to Maui, you know this is more than a steal. Regularly they are upwards of $800-$1000 per person. I talked to a friend who had just gotten back from Hawaii on a trip with her husband and asked her how the restrictions and stipulations were. She pointed me toward some websites where I learned that we’d have to test negative 72 hours prior to leaving and we would be good to go!

Once I learned about the requirements and had a pretty good grip on them (if you’re interested, check out this website), I tried to convince Ryan. He was a bit skeptical at first because it seemed like this came out of nowhere. And, to be honest, for him it kind of did. He didn’t know I regularly checked Maui flights 😂 but eventually I talked him into it. And when I did, flights were even cheaper!! We jumped on it!

Then we had to figure out where we wanted to stay. We knew we wanted more of a “local” type experience—staying in a VRBO/AirBNB with a full kitchen instead of a resort, shopping at local stores, renting a car to let us explore, etc. Everyone we talked to recommended staying in Lahaina (rather than Kihei), so that’s what we ended up going with. Our place was north of the resorts but with a water view condo where we got to watch the whales splash around from our balcony. It was beyond awesome.

In this post, I’m going to share some of my favorites from our self portrait session (and some outtakes 😂). I’ll follow this up in the coming weeks with a couple of other blog posts (and LOTS of pictures): general hacks for staying in Maui/specifically the Lahaina area, our favorite beaches and restaurants, and our must-see Road to Hana stops!

Self portraits are hard to take, let me tell ya. Getting the focus just right is virtually impossible, even with the Canon Camera Connect app. But we got a few good ones and I’m happy with how they turned out. Enjoy! Some good ones, some sweet ones, and some of Ryan being over the session when we had just started 😂