Travelin' Jones

Eric and I have been doing lots of traveling lately. After our Maui trip (more on that in a bit) we headed out to Miami for five days. Eric had a conference to go to and I tagged along. Miami was very bright. Quite a gaudy city, actually. I heard a quote that I think is very appropriate: "Miami is where Neon goes to die". This seems to be most true in the Art Deco district in South Beach. We spent three of our four nights there exploring South Beach. We didn't join the kids at the multitude of crazy clubs, but we did spend our evenings strolling up and down Lincoln Road, which is a wonderful promenade with lots of shops, fabulous restaurants and even more fabulous people watching. Pooches were everywhere and welcome in the outdoor dining areas. Made us miss Rosie :-) After one night out, I decided that I don't fit too well into the Miami lifestyle for three reasons: 1. I haven't had plastic surgery (although I do have silicone implants in my eyes!), 2. I don't wear heels every day, and 3. my clothes cover more than just my tits and ass. I spent an afternoon at Bill Baggs State Park on Key Biscayne. It was a beautiful beach with awesome swimming. I kept my eyes out for sharks - yikes! Downtown Miami is basically one big skyscraper with more and more additions being built on every month. The city just approved another 93 storey building with two more impending approvals. It's really unbelievable. Not a place I'd move to any time soon, but apparently there are many people who think otherwise!

On to my Maui review:

The places we stayed were awesome. We ate breakfast and lunch in using the full kitchens in the places we rented. We were shocked at the prices for food at the grocery store - $7.99/half gallon for Organic milk, same for OJ. Amazing! We spent every morning exploring some part of the island and spent the afternoons on the beach. The most incredible part of our trip was when we went kayaking with humpback whales! We joined a small tour group and spent an entire morning cruising around the waters off of the southern side of Maui in kayaks. Eric and I shared a kayak and actually did very well. We no longer call them "divorce boats" :-) The whales swam right near our boats. I knew they were huge, but until you're next to one, you don't realize how big they actually are. We didn't bring our camera on the kayaks, but there are some shots on Flickr taken by folks who've done similar trips click here to see.

I'll upload a few pictures from the rest of our trip:

We drove 1.5 hours to the top of Mt. Haleakala at 4:00am to watch the sunrise. It was awesome and well worth the early morning.

This is the NeNe bird. There are only 250 left in Hawaii. We saw three of them!

The Iao Needle in the middle of West Maui.

Some beach near Ka'anapali in West Maui.

The blowhole created by a hole in the roof of a sea cave. The waves splash in and poof up through the hole.

A field of cairns in West Maui.

A pretty bay, also in West Maui.