I had my children early in life. In so doing I missed having freedom in my 20s. The trade off has been adventures with my now adult daughters. For other posts I’ve written about backpacking with my youngest daughter and walking the Camino with my third daughter. I know the days of trips with just my girls are numbered. Soon they will get married and start their own families, so I consider any opportunity for these adventures to be time well spent.
My second daughter, Ceciley, loves Maui. We have a timeshare there, so she’ll send me a text when I’m busy and say, “How about Maui for your birthday, wouldn’t that be fun?” Who wouldn’t say, “Yes, that sounds fun?”
Exploring Maui
For the last two summers we’ve had the opportunity to explore Maui together. Although we’ve done many of the tourist types of things such as dinner cruises, parasailing, and even a trip to Lanai’i, we really like doing things that don’t require a big budget. We also like to include some exercise because it helps us feel like we earn our time to flop on the beach. Last year we went to the beaches near Wailea, including a black sand beach.
There, we enjoyed spending time in our own “natural jacuzzi” where the waves rolled in and over us while we sat at the edge of the shore. Nobody else was around, we had the beach to ourselves. Then we walked to what seemed like the end of the world over a lava rock field. We made our way up to a bigger beach and over to a shaved ice vendor, then on to fish tacos at Coconuts.
Backpacking the Coast of West Maui
During this trip we decided to backpack along the coast of West Maui at a leisurely pace with some fun stops thrown in. We trekked from Kahana up to Kapalua five miles to begin the real fun, then we wandered along the coastal trail. The first stop was cliff jumping and diving at Napili Bay. Ceciley saw people doing it the day before and came back saying she wanted to try – but not by herself. We started with jumps, then I said,”Let’s dive because I may be older, but I know how to dive and who knows what next year will bring.” We both took a couple of dives and lots of pictures before moving on.
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[/column]The next stop was Sea House Restaurant for early lunch of poke nachos and fish tacos, then a little snorkeling in the bay. I chatted with some other swimmers until my daughter was ready to go.
After that, we wandered along to a beach we both love that has a hammock and usually no people. Apparently others have discovered our favorite beach because while we shot the breeze with a local lady, a couple carloads rolled up. That was our cue to head down the road. We took off down just in time to stop and watch a family of sea turtles swimming around the rocks. We took our time enjoying the moment and making a video for the sixth grade class my daughter teaches.
Further down the road we plopped on another beach for awhile. Then we tried a little swimming, but the surf was getting rough. We took that as a sign to move on. As we walked I picked up ripe fallen mangos and we talked and laughed, making memories. In fact, we probably began a tradition for her, either with me or with her own children, or maybe for me with a grandchild.
We cruised back into our timeshare ten miles and six or seven hours later a little road weary, but happy and thankful for the chance to be in a paradise together. My daughter is 27 and I’ll be 53, so in a way I’ve experienced a little of the freedom of the 20s with my daughter without the angst of the age.
I’ll repeat, time well spent.
