Hawaii 2018 - Day 5

Day 5 and I'm excited to do something I've never done before! Scuba! I've done plenty of snorkeling, but scuba is something new.

As part of our resort fees, we get to take an intro to scuba class for free! They try to upsell you to a full scuba package, but we'll just see how this goes first.

Austin can sound like a train with his scuba mask.

After about 30 minutes of instruction on land, we were all taken to the pool and strapped in. Some of us were a little more freaked out than others.

We learned some basics, like taking out your respirator and putting it back in, clearing your mask of water, and inflating your float vest.

Underwater and doing fine.

We got to play around in the 6' pool for another 15 minutes. Skimming the bottom of the pool, doing flips underwater, and just having fun.

Afterwards it was back to the pool for the rest of the morning.

The kids loved climbing on and jumping off the whale.

Inspired by the scuba this morning, it was time to do a little bit of snorkeling ourselves. Using the masks Donald packed in his luggage, Donald, Austin and I all headed out.

Just in front of our resort there is supposed to be pretty decent snorkeling. We ended up swimming from the south side to the north side, fighting the current the entire time.

And we saw some decent things, including a couple turtles.

The weather at our hotel was getting bad, so we all hopped in the car hoping for clearer weather on another part of the island.

But it was completely cloudy at the top of Haleakala Crater. With all the clouds, there was no way to look down towards the crater. We did get a nice rainbow up at the top though.

From sea-level up to 10,000 feet in just a couple hours.

Up at the top, it was quite a bit colder than down at sea-level.

I see blue skies! They were fairly short lived though, and never actually settled for us to see anything.

Aubrey needing to be carried for some reason or another.

Ian picked up a Junior Ranger badge at the visitor center on the drive up.

Look at that view...

We took a few family pictures at the top.

Alli did not enjoy the drive down. I'm thinking we forgot to give her snacks to keep her jaw moving and get her ears popping.

Dinnertime! It was suggested to head to the Outback Steakhouse, but unfortunately we had a bad experience.

With such a large party, we ended up splitting tables. The first table had great service and had their drinks, appetizers, entree, and kids desserts completed all before the second table got their entrees. And when the food did come, 2 of the 5 items weren't what we ordered and got sent back to the kitchen. Thankfully the manager just removed them from the bill and gave us an extra 20% off the rest.

After we got back to the resort, I went exploring with my camera. No tripod for this trip, so the shots of the stars aren't the greatest. Everything had to be handheld.

There's some crazy trees, and I love the lit tiki torches all over the place.

These trees with the hanging lights welcome you on the drive to the resort.

This was a really eventful day, from Scuba, snorkeling, pool time, and the Haleakala crater. Busy busy.