Maui Day 6-- La Perouse, Molokini & Turtle Town Rafting and Edward Jones Farewell Dinner...

This was our last day in Maui! We fly back to the mainland early tomorrow morning! It has been so fun to be here on this beautiful island!! We had a rafting adventure this morning-- which is the understatement of the century!! Our 3 hour tour got cancelled and we were "upgraded" to the 5 hour tour. Megan and Todd decided to stay back as they couldn't leave Logan for that long... so it was just Bill, me, Brooke and Katelyn on this one. We were all holding on for dear life! Katelyn never gets seasick, but she was over the edge throwing up halfway through the tour. The water was super wavy with pretty big swells that we just zipped right over the top of-- Ugh! As soon as we stopped for a bit she was fine. I think I was rocking for several days after this trip!!! We did get to see some really cool things and the guides were really cute as they talked about it all. We went down to La Perouse first and saw all the volcanic rock and caves that Haleakala formed thousands of years ago. They showed us around for a while down there and I was ready to go after about an hour of it... but we stayed for quite a bit longer than that! Then they took us to another place where we snorkeled and I saw a BUNCH of fish, but the water was really rough-- but it was still fun. Then we headed over to the very small crescent shaped island of Molokini where we dropped anchor to snorkel. The girls enjoyed it, but my mask wasn't working very well at this point, so I gave up trying to fix it and just came in. Plus, it got really rough here too. There was some amazing snorkeling here though with lots of other boats there as well. The water was such a deep, royal electric blue here! We learned that Molokini was used by the US military for target practice all the way up to 1994! They set lots of missiles and bombs over to this place and you can still see all the holes in the rocks they formed. Now it's just a sanctuary for a lot of birds-- red tailed boobies were everywhere! We weren't even allowed to climb up onto it. After that we went to an area called Turtle Town where the girls snorkeled again... here's where a lot of turtles hang out-- hence the name. Again, I opted not to go in, but the girls saw a lot of turtles and they aren't shy! They just swim right up to you!! They are so cute!! They are used to people as boats come through here daily for snorkeling. After that we headed back to the harbor. The trip back was slower and a lot less bouncy as the waves were calmer this time-- thank goodness! It was nice to set foot onto terra firme when we got back. I was feeling pretty icky for the rest of the day! That's probably the last time I ever take a boat ride like that again! It really whipped us around!!! Megan, Todd, McKenzie and Logan came to get us and we poked around Kihea for the afternoon again-- visiting that open air mall for the 2nd time so we could check out last minute souvenirs. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a bit and got cleaned up. Tonight we went to the Edward Jones Farewell dinner and the food was amazing. They had pina coladas for the first little bit, but they weren't that great. The food was really good though-- they had this passion fruit dressing on the salad that was SOO GOOD!! The entertainment was really nice and the atmosphere was beautiful as we watched the setting sun for the last time here! They had a really cool "Aloha" sign set up so we got lots of pictures in front of that. Logan fell asleep on Bill-- he's tuckered out after all this partying we've done! It's hard to believe that today was our last day here! We've had so much fun and seen so many beautiful things! I really don't want to go home and wish we had just one more day to poke around this beautiful place...BUT all good things must come to an end. I may have to come back to Maui sometime-- I feel like there is still so much to explore here! Arizona, and your heat... here we come! Mahalo Maui for being so much fun! And Aloha until the next time! Maui no ka oi... Maui you're the BEST!