Scuba Diving, Mermaid Hair and Wandering Makawao!

I haven't eaten in 17 hours.
I'm still full from lunch yesterday.
Does that ever happen to you?

First scuba:
Yesterday I was determined to get my neighbor and friend, Cresty, out on a dive. I'd promised her if she came to Maui with me, I'd get her scuba diving. We'd tried last week when the Kona storm blew in and it was not great. At all.
After I dropped Bill off at the ferry to Lanai in Lahaina, I rented some gear for Cresty and told her today was the day!
This time we set ourselves up for success, and in we went. The beach was relatively calm, Cresty was not panicking, the water was pretty clear considering the rain and red dirt runoff we've had.
The good news...Cresty got below the surface, horizontal and we went on a nice little dive around coral heads and tropical fish! She did GREAT!
The bad news...I was over weighted by about 10 pounds (you wear a weight belt to get under in this salty water) and my buoyancy control device fell apart at the beginning, which isn't horrible until you try to stay on the surface to talk or breathe. I was too heavy to stay on the surface so I stayed under, but when the connector hose came off in my hand and the jacket started to fill up with water, I considered dropping my weight belt. Instead, I signaled for us to go in to shore. I could dive, I just couldn't get off the sandy bottom. Cresty was done anyhow. She'd signaled she needed a break.
We headed in to shore, surfaced, got caught in a little surf, enough to know that we'd have sand up our bathing suits. Back at the car, we congratulated ourselves on Cresty's first scuba dive! Yay! I hesitate to include Cresty in these photos because it's hard to look presentable after the salt water. I'm okay with looking wet and strange and squinty.

After showers at Lynn's house, we took off in the car to the upcountry area of Maui - part way up the side of the volcano Haleakala, which hasn't been active since 1790. There are lovely towns dotting the side of the volcano and we landed in the cowboy town, Makawao, at a Mexican restaurant called Polli's. Food was ordered, consumed and we took off to walk the downtown and check out the boutiques of the town, something Lynn loves to do. It was now pouring rain and we ran between shops, ducking in to look at gorgeous clothing, jewelry, and high-end boutique items for wear and decor. Galleries too!
Driving home, we hit sunset right at the Pali lookout and stopped so Cresty could get a shot of the peachy blue sky with a giant tangerine-colored ball at the water line. Whales jumped and slapped their pectoral fins in the ocean just off the cliff. Cresty took photos while Lynn and I joked about some inconsiderate man named Walter who would not move his car that blocked the entrance to the parking lot because it was his god-given right to watch the whales. "Zip it!" he told his poor wife.

Back at Lynn's we were tired and over glasses of wine, we settled on the couch to watch the movie Joy, with Jennifer Lawrence.

Today is our last day on Maui, and Cresty has gone off to play tennis at the Royal Lahaina. Lynn is walking JoJo under the cloudless blue sky and I'm sitting on the deck chronicling my adventures. This trip has been amazing! I haven't written as much as I intended, but I've been out there experiencing life, meeting people, hanging with friends, talking, doing, living, which is never bad. I've kept up with my screenwriting lessons and will always remember that I learned the basics of writing a treatment (synopsis for screenplays) on Lynn's deck while staring at Molokai in the distance.
On our way to the airport today to catch our red eye flight, I'm dropping off The Dream Jumper's Promise books to the Lahaina Library -- a book club kit with the reading group questions included. If you like to read print and Barnes & Noble is out of my books, head to the Lahaina Library and ask to sign out the kit.

As with all vacations, I'm eager to get home and see my daughter, husband, dogs and look back on the memories of these 9 days on Maui that I was so very fortunate to have. All year, I forgo pedicures, manicures, haircuts, makeup, eating out, buying things I don't need to justify a cheap plane ticket twice a year to feed my Maui addiction.
Maui is one of my happy places, to be sure.

Thanks for reading, folks and if you haven't read my Dream Jumper series, you may want to pick up a copy of the first book which is 99 cents on Amazon (ebook) this week. There is a really good chance you'll enjoy the book. It's been downloaded over 100,000 times and has very few negative reviews. Just sayin'.

The Dream Jumper's Promise on Amazon
The Dream Jumper's Promise on Barnes & Noble

KIM HORNSBY is an Amazon #1 Bestselling Author who lives in Seattle, writing Suspense and Romance. Find her on Amazon to see how she opened shows for Jamie Foxx and The Smother's Brothers in Hawaii, then became a novelist.

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