May: books for long airplane rides and Hawaiian sun

the view from our hotel room in Lahaina

It's May, so it's vacation time again, and for 2 lovely weeks we're in Maui. We got in yesterday after a long flight from Ft. Lauderdale to Seattle for an overnight stay to see family. Then after an overnight stay we took another very long plane ride from Seattle to Maui.  After about 5 hours of sleep, we left at about 3 a.m. to go up to the top of Haleakalā, the local volcano where at 10,000 ft, we watched the sunrise at about 5:45. It was freezing up there, so we're standing around above the cloud line in our long sleeves, fleece vests, hoodies, hats and thermal socks trying to keep warm. 

sun rising over Haleakalā

Then back to Lahaina for a change into shorts and tank tops and a few hours of driving along the coast and looking for local food (we try to eat mom-and-pop local wherever we go...thank god for Yelp!); and we drove to the north of the western side of the island

where we saw the most incredible scenery that made me want to move here.

But we're only here for a couple of weeks, then home again home again.  In the meantime, I brought several ARCs I need to finish, along with Hakan Nesser's newest book The Weeping Girl, Johan Theorin's Asylum, Going Clear by Lawrence Wright and a few others to read while laying out on the beach, by the pool or on the balcony with MaiTai in hand; not to mention the uber-long plane ride from Maui to Seattle to Ft. Lauderdale all in one fell swoop! 

ahhhh -- relax, get sun and read...how much better can it get?