Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Old Lahaina Town

Cache Location


View from our table - lunch at Cheeseburger in Paradise



We sent Tom a coconut postcard - belated birthday!

For this morning’s walk, I decided to go north. There is a cache along the beach less than a mile that way. I grabbed the GPS, stuck it in my pocked and left #6. In the parking lot were three of the full time residents heading across the road carrying their paddle boards. The sea was calm so they were just out for a paddle. I walked up the beach a ways and turned on the GPS unit, or at least I tried to. It turned out that it had run out of batteries. Oh well, I just had a nice walk. I was not alone. Other senior citizens and dog walkers were enjoying the beach this morning as well.

When I’d gone far enough, I decided to cross the street and check out the residences up close and personal. All of the structures were either low rise condo’s or collections of cottages surrounding a central court. They look as though they were all built in the 50’s and 60’s. As I strolled along gawking, I was not concentrating on my feet and managed to stumble on some loose pavement. Wham! I did a face plant. No serious damage done except some abrasion to my right leg and knee. As I sat up and then got up, I was happy that it hadn’t happened yesterday on the edge of the crater.

Back at the “Holiday” we had some breakfast and then set out for our days goal, the town of Lahaina. It’s just a short run up route 30 which follows the curve of a mountain along the ocean but the drive has spectacular views and the town has a lot of memories for us. It’s where we have stayed on our previous trips. Along the way we want to find a number of traditional caches that we can place some of our coins in. We have one named Hawaii, one named for Maui, one named “Mission Accomplished” and a couple of others. The problem was finding a cache with a container big enough for a coin that would not require a substantial hike to find.

Our first find was right along the highway in a small park and ride lot. The description indicated that there were trackables in it so we thought maybe we’d trade. It turned out to be a small cardboard box inside a zip lock tucked in the end of the guard rail.

Here is our log for that cache:
This is the first time we've seen this type of container but it met our needs. Back in 2007, we created a coin for our 50th wedding anniversary. We established a goal of launching a coin series named for each of the states. We came over to Maui because Hawaii was the only state we were missing and so we were out today on a quest to find a cache that would hold our Hawaii coin. We found the box, traded pathtags, left our card and flashlight and sent our Hawaii coin on its way. Good luck little fellow. There was no other trackable in the cache.
 






A most unique cemetery at the beach in Lahaina.
 
 
This baby will grow up to be a surfer for sure.


Our next stop was at an overlook just off the road. There were two caches here, a virtual named “Why Papa” and a traditional which had some travelers logged into it. It was named “Cliff Edge Redux”. While Nancy worked on the questions for the virtual, I went past the railing and down the trail to the other one. Remembering my morning mishap, I borrowed her cane for this jaunt and proceeded extremely cautiously. The cache was not just at the edge of the cliff, I considered it to be a bit over the edge. I almost decided to give it a pass but after a bit of study, I saw the best route. The climb back to the parking lot was a bit of a struggle and when I reached it I got a frosty reception from the spouse. The bottom line is that she believed that I had been “reckless". I couldn’t argue much. That was my last serious excursion. I logged it as follows:
In 2007 we created a coin for our 50th anniversary and decided to drop one in each of Michigan's 83 counties. Upon successfully finishing that goal, we set as our next task to drop one in each state. We came here this fall to launch our Hawaii coin. We found the virt up at the top and then, using Mrs Bends cane, creakily made my way down to this cache. The final drop was intimidating for a geezer who only this morning tripped and fell over my own feet. I made the final drop on my belly like a 6 year old and scored the cache. Took nothing, left our card, pen, and a signals TB. We also launched new coin named for this spot - Maui Wowie. There were no other trackables that I saw in the cache .