Flying into Maui

I've always wanted to go to Hawaii, ever since the Brady Bunch went there in the after-school reruns I'd watch back in the 1970's.  It's just so darned far away though, at least it was when I was in Canada.  Since I started spending part of the year in LA back in 2009, it's been on my list of places to go, but it's only now that we plan a permanent move back to Ottawa that we actually decided we must go, while it's still 5 hours flight instead of 10.

We decided to visit four islands, Maui, Big Island, Kauai, and then fly home again via Oahu.  On November 29 we flew into Maui.

Here is our first glimpse, there is some mountain peeking out above those clouds as we circle around the southern coast of the island:

Coming around the southwest side of the island:

I think this is an old lava flow, maybe from the 1800's or so?  We didn't realize as we flew over it that that's what it was though, we only found out when we drove over it the next day:

Heading into the "saddle" that divides the two volcano mountains from each other.  This photo looks like it's on an angle, but the horizon is actually the slope of the Haleakala volcano:

We were too new to realize the cloudy and rainy conditions on landing were foreshadowing for the trip ahead ...