Hawaiian Family Vacation Day 4 – Maui

Date: February 21st, 2026

On this particular day, we didn’t have anything planned. There was a breakfast place that Jill had heard good things about up the road, so we decided to try that out. We noticed the Kihei Caffe had a decent line so we found a place to park and got into line. They don’t seat you and serve you at your table, like many other restaurants, but instead you order and grab a number for them to deliver it to you. We took the fact that they had a line out the door as a sign that they must have good food. We had also seen live music playing at Kihei Caffe as we drove by, but never were able to catch a show there. The kids ordered pancakes, Jill had an egg & bacon breakfast sandwich and I built my own omelette but requested it to be more like a scrambled skillet. I added bacon, mushrooms, onions, and jalapenos. This was the best meal I had on the entire trip. I was very pleased with my choice.

I was on the lookout for a Hawaii license plate to bring back to the mainland because my father-in-law collects and displays differents plates by his pool. I found a group of shops nearby that I thought would have one and after about 10 minutes of looking around, I found some. I grabbed one that I liked and brought it up to the cashier to inquire about the price. To my surprise they wanted $30 for a used license plate! That was a lot more than I was ready to spend so I put it back. I later found a different license plate while we were in Kauai and they were asking $40. I ended up purchasing a novelty Hawaiian plate on the last day of our vacation and then mistakenly left it at our condo along with our sea turtle Christmas ornament. I guess it just wasn’t meant to be.

After shopping for a bit, we got something to eat at the condo and headed to the beach just north of the one we had been going to for a change of scenery. This was Kamaole Beach Park II and was on the other side of the lava rock peninsula. Maybe the water was more clear or I was dreaming it up, but the coral seemed more colorful on this side. We snorkeled for a bit and Mattix tried bodyboarding, but we mostly just relaxed on the beach and watched the whales in the distance. Charlie even got a few good pictures of the whales from afar. I thought it was interesting that the spout of plume of mist that they emit isn’t really water but a combination of hot, moist air from the whale’s lungs and mucus, which condenses instantly when it hits the colder, lower-pressure air at the surface.

After we had our fill of beach time, we had some spaghetti fand garlic bread for supper. Most of us went to bed fairly early, but I decided to stay out on our patio/porch and listen to music with a few drinks to keep me company.

I tried out some new video software that takes some of the shakiness out of the screen on the video below. Let me know if you think it improved the video in the comments 🙂