Maui - October 2009

Katie and I took a vacation to Maui, Hawaii at the end of October in 2009. For this vacation, we really have to thank the American Society of Human Genetics (ASHG), which had their annual scientific conference in Honolulu this year. Katie, who studies human genetics, was eager to go the conference for both the scientific and scenic value. She submitted her abstract, and was rewarded with a talk! Anyway, once it was clear that Katie was going to Hawaii, it only made sense for me to come along and make it a vacation.

Katie spent five days in Honolulu as part of the ASHG conference. She had a great time catching up with old friends from grad school and her previous lab, the Hirshhorn lab, and hanging out with her friends from the Eichler lab. She has posted photos from her time in Honolulu in our photo gallery.

I arrived in Honolulu on Friday night, before the last day of the conference. Katie was scheduled to give her talk on the last day, so I was able to go and see her give her talk Saturday morning. We had lunch with our friends Kristina and Steve, spent some time with Kristina on the beach (Steve had other things to do), and then took our plane to Maui that night.

We spent four days on Maui. We squeezed as much as we could into that time, including some very important relaxing on the beach. We took a Zodiac boat to go snorkeling around the island and at Molokini Crater. We woke up super early to watch the sun rise over Haleakala Crater, and then when most of the other people got in their cars and left, we hiked down into the crater to one of the cinder cones. We also attended a lu'au at Old Lahaina Lu'au, snorkeled with turtles at Turtle Beach (at our hotel), and saw a pod of dolphins. It was a great vacation, and a welcome change from the rain in Seattle. We have posted our photos from Maui in the photo gallery.

As I have started to do, I kept a travel journal while in Hawai'i so that I wouldn't forget what we did. I have posted the pages from my journal on the following pages.