UNPLUGGING IN MAUI

My parents have been visiting the island of Maui in the island chain of Hawaii for the past few years, and every time they come home Dave and I are bombarded (in the best of ways) with many stories, macadamia nuts, and photos from what has quickly become their favourite place on this planet. And every time they return, they tell us "you should go" and then "no, really, you have to go", until finally last month they surprised us with a trip down south for a week to wrap up our 2011, and now we get it.Maui to me will always be remembered as stepping off the plane into a pure and sweet-smelling air (yes, the air there just smells better). I'll always remember when the breeze blew in the right direction and being hit by the aroma of one gorgeous bunch of flowers after another, or walking along a path that is littered not with garbage but with flowers that have fallen from the trees like leaves in the fall...... I mean, what an amazing place -- their litter is mostly made up of flowers! We had a car for the week and got to see the island -- some of our highlights include the morning we got up at 3AM to drive up the HALEAKALA CRATER (not before stopping for some sustenance in the form of coffee at the amazing CRATER COFFEE cart) and watched the sun rise from 10,000ft -- amazing. Then we enjoyed a lazy descent down the mountain while defrosting (it was chilly up there!) stopping in at a few places along the way and a delicious lunch at a gorgeous tucked away spot called CAFE DES AMIS, which we wholeheartedly recommend if you're into Indian food as much as we are.Mostly though, Maui will be remembered as a time where we were able to unplug, from email, twitter, facebook, and this whole online world, take a run along the beach path as the sun rose, stroll over to HONOLULU COFFEE after breakfast for a latte, and just sit out, read through some good books, talk, and just get back to what matters. I really felt like during our time away I was able to shut out some of the periphery and extraneous and just get back to truly listening to my own inner voice. We reflected on the year we'd had and talked through lots of ideas about where to go from here....... Maui will definitely be remembered most of all as a turning point on this great journey of life  : ) Enjoy these few frames we shot along the way!- Jenn xxMaui, December 2011. For the photography nerds in the crowd, Dave and I both challenged ourselves to manually setting our white balance on this trip (honestly, I usually stick to Auto, or maybe play around with the "cloudy" preset) and I've got to say we both really loved the challenge, and the results! I'd definitely recommend trying it out if you haven't. I learned a lot!