The Beatys in Maui: Day 2 ~ alicka promise

I almost fell asleep over a book as I was waiting for these photographs to upload onto Blogger. It's been an action packed day with the family, topped with a stomach busting dinner that nearly put me into a food coma.

We began today with a late breakfast (well, "late" for Mom, Dad and Hana and a tad on the early side for Paige, the late-riser) at Coolers. It was a special occasion where I got to introduce Bryan to the family for the first time. The first meeting went well, and I'm looking forward to sharing Bryan with my family again on his upcoming day off.

After our successful meet and greet over breakfast, Mom, Dad, Hana and I got into their rental car and drove upcountry to check out the goats, sip some pineapple wine and watch some windsurfers.

Our first stop was the Surfing Goat Dairy Farm in Kula. The farm is located on the leeward side of lower Haleakala in lower Kula, and the farm rarely sees rain. The dry weather is great for goats, but pricey for the farm owners who pay a fortune to irrigate the land.

Despite these hardships, the dairy has been producing award winning gourmet goat cheese for over 9 years.

For ten bucks each we got a quick tour of the farm where we got to meet and feed the goats, learn more about the milking process, see where the cheese products are made and sample the final product!

The Kids!

The girls wear pink ribbons around their necks and the boys sport blue.

A baby goat at the farm's entrance

The milking barn

Dad feeding the goats

This year's stud

The kids stretching their necks as far as they can go to score some hay

The stud has given up begging for hay

The milking station

Notice the two herding dogs on the ground and the goat all the way in the back

The milking goats are led onto this platform where they will be fed "granola" while they are milked.

These are the contraptions that get hooked onto the udders

Barn cat

Chalk writing on the wall tells visitors about milk production as well as the number of goats on the farm

Lilokoi (Hawaiian passionfruit) plants are wrapped like grapevines around the eaves of the barn

Mom and Dad taking a peek at where the cheese is made

After getting our fill of cute goats and yummy goat cheese, we continued along Highway 37 towards Maui's Winery at Ulupalakua Ranch, Tedeschi Vineywards.

It's amazing to step out of the car out here. It is so quiet up in the hills. The views look out over southern Maui, and you can see the peaks of the Western part of the island while looking out over the ocean and Maui's surrounding islands.

The winery is housed on Ulupalakua Ranch, Maui's second largest cattle ranch located at an elevation slightly under 2,000 feet.

Dad, Mom and I sampled four of their wines. Two were made from grapes and two were pineapple wines.

A lei draped over the fence in front of the winery

After enjoying some wine, we walked across the quiet street to pick up snacks at the Ulupalakua Ranch Store. The store has fun cowboy knick knacks like the following sign:

as well as a bustling BBQ counter where you can order deli sandwiches and monster burgers. The smell of the BBQ was amazingly enticing, but we didn't want to ruin our dinner plans so we got drinks and candy for the drive back down the mountain.

On our way back towards the west side of the island I took my family through the surfing hippie town of Paia to Ho'okipa Lookout.

This is the spot to check out surfers, wind surfers and kite surfers.

It was a very blustery day, so we didn't stay out here too long, but it was fun watching the kite surfers blast across the ocean. There weren't any kite surfers out there, but a few traditional surfers were catching some waves closer to the cliff wall.

As we watched the surfers, we saw quite a few turtles serenely swimming out towards open ocean. Their heads would briefly pop above the ocean break and then submerge again as the turtles slowly paddled out to sea.