What do you do when you are on vacation on a beautiful island, and not one, but two hurricanes are bearing down on you, the first one set to arrive that very evening?
If you belong to my family, you decide it's the perfect time to pack a lunch and drive the narrowest, twistiest, wettest, most dangerous road on the island, a road full of steep drop offs and one-lane bridges. Because hey, why not?
Marquis and I saw a T-shirt in a gift shop that describes The Road to Hana perfectly, and I wish I could find it online so I could accurately quote it, but it said something like this, "How to drive the Road to Hana: Start out on the Hana Highway toward Hana. Turn right. Turn left. Repeat 465 times (I'm totally guessing on that number, but it was in the several hundreds). Pass 120 different waterfalls (again, guessing on the number). Go over 40 one-lane bridges (yep, a guess too, but probably not that far off). Experience the most beautiful drive on the planet."
And it truly was so very beautiful! We took our time and stopped at several of the waterfalls and scenic spots.
(Marquis's brother and sister)
(The whole gang, except Poppa who was manning the camera)
This road was especially fun for Marquis, who took the opportunity to do some exploring, and to make his wife's heart beat a little faster, and not in a romantic way, I must add. My boy can be a little adventurous! For example, check out this beautiful picture of one of the waterfalls.
Gorgeous, right? And if you look closely, you might just see someone familiar. Let's zoom in a bit.
Do you see him now? Maybe I'll zoom in a bit more and add a red circle so you can see my fearless man precariously perched on slippery rocks in a flash flood zone with a hurricane on the way, leaning out over the waterfall to get a better picture.
To his credit, he didn't get wet at all. At least not here at this waterfall.
There were so many beautiful places to stop, and the incoming storm made the sky so beautiful!
The waves were crashing so high on the little rocky beaches we found!
And this is where Marquis got really wet. We found this cute little rocky beach, and he climbed out onto the rocks to get some better pictures. Pretty soon a big wave came along and swept right up the front of him. He was smart and lifted his phone above his head so it stayed dry, but his clothes were completely soaked!
Completely dry on the back, dripping wet on the front, so funny! We read later in the guidebook that this is the beach where you are most likely to be swept out to sea. Haha, oops! Thank goodness he didn't go for a swim this time.
And then it seemed like the right time to stop and get some ice cream and banana bread. There is something about Maui and banana bread. I'm not sure why, but it is everywhere on the island, and many different places claim to have the best one. We sampled many different ones to try to find our own favorites. Whatever the deal is, yum!
This next picture doesn't do the view justice at all. At this point on the road there was a real turnout, not just a little wider scrape at the side of a narrow road, and there were two whole parking spaces. Once you got out of the car there was a staircase on the side of the hill, and at the top of the staircase was possibly the prettiest view I have ever seen. When you looked in toward the center of the island, you could see four different waterfalls, all gorgeously cascading down the side of the mountain. When you looked out toward the ocean, you could see little houses, a church, and fields that had been planted. Everything was green and lush with flowers and fruits growing spontaneously. It looked like the most idyllic place to live, like a village out of a fairytale. Just beautiful!
We stopped many more times on the road to Hana, and my adventure boy liked to get as up close and personal with the sights as he could, whether it was standing on the very edge of a ledge overlooking a steep drop...
...or climbing down the steep sides of the road to get to the base of a waterfall (can you see him there, the tiny man at the bottom of the falls?)...
...he made sure not to miss a bit of the adventure that was waiting there for us.
We followed that road until the clouds from the hurricane were starting to make the sky prematurely dark and a light rain began to fall, and then we followed it just a bit longer until we got to yet another old church, the church where Charles Lindbergh is buried.
After a quick hello to Mr. Lindbergh we turned around and raced the storm home. As the day had gone on, we had (or at least I had) become increasing nervous about the storm, wondering just what it was going to be like to be in the middle of a hurricane. According to the news, it was going to arrive in the middle of the night, but the wind and rain had already begun. We stopped at one of the only open restaurants we found that was fairly close to home, a fish market in Paia that actually had really great fish tacos, and then we headed home to hunker down and wait out the storm.
And then the hurricane hit.
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