Oh man, this was a CRAZY day . . . . our adventure day for sure! We decided awhile ago that we wanted to do the Road to Hana this time. We’ve never done it before, and now I know why. We’ve always heard a lot about it, though. But I guess all we really knew was that the road was long and winding and very beautiful. And indeed it was all those things. There were just some things about this excursion that we didn’t know.
The bottom line is that we were not prepared for this day. We should have been on the road by 7 am, with lunches and snacks packed for the day. Instead we slept in, lazily ate a little bowl of cereal, and left at 10:00, with not so much as a fruit snack on us.
The drive was absolutely gorgeous. Hana is a very small town on the opposite side of the island, and the very curvy and narrow road to Hana is through the tropical rainforests of Maui. It’s one of the rainiest parts of the island and a few times during our drive it was an absolute downpour of rain. We saw incredible waterfalls, amazing views, and lush vegetation like these beautiful tropical rainforest trees with orange flowers on the top, which I’ve only ever seen before in giant Melissa and Doug puzzles. My Dad was driving the lead car of our 5 car caravan. He took it slow, adding a lot of time onto the drive, but it made it so I didn’t get carsick at all, something people are very prone to on this drive. Scotty was really the only one who ended up car sick, and so Stephanie let him sit in the front of their car, while she squished in the back between two car seats. But that helped Scotty a lot, and luckily no one threw up.
After about 4 hours of driving, we finally made it to Hana and went straight to Wai'anapanapa State Park to see the gorgeous black sand beach. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves at this point. See? We threw up our hands in celebration and yelled, “We survived the road to Hana!!” (A popular saying on t-shirts:)
This was a really awesome place. The kids loved playing on the black sand beach.
It was pretty fine black sand under the waves, but at the top of the water line laid these beautiful black rocks.
I had a vision of a glass jar filled with these rocks, but instead of just being store bought rocks from Pottery Barn, these rocks would mean something. So Steph, Ash, and I started stuffing our pockets and bags with these beauties. Well, they stuffed their pockets and bags. I had neither, so I filled up my shirt with them. Then I dumped them all into an empty Doritos bag we had.
We had fun walking along the black volcanic cliffs. Awesome views from there.
There was also a really cool cave on the beach to explore.
Well, it was 3 pm by this point, and Spencer and Ash (who came here on their honeymoon just 8 months ago) were urging us to hit the road again and reminding us that this was supposed to just be a quick stop along the way. So we loaded up into our cars and happily went on our way along the Hana Highway. I guess we just really didn’t do enough research before heading out this day. And this was our mistake. Dan and I thought we were just like 20 minutes away from our final destination . . . . some little hike up to a cool waterfall. We thought Hana would be a bigger town and would have some options of places to eat. But, oh were we wrong. We drove through the tiny town of Hana, and pretty soon realized there was nowhere to eat. And the longer and longer we drove, the more we realized we were in the middle of nowhere and we were just getting farther and farther from civilization. Dan and I were shocked when we drove another 2 hours of the narrow and curvy highway and finally pulled up to the Haleakala National Park. We’re arriving at a National Park at 5 pm? And we’re all starving and have no food and we’re over 5 hours away from civilization and we’re supposed to do a “moderately difficult 4 mile hike” (2 miles in, 2 miles back) with 10 little kids? Um, yeah . . . . we did NOT think this one through. We got out of the cars to have a family discussion about what to do. Some people were not too happy with the predicament we were in. But we had come all this way and it would be such a shame to just turn around at this point. So we decided to do the hike. And once we had made that decision, we just sucked it up, rounded up any snacks people had, divided them up between the kids, and no one complained at all after that. And luckily Brigham and Steph had a case of water bottles in their trunk. We were set. Haha.
The hike was actually a pretty fun hike. It was very MUDDY the entire way due to the wet climate of that area of the island, so we had to be careful as we hiked in our flip flops. But it was beautiful up there and it was just cool to be out in the jungles of Hawaii. We passed gorgeous waterfalls:
And this tree along the hike was pretty cool:
About half the group:
Part of the hike was through this amazing bamboo forest:
It was so funny taking pictures along this hike. A park ranger saw our group of 23 people (almost half being kids) starting this hike at 5 pm and warned us that if we got caught on the trail after sunset, it would be pitch black and that hopefully we were prepared with flashlights. Haha . . . . were we prepared for anything this day? No. So, definitely no flashlights. So, we tried to move up the trail pretty quickly, which meant no time for pictures. But every once in a while, we’d come to something really cool (like the tree or this bamboo forest) and we just had to stop. “Hurry, get in the bamboo for a quick picture! Ok, good! Let’s go!”
There was a pathway built out of wooden planks towards the end of the bamboo forest section. It was a welcome relief from the muddy path.
We finally came to the end of the hike. We just needed to cross the stream and about 50 yards further in was our final destination . . . . Waimoku Falls. We helped each other cross the stream. My flip flop slipped off my foot somehow, and started to float down the river, but luckily Dan was standing a few feet downstream and caught it just before it was lost forever. Good thing, because it would have been really hard to hike the 2 miles back with no shoe.
Now comes the craziest part of the story. Right as the remainder of our group was crossing the stream, we heard some loud rumbling crashing sounds coming from the waterfall. It sounded like thunder. Dan yelled, “Rocks are falling!” and a few of us caught sight of huge boulders crashing to the bottom of the waterfall . . . . right where people had been standing and playing in the water. We heard screams coming from that direction, and Dan and John ran in to see if anyone was hurt. Luckily there were only minor injuries, but a few people were pretty shaken up saying they had narrowly escaped death. How scary! Needless to say, we decided it wouldn’t be safe to go any further. So that was it. We had driven almost 6 hours down one of the windiest roads in the country, hiked up 2 miles along a muddy and slippery trail with 10 little kids, and right when we were just about to see the waterfall and reach the end of our journey, we decided to just turn back. We didn’t want to take the kids any closer. The scary thing is that if we had been 5 minutes sooner, some of us might have been playing in the water at the base of the waterfall, right where all the rocks came crashing down. Who knows what might have happened. So we took a peek at the waterfall through the trees and took a picture to prove we made it this far! haha. Jeff’s family, Brigham, and my dad were still on the other side of the stream. They never even made it across.
Dan and John took a few pictures of the waterfall when they went over to see if anyone had been hurt by the falling rocks. The 400 ft. Waimoku Falls is pretty impressive. It’s too bad we couldn’t enjoy it.
So we crossed back over the stream and hiked the 2 miles back down. We went pretty quickly and we made it down with still a little sunlight to spare (probably because we didn’t take any time enjoying the waterfall!) This was definitely a lesson of how sometimes it’s not about the destination, but about the journey. And I have to say, I was so proud of my family. A few people voiced their concerns before the hike when we were trying to figure out what to do, which is what family meetings are for. But once we made a decision, everyone accepted it and had good attitudes through the whole ordeal. The kids were amazing. They zoomed up and down that trail like pros, and not one of them complained even once. They were having so much fun. And Dan declared Stephanie the biggest trooper of all. She did the whole thing with Savannah strapped to her. My mom was so worried that she would “slip and crack Savannah’s head open” that Ashley held on to her arm and walked with her the entire 4 miles.
Muddy legs at the end of the hike!
It was a little after 7 when we finally got back to the cars. We did NOT want to drive the 5 hours back the way we had come. So we decided to keep driving along the road and just make a full circle around the island. It would only be about 3 hours going this way. But we weren’t really supposed to drive that way because the majority of it was just a dirt road. In fact, the car rental companies don’t allow you to take their cars on that road. But we decided to go for it. (Mainly based on the fact that a few people we knew had said to just go home that way.) Sure enough, after about 10 miles, the paved road became a dirt road, and it was still very narrow and windy going along the coast. It was slow moving, and soon it got really dark. So there we were . . . . our little caravan of 5 cars making our way on a dirt road in total darkness on the side of the island that is completely uninhabited. I felt like I was in Jurassic Park. Just another great adventure to end the day. It was a shame it was so dark, because the views of the ocean and the island would have been amazing. It was sometime along this road that all of a sudden we saw my parents’ car pull over and Ashley dumped out all of her black rocks along the side of the road. I guess the people in that car had decided that we had been cursed for taking the rocks off the black sand beach and that if we wanted to get home safely they needed to get rid of the rocks. Hahaha. There was no way I was dumping my rocks. And besides, to really break the curse, they probably needed to return the rocks to their original home on the beach. Well, we drove and drove, and finally the dirt road became paved again and at around 10 pm we pulled into the first place we saw . . . . McDonald’s. And this is a whole other story, but without going into any details because this post is already long enough, I’ll just say this was the worst and SLOWEST service any of us had ever had at a fast food place. But we finally ate some food, drove another hour home, and crashed in our beds a little after midnight. PHEW! What a day! I was just so happy we all made it home safe and sound. And I think we’ve learned our lesson . . . . there’s a reason people don’t take kids on The Road to Hana. But we survived it. And looking back, I’m still glad we did it. It will be fun to look back and remember how CRAZY this day was! It was definitely an adventure!
