Road to Hana (aka Highway to Hell)

After Curt enjoyed his breakfast at the lovely Plantation Inn...

I told him I was putting this on the blog! 

...we packed up and drove to the other side of the island to begin the famous or infamous Road to Hana. This is what my GPS did once we were officially on the Hana Highway.

 This should have been a sign.

A major tropical storm had just brushed by and the day was very wet. The road was punctuated with beautiful waterfalls. Most of them raging. Really cool to see all of the water.

The road also had approximately 185,000 one lane bridges and 2 million signs advertising road conditions.

 Exactly how can this road get any narrower? It did.

Really, tell this to the locals who think driving towards you and swerving at the last moment is funny. It's a small island and that must be their version of rabbit hunting and mail box bashing.

 And another one.

 Hey, we haven't seen one of these for at least 100 feet.

Thanks to the warnings of family and friends who'd traveled this road before, we knew to stock up on Bonine and Diet Coke. Luckily, we did not get motion sickness. I was seriously worried about that especially since my experience with motion sickness on the plane.

At the end of the day when we went to dinner, I couldn't figure out why my legs were sore. After all, we had been in a car most of the day. I realized it was because as we drove around every corner, I would tense up waiting for the inevitable crash. Hence the sore legs.

But on to happier topics! The scenery was beyond beautiful. Blue ocean, black lava and lush tropical greenery everywhere.

The owner of our bed and breakfast asked us if anyone had mentioned quick sand at the mouth of this cave. Uh, no?! Don't know if we were talking about the same place or not. Hopefully, not!

The lava, worn smooth by the constant surf and turned into sand, is the complete opposite to the sharp lava at the  Nakalele Blowhole. There's a Gospel analogy in here somewhere.

Aren't all cliffs hazardous?

Black Sand Beach--gorgeous!

The many different colors of blue! 

Ohe'a Falls

The Seven Sacred Pools--or 7 Raging Torrents. We've heard that you can swim here? Not today!

We couldn't face going back the way we came, so we did a complete loop of the island and just kept going forward. This is where the tour buses travel. After driving by cliffs with rusted railing or no railing and traveling over several miles of rutted road, we happened upon a veritable freeway--seriously, the best road ever! Yeah, no more highway to green, lush, tropical hell. We were saved!

This side of the island is such a contrast to the other side.

 Loved the views of the back side of  Mount Haleakala. This was our destination the next day.

For some reason GPS has a hard time in Hawaii. But we got a good view of the sugar beet factory as we followed the GPS back to the bed and breakfast.