Road to Perdition

The more traditional name for our journey is, “The Road to Hana”, but I think if you've been on this trip, you'll understand my artistic license. Let’s be honest, the road does not actually end in Hana, it blasts right through. And I’m sure there are several reasons to stop there, but we did not come up with any and continued around the island.. Usually on these journeys I am a passenger. But once in a blue moon, we will come across a road such as this, and due to the delicate nature of my equilibrium, I will have to drive. It was only a few moments in to our drive and I had downed several bonine and was already hiccupping and threatening to yack up my coffee when mom pulled over and I took the wheel.

You’ve probably heard about this road being the destructive force of rental cars. Um, what I would like to ask, is why doesn’t anyone mention the ONE LANE BRIDGES???? And more importantly, how terrifying they are when dump trucks (or school busses) come tearing down the hill, across the bridge, without stopping! Holy Cow. I spent a fair amount of time screaming for my life from the driver’s side. It gave my passenger an incredible feeling of security.

My other comment about the road, is I think they should add a sign that says, “Yield to Rock Wall”. A fair amount of my screaming came when I was sure we were going to scrape the paint (or door!) off the right side of the car.

Of course, we survived, as I imagine most people do, and we saw some amazing sights.

Our first stop was the Garden of Eden. All you Master Gardeners, this was a playground. There were…plants. I don’t know – anthurium, palm, bamboo… I just picked some basic groups that I can’t mess up. I suffocated in the heat and let the mosquitoes have some breakfast, and mom thoroughly enjoyed herself. I will admit that the rainbow eucalyptus had beautiful colors on the trunk. Mom took a million more pictures, which you plant people will have to get from her later. J

Next we stopped at Ke’anae, which apparently is a peninsula. The drunken truck drivers (from last night) told us the waves were amazing coming over the rocks. It was quite a sight. Plus it was more like the Big Island with so much lava rock. We tried to get one of our famous remote pictures, but the wind was blowing quite a bit, and it was hard to get the camera to balance, and then it was hard to sit on the rock. I was waiting for mom, wincing the whole time!

I had reached the maxed out heat factor again, so we stopped at a roadside “shack” for a soda. They had real shaved iced served Hawaiian style over ice cream, so we had that. It was delicious!!

Next we stopped at the Seven Sacred Pools. They aren’t really sacred – it was an advertising stint from long ago to get people to the Hana area. There was no chance of us jumping in those pools, but we did walk around and get some great pictures.

The road from here was loooooooong. It was along this stretch that we came up with several examples 0f seeing this road before:

Arizona: windy road in which we almost hit a cow as we came around a corner

Montana: “accidentally” turned on to an unmarked, unpaved road on which they were herding their cattle

New Mexico: the road in to Chaco Canyon

Alaska: road to Kennicott Mine (this one takes the cake!)

It was windy, in parts unpaved, mostly 1.5 cars wide, and devoid of bathrooms. On the last half, we were mostly alone on the road, which was really fun. We were very glad that we came because the land changed so much as we drove. It was lush and wet in parts and barren and dry in others. It was a fascinating (but yes, completely bumpy!) drive.