We had scheduled two days for our roadtrip to Hana: Driving out with stops … Spend the night … Drive back with stops. But our kids didn’t want to risk two days of rainy weather on their first week in Hawaii. So I took them on a half day sampler of the Hana Highway. Instead of getting up early and driving the entire 50+ miles to and fro, we let most drivers get ahead of us, drove the first 20 miles, turned around and came back. This way, we missed most of the jam on the road, but still ventured far enough that the kids crossed over ten one-way bridges, saw waterfalls and coastline, and stopped for a scenic loop trail through the rainforest.
We encountered a couple closures due to COVID … Twin Falls, at mile eight, was closed by the owners of the land. But we were able to see waterfalls from the road later on. The flow was good, as they had some serious rainfall the week before, which actually caused landslides and temporarily closed the road.
We continued to the Garden of Eden, a 26 acre botanical garden, and stopped to walk their paths. This will be a separate blog entry so I won’t say too much about it now. The pic at the top of that little old tree hugger was taken there. I’ll throw in one other preview.
We drove back after our garden walk and stopped in P’aia for a late lunch. Nice town for shopping and eating after coming off the serpentine part of the road. Another hour of driving got us back to our villa for a swim and view of tonight’s sunset.
This was a really nice sampler, especially if you don’t want to commit to the entire length of time necessary to reach Hana. The kids were already talking about their strategy for a return trip, including the idea of using a motor scooter rather than a car. This would make parking along the road’s edges so much easier. We’ll have to wait and see if they accomplish it.
The Adventures of Barry Brink 