The Hana Highway

Today, we were hoping to wake up a little earlier than usual to get a good start to the day.  By 10'o clock, we were in the car, on our way to the most picturesque drive in Hawaii.  Clearly, we were running late yet aain.

Just one of the many waterfalls we saw

Unfortunately, it was raining on and off again all day, which brought down the mood a bit.  But once we got on the road and saw some eucalyptus deglupta trees, the excitement was back.  I had only heard about this tree and to see it in person is awesome!    The road wasn't too winding in the beginning but everyone was still worried about getting carsick like we did on the drive to Haleakala National Park. However, the road wasn't as bad (probably because I wasn't driving!) as I anticipated and didn't get carsick.  I also don't drive so... ha ha

The first stop we made was at the Twin Falls, where my Mother checked out the fruit-stand, but we didn't bother looking at the falls. Instead, we drove off until we reached a double-tier waterfall with little pools that you could swim in.  The water was freezing, but we got used to it and had a lot of fun swimming around in the pools.  We didn't swim in the lower pool since we were pressed for time.

The twists and turns are crazy!

The next stop was Three Bears Falls, which we only looked at from the road since the path down was a bit too dangerous for us.  Then, we tried to swim in the Ching Pond, but the path down didn't look safe there either so we moved on.  But it still looked pretty nice from the bridge.

We stopped at another fall, but it was a faint trickle that was pretty unimpressive, so we didn't bother to stop.  Then we stopped at another fall, which we couldn't get a view of, but it was still interesting.

Then we made our way to a park with two caves, the black beach, and a blowhole.  Of the two caves, only one was good to swim in, which we did.  The water was cold and deep, but still enjoyable.  We jumped off some rocks into the water which was very fun.  The black beach was really cool and the water was very clean.  The waves were medium sized and fun to ride.  There was a small tube on the beach that let out into the ocean which I went in and it was interesting to feel the waves crashing in towards me.

The blowhole, unfortunately, wasn't blowing, so we just quickly made our way to the Venus Pool.  However, the path there was a bit to treacherous.  There was a mud path that we were slipping on and the pool was a bit too far away, so we decided to go farther to see the Seven Sacred Pools.

Black Beach

The Seven Sacred Pools were in the Haleakala National Park, but we didn't have to pay the $10 entrance fee since we got there so late.  The Pools were closed off so we couldn't go down and swim in the Pools, but we could see it form a view point and get some nice photos.  It was a bit disappointing since we couldn't see it up close and it was raining, but we tried not to get too upset.  Plus, Mother and Father wanted to take a picture in the same spot as a picture from their honeymoon.  Epic Fail.

While driving home, it was raining pretty heavy.  As we were making our way back to Kihei, a big piece of tree fell right in front of Mother.  Literally, if we were there 15 seconds earlier we would have been crushed under the tree.  Mother and Father directed the headlights onto the tree area so the oncoming traffic on both sides would hopefully not run them over, ran out of the car to move the tree and push it out of the way.  The tree was pretty heavy, so they could only break off one piece of branch to open up one lane. Unfortunately, in the excitement of the moment I didn't take any pictures but we safely made it home after that.