Despite visiting Maui before, we have always avoided doing “The Road to Hana.” It’s billed as a full day of driving bumper to bumper with a million other people to see some waterfalls and end up in the town of Hana, famous for its Seven Sacred Pools. A little research and you will find out there aren’t actually seven pools and none of them are sacred- the name was invented to boost tourism to a local hotel. But, supposedly its a beautiful drive around the coast and apparently everyone that visits Maui does it.
We’ve done lots of other fun things on the island, plenty of exploring and visiting local treats. Just never to Hana. We finally decided to man up this time and see what this Road to Hana had to offer.
So we went! Jazz and JR willingly stayed back with the Lincoln and Margo, but the rest of us piled into the car for our 6 hour drive. And when I say six, I really mean ten. Seriously.
And surprisingly we really enjoyed it. We left pretty early to beat the rush of people, and so it was less bumper to bumper and more like us just leisurely mosey-ing around the coast, stopping periodically to get out and explore. The west side of Maui is where we stay and it is very tropical and lovely, but this side of the island is like straight up jungle, vines hanging everywhere and waterfalls just popping out of the rocks. Totally gorgeous.
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| Iz and her sunglasses, dad, mom, mo, sabs and fetus, jared |
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| See that waterfall in the middle? We were supposed to hike down to it but someone got hurt so they closed it. Thanks a lot, hurt guy. |
I think he is searching for the stork that is bringing their baby soon.
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| one of my favorite expressions |
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| Waterfalls behind us… Izzie, appearing 976 inches long. |
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| blurry isabelle but she was super excited she could touch some light falls. |
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| dad, perched precariously on some volcanic rock |
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| when she is sleeping, she looks like a baby again. |
Ironically, I don’t have any pictures of the actual town of Hana. It is very small, blink and you miss it. Wait, yes I do have one picture. The picture of Morgan with a hawaiian chicken is in Hana. I stole this from her instagram without her permission….keepin it classy.
We did stop and eat lunch and stretch our legs. We even ate from a food truck! I mean, whaaat! Fish and chips and coconut shrimp never tasted so good.
We also visited a very small black sand beach which was pretty awesome but also not soft. Black sand is like tiny ninja knives. There was this neato cave you could walk through to see the ocean and I was like go ahead I’ll stay here mk thanks bye! But it was short so I eventually went in it and it was less claustrophobic than I thought. Phew.
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| felt a little bit like jurassic park, ya know. |
Dipping her feet in a sacred pool. Nah just kidding it was a regular pool.
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| Isabelle, posing as Ariel, naturally. |
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| oh man, I miss these girls of mine. |
At the very end of the drive we got to Jared’s favorite part of the whole trip… which was visiting the grave of Mr. Charles Lindburgh. Jared is a pilot so you can see how this would be a fun experience for him- you go down this teeny road to a teeny church with all these giant trees and then bam, Charles Lindbergh buried under some rocks.
So you get passed all that Hana stuff and then you can either turn around and go back the way you came, or continue around the south end of the Island like a big loop, which is what we did. This part lasted a long time- much longer than I thought… we thought we would be back to the condo about 2… and we rolled in about a quarter to 5. I’m sure the menfolk thought we were never coming back and they were going to have to take care of those babies forever.
My two cents? It was absolutely worth it. Breathtaking views, lush greenery everywhere, and lots of waterfalls/pools to stop and swim in. Our van was chalk full of some of my favorite people so that helped- we laughed a lot and passed around snacks and kept Isabelle entertained. (Lincoln would have hated this trip. HATED.) Being with my peeps was so much fun, I felt like that was the best part of the drive and the waterfalls and scenery were just icing on the cake. It hardly felt like we basically drove to Utah… lots of starts and stops, places to get out and explore- there are tons of hikes that we didn’t even get to. Also, if you get car sick, this is probably not a great drive for you unless you are wearing a shirt primarily made out of scopolamine patches.
And now we can say we survived the Road to Hana!
the sorensen six 
I am convinced the only way I will ever get to go to Hawaii is to become part of your family. Will you adopt me?
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