Emily and Matt

Even though I come from a family who has practically adopted Hawaiian culture as their own, I had no idea Hana existed. Sure, I had heard the phrase “the road to Hana,” but I never knew what it meant. Around every corner (and believe me there were a ton of corners on the long, windy road) there was something beautiful to stop and admire. I understand why our guidebook writer recommended staying there for a week to be able to truly connect with the area.

One thing our handy guidebook showed us was how to get a better view of a popular waterfall. Which involved climbing below the bridge…

Hiking through reddish bamboo flower things… (also seen on our Fern Grotto trip.)

Jumping from rock to rock to rock to rock to rock to… you get the idea.

 

And just look at the payoff! We were bummed we forgot our sandwiches, so just stayed a minute or two to make people jealous and ruin their pictures.

Matt experiencing black sand for the first time.

Matt thought it was funny that I brought a Sprite to the blow hole at the state park. Like I was going to throw away or set it down for these guys to pick up:

Speaking of which, what the heck are these guys? They were cute. But not as cute as our future pet hedgehogs.

The short hike to see the freshwater caves.

The caves were really neat,  but I didn’t get any good pictures of them. Whoopsie.

The Seven Sacred Pools. Our guidebook said a local hotel owner made this up to attract more people to the area. We were warned not to swim because of flash flood dangers. But it started raining so we snapped a couple pictures and jogged back to the car.