VACATION! Sorta.

David and I finally made it on an excursion to one of the other islands! Just in time, as I was leaving less than a month later.

We went at the end of April, so we were starting to feel the cash crunch of our huge moving costs back to Texas. However, we still really wanted to make it to Maui.

Solution? CAMPING.

Ha. You know it got interesting.

Adventure #1 was figuring out how to fit all our clothes, sleeping bags, pillows, and tent into two pieces of luggage. Yowza.

But we made it, and with extreme sleepiness, we picked up our rental car at 8:30 am. We needed some supplies and our camping permits, and not a whole lot is open this early on Maui. Except Krispy Kreme! muaha haha. I smelled a side trip.

Buoyed by fat and sugar, we went to the county office to get our permits for 2 nights of camping on the other side of the island. If you've never been to Maui, we were staying in the southern, less populated areas. I think the island could be divided up into the following regions:

• South/Hana: Hardly Anybody
• Haleakala/East slope: Absolutely No One
• Wailea: Rich Tourists/Retirees
• Lahaina: Everyone else

We were planning on spending our first two nights in the 'Practically Alone' areas. So imagine our delight when the ranger who was selling us our permits told us that they expected flash flooding on the south part of the island for the next 3 days. Joy! Our Vacation. I had wonderful mental images of being washed out to sea, or off a cliff. Perhaps both.

One of our planned campsites required 4x4 to access it, and it was a pain in the rear to guarantee a car rental equipped with it. I was so pleased that the correct car was waiting for us! Naturally, 10 minutes later when our 'check engine' and 'wrench next to crazy squiggly road sign' came on, I was suddenly less than pleased. So, we returned to Alamo and exchanged it for a non-death trap version. Perhaps 10 minutes after that, I realized that I had left our digital camera and video camera IN THE CONSOLE OF THE BROKEN CAR. Whoops. Back to Alamo!

This is me in front of Alamo, flashing the '3rd time!' sign. Cuz I'm cool like that.

We finally pulled away in a working vehicle with all our possessions and were ready to start vacation. Except you know it is never that easy with us. Care to guess what happens next?

a) It starts raining with the windows down, instantly turning the car into Eau de Wet Weasel
b) Tiffany twists her ankle on the dashboard
c) We wreck the car in slow-mo 10 minutes later and no we didn't get the insurance

scroll down.....

If you guessed C, you are sensing a vacation trend! Oh yes, there was some twisting metal.

Ok, not quite twisting metal, more like denting metal. No, I wasn't driving - you men can stop with the 'women drivers' thing right now.

David was actually driving, and we were trying to pull into a parking space. Neither of us even realized we were destroying the car next to us until it was almost over. Which I find insane. Those of you who have been in wrecks know that they are NOISY and cars are very SOLID. Somehow we managed to silently scrape the entire side of the compact below without feeling or hearing anything. It was kind of nuts. What is that car made of, aluminum!? We had no idea anything was going on until David dinked the side-view mirror of the other car. I was like, "David!" coupled with the disapproving Spouse glare/glance. Then I got out of the car and saw some serious badness.

Holy crap.

David was immediately superbly depressed. He went into the store while I moved the car and left a note on the windshield of the demolished one. I found him moping in the chips aisle. I can't blame him. I would be moping+crying, so at least he can hold it together. But we were going to have a Nice Vacation, damn it, so there was much cheering up and downplaying of the event. Our car just had a big scratch, so way to go Detroit! That thing was a beast. (Or some kind of Chevy)

It was only 11 am, and already I was ready for a nap. Alas, we only had 7 hours to get to our camping spot at Wainapanapa Bay! The road to Hana awaited us.

For those of you who don't know, the Road to Hana is this extremely windy, narrow road that threatens to plunge you to your doom about every 20 seconds. Also, there are lots of pretty waterfalls.

And I mean LOTS. Like, dozens. David and I have already kind of been played out on waterfalls from living on Oahu, so it was less spectacular than I remembered. Also, back then I wasn't the one playing chicken on the one-lane bridges when you can't see the other side. Fun! The constant drizzle was not helping.

The bebes!

This is the what the road is like - 3-4 hours of driving at 13 mph behind the retired senior citizens in the front who are about to bust out of their Depends.

One of the many waterfalls. No, I'm not looking up which one it is. Check the comments - that's what Courtney is for. Also, she is good at pointing out my many grammatical errors. :)

I love this picture, because this is the epitome of our entire drive. Twisty badness. I actually got nauseous, even though I was staring at the road the whole time.

We stopped and went down a side road to escape the insanity for a minute. It was very tranquil.

More falls... yawn.

David contemplating the tree reaching down to grab him

At the end of the road. Approx. 1 1/2 seconds before I snapped this pic, I slipped and fell, narrowly escaping ankle issues.

To get to the point to see the coast, you have to cross a bridge. Which, if you have amazing eyesight and can read the sign, has been condemned. It says things like 'Caution!' and 'Unsafe!' Judging from our luck so far on this vacation, we should have probably turned around. Did we? Ha! Of course not! Common sense? Me? Please.

I understand our insurance is pretty good.

Along the road before Hana there is this ADORABLE little cafe place. We picked up some homemade pineapple coconut bread, which was stupendous. When we got in the car and I remarked that it would be great for breakfast, David looked at me dumbfounded. It was gone 5 minutes later.



Little fruit and flower stands are set up all along the road. What is so extraordinary about them is that they are all unmanned, relying instead on the honor system. This amazes me, because it must actually work for there to be so many of them. Our society hasn't completely degraded in all parts, apparently. I thought they were adorable.

We made it to the campsite early, and thought we'd check it out before continuing on around the coast. This is Wainapanapa, a black sand beach with a neat cave.

Cave, duh.

Black 'Sand' Beach. Sand = Small Rocks

Do you see this? This is an atrocity. Freaking Hawaii and random things being stupid expensive. I mean, this is a CAMPSITE. We are obviously not made of money. I overreacted a bit, but I don't think the machine took it too hard.

Actually, this is a theme with us. For whatever reason, David loves to have coke on vacation. As in he MUST have it, forget the cost. Once, we ended up paying $15 for a coke in a restaurant.

True story.

David's little coke problem is going to bankrupt us.

Ha ha!

Ahem. Anyway!

Enough dilly-dallying! As we rounded the bottom of the island, the sun came out, FINALLY. Thank you, nature! It was much prettier .

This whole area is very pastoral - lots of open fields and cows, hardly any people.

We finally made it to the Seven Sacred Pools - which, actually, aren't sacred. It's actually called Oheo Gulch, but the guy who owned the land around it wanted tourists to come, so he gave it a cooler-sounding name. Which worked, apparently, because it is a main attraction and is always packed.

The series of waterfalls capped by the old bridge is beautiful, and needed to be captured by a better photographer than I. Oh well, this is what is you get.

David swam to the base of the falls - I cheated and walked along the edge. Which turned out to be a good thing, because David was having some serious issues climbing up out of the water. I was having some serious issues trying not to laugh.


He eventually made it. This is a pretty good pic of us. Way to go Random Camera Guy!

The falls. One of maybe 30 pictures. David kept being startled as I randomly darted off the path to the edge of the cliffs to get new angles. He was probably rightly concerned, given my track record.

Check out the tat.

View from above

After, excited by a guidebook, I made us trespass and tromp through brush to see the 'best sunset ever your life will never be the same'. See below. Pretty, but I'm not having the single tear overwhelmedness that I was expecting. Freaking weather.

David tried to seek Nirvana. It was peaceful, I'll give it that.

As we were driving back towards the campsite, I spent the drive silently looking out the window. I had been so excited to go on vacation, but this just didn't feel like vacation. It was too close to being like home. Even though it was still beautiful, Hawaii had become ordinary for me. It was feeling like we were out on a along weekend or something. I was experiencing an odd mix of feeling sorry for myself and apathy when we drove past an interesting sight.

As you can see from the pictures above, the beautiful countryside slopes steeply towards the sea. Every now and then, a house will be perched on the hillside, usually surrounded by cows. As we flashed past the countryside, I noticed a house with floor to ceiling windows, looking out at the hazy sunset over the ocean. It was a picturesque setting.

Then I looked inside.

Sitting in a chair, facing away from the wall of windows looking out on the ocean, was a man - his eyes glued to the television before him. I saw this and laughed a bit, and then felt quietly sorry for the both of us, who have apparently lost our child-like delight and appreciation for the beauty around us.

After this it got dark, and we came to realize that all food places close at 6 pm, for some ungodly reason. We found one tiny mart/gas station place that was still open, and began to scrounge for food. Mainly we came across frozen items, candy, or ancient spam musubi. It was a random assortment. We had no utensils or coolers, so... non perishable with no cooking required was needed. In the end, we ended up eating pita chips with hummus for dinner. Really.

Here is the view from our tent:

The ocean is so close! You know what else is so close?!

After we finished pitching the tent happily climbed inside and eagerly looked out the window to check out our view. What do you think I saw? Ocean? Palm Trees? No. I saw this sign.

Um, what?! We're sleeping next to a cemetary? No, practically on TOP of a cemetary? Are you kidding me?! I confronted David with this small dilemma, and was informed that moving the tent was not an option.

Later in the evening, the walk to the bathroom in the pitch black was fun, because inside I'm really 7 years old, not 27. Additionally, my teeth-brushing that night was punctuated by brief bouts of insanity with a side of seizures. It was not my best moment. The lights (as it quickly became apparent) would only come on when activated by a motion sensor. Teeth brushing doesn't exactly raise your heart rate. So, when they switched off due to my inactivity, I proceeded to have a coronary and flail about, trying to get them to come back on before I got eaten by a hawaiian zombie. There was toothpaste in my eyebrows.

Morning tent-face. His is pretty cute. You will notice there are no pictures of me.

Our tent!

In the morning before we left, we headed down to some really pretty freshwater caves in some grottos nearby. I vaguely remember the story connected to the caves - basically a queen ran away from her abusive husband, and hid in the caves. The king could not find her, but then he saw the reflection of her servant's feather fan in the freshwater pools of the caves where she was hiding, and so he found her and killed her. The Hawaiians have all kinds of heartwarming stories just like this one. The water probably turns 'red' at sunset or something. I'm not sure what we're supposed to take away from this. Aren't all the boring stories your parents tell you supposed to have some moral or something? Perhaps we shouldn't be too lazy to fan ourselves or something?


Bad story aside, it was really pretty. The light coming in through the plants was so green. The whole place was bathed in a verdant glow.

This is a spider lily. I love them, for some reason. I think it's because the whole plant is so beautiful, yet unmistakably droopy. I like the juxtaposition.

Down to the caves

After that little interlude, we had to drive back up the road to Hana, once again in the rain. David was frightened.

After all, he was in the hands of a crazy woman driver. In response, I asked who wrecked the car yesterday, and was rewarded wth some lovely silence.


Day 1 - Hana - Complete. Ahead: Running for our lives, we think.