The Road to Hana

The Road to Hana may be one of the most beautiful drives in the world. I love checking it off my list, since another of the most beautiful drives, the Icefield Parkway between Banff and Jasper, is something we've already checked off.

The road to Hana is a tiny highway crossing 59 bridges, most being one lane. The road winds around tight turns making it slow going and not at all enjoyable for people sitting in the backseat.

We decided to only go as far as we felt comfortable with, knowing that we'd have to turn around and drive back the way we came, creeping along slowly the entire way.

Our first stop, at 6.5 miles, was the incredible bamboo forest. E and I adore bamboo and loved exploring Japanese forests when we spent our time in Kyoto. The neat thing about this forest was it was literally just bamboo. Nothing else grew there, and the bamboo was thick and tall. Such an incredible place to hike.

We took a ton of pictures because every single spot was prettier than the last. 

If you continue hiking past this river you'll get to a waterfall, but fording the river was a little much for us with two small kids and our cameras. But we did get a few minutes to play in the perfectly warm river water before moving on.

Our next stop on the highway was Haipua'ena Falls. The fact that it had been raining quite a bit meant that we couldn't swim, which was a huge bummer because I adore to swim in falls.

The rocks were slippery with rain water and the falls were raging.

James and I left E and Juliet behind as we climbed higher up above the falls.

Huge orange blossoms had fallen into rain puddles within the rocks. The reflections and flowers made it almost look fake it was so beautiful.

This waterfall lover was diggin' it.

We tried to stop at a few more places, hoping for a swim, but each spot wasn't swimmable due to the huge amount of rain and flash floods. So instead we finished our drive at Ka'anae Peninsula where we got a fresh fruit smoothy and fresh banana bread at Aunty Sandy's.

While we devoured warm banana bread we watched the waves crash on the lava rocks along the shore.

The waves were huge and the enormous splashes were well received by everyone in our party.

Particularly this guy, who was loving the rough sea. 

These two are thick as thieves. Always.

Our last stop before turning around was at the 19.5 mile mark, the Three Bears Falls. The falls were raging and everyone was happy we didn't turn around before then. Road to Hana should not be missed. We loved it.