The Road to Hana

After the wedding, we had a delayed honeymoon. Taking a little over a month to regroup, get our heads on straight, and process the entire wedding was honestly the healthiest thing I think we could have done! It also gave us time to really build excitement for our honeymoon: HAWAII!

We took so many adventures, but Hana was the ultimate. There's a really exciting rush when you know you're in for a great road trip, but you have no idea what could possibly happen. That's how I felt when we got in the Jeep for our Road to Hana day!

Ho'okipa Beach, overlooking the western side of Maui.

As all of the locals, legends (and even guidebooks) say: The Road to Hana is in the journey. Throughout our week, we asked locals, shopkeepers, and even our Uber drivers for advice on the road to Hana. All of them echoed, "don't rush it! Enjoy it!"

With Hana, I won't even bore you with mile posts, the names of the places we stopped, or my "must sees." Hana is different for everyone. It is so legendary, it truly deserves to remain a mystery in most ways...you could spend days exploring the stops along the road alone. We rented a Jeep (S named it 'The Arctic Cat!') and took our goooood old time. We truly adventured, and got our feet a little wet - no pun intended. Exploring was so much fun, exhilarating, and yes there were some moments where I was clenching my jaw. Those hairpin turns are NO joke!

When it came to planning, I thought we had done a fantastic job of adventuring spontaneously, and also mixing in planned stops. I went with an awesome guidebook and bookmarked a bunch of stops, but realistically with the crowds and limited parking we only stopped at a few of my pre-picked places. That is where the fun started, though! Because we started early (also a must) we eventually beat all of the crowds and got to explore places that we didn't even know about.

our jeep - the "arctic cat," named by s :)

Of all the sights on the road to Hana, these are the ones I will remember: the lush grasses and bamboos and leaves; the water trickling down the hairpin turns on the road, undoubtedly the runoff from babbling waterfalls; the dashes of blue ocean in the distance; overlooks with old early 20th century bridges (1911). The cliffs teeming with wild sprouting bamboo; the pride I felt after completing the most demanding (and epic!) hike of my life with S.

Magic!