The Duluth Marshak Great Blog: 2011

Saturday, December 3, 2011

How We Spent Our Morning

Incidentally, Jeana was WAY better than me at this, though in my defense I did not cut my ankles open on coral like she did...

Photos from the Drive to Hana (aka Nowhere)

2 Miles in the Sand...

... feels like four. Wow, I would really get some killer calves if I could do this every day.

More Pics Later

We have to download our pics from yesterday, but in the meantime, one more action shot from ziplining!

So they say one of the great things to do in Maui is drive the twisty Road to Hana on the east end of the island. Over 600 hairpin turns and over 50 bridges, almost all of them one-car wide, with much of the road bordering sea cliffs or deep canyons cut by lava flows.

OK, the terrain is pretty cool. But it takes 2 1/2 hours to drive 50 miles (you can't go much more than 20 mph most of the way because it's so twisty). But we were OK with that, believe me.

Unfortunately, we also figured that at the end of the Road to Hana, we would find... well, Hana. We knew Hana wasn't much. But essentially, think of Stratford with no restuarants except a bunch of roadside food stands that closed at 4:30 (which totally sucks when you come in to Hana at 5 PM). There was a general store (Davel's), a gas station, and a community center. And we drove around for a good half-hour thinking we just must have missed the rest of the town. Nope. Not even a diner that might be open to serve dinner to all of these hungry hordes who make the trip to Hana every day. What the heck?

We had made last-minute reservations and what sounded like a quaint tree house but in fact was the campsite from Deliverance. OK, it wasn't that bad, but we had to hike up a quarter-mile hill in the mud to get to it, and I'm sorry... I can rough it, but after 2 1/2 hours in the car, I did not need a mud slog in Tevas up the same hill Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner slid down in Romancing the Stone.

So we turned around and did the Road From Hana in the dark back home. Maybe I'm spoiled. I actually was not that upset about our lodgings, but if I'm going to drive 2 1/2 hours on a rain-soaked highway of death so I can get up at 6 AM and watch a legendary sunrise on the beach, I'd at least like to be able to sit down at a nice cafe for breakfast afterward, instead of a Snickers bar from the Hana Pump and Munch. That's all I want. I don't think that's asking too much.

I suppose the average Hawaiian would think we were crazy, but hey, we're Minnesotans, we've driven in the dark in a blizzard. And besides, now we have all day tomorrow to have real fun, instead of try to figure out where the hell we were going to have breakfast after we mud slid off the mountain we were on...

Wednesday, November 30, 2011

How's your Hawaiian pronunciation?

Hotel Where the Conference Is

Ziplining in Maui

So Jeana and I spent the morning on a Zipline tour of the canyons inland from Lahaina. Pretty fun, boys would love it (but they're not old enough yet... one clueless woman managed to get herself stuck halfway, I was hoping there was some sort of pole that would reach out and grab her, subjecting her to public humiliation, but the guide just shimmied out an got her). Video below..

Zip lining across from Lanai

View from our Hotel RoomT

That's Kauai across the ocean, beach is front of us. Can't see much reason to leave the hotel right now. Actually, we are going ziplining in about an hour.