Maui

The Hāna Highway is a 64.4-mile long stretch of Hawaii Routes 36 and 360 which connects Kahului with the town of Hāna in east Maui.  Although Hāna is only about 52 miles from Kahului, it takes about 2.5 hours to drive when no stops are made as the highway is very winding and narrow and passes over 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane wide.There are approximately 620 curves along Route virtually all of it through lush, tropical rainforest. Many of the concrete and steel bridges date back to 1910 and all but one are still in use.

 I will not mention any names but one of us typed in Road to Hana Adventure into the GPS and we ended up on the other side of the Island in front of someones house.  It took us almost an hour away from where we were supposed to begin.  We were a whole 5 minutes from the beginning of the Road to Hana when we got off the ship.  Our silly Gypsy program we bought will not start until we get to a certain point and if I would have read the rest of the instructions I would have found out he told me the destination to put in to get the program going.  I went with the philosiphy that it is about the Journey and not the destination for this mistake.  Also used the good ole this is how memories are made.  Lucky for me everyone was just happy to be out cruisin' in Maui in our convertible Mustang.

This is how Thelma and Louise passed the time on our extra tour on the Road to Hana

Paia Lookout

 Surfer

 wind surfing has become very popular

Turtles basking in the sun on the beach. 

 This is the lady who made Brenda and Mackenzie's bracelets

One of the 59 bridges we crossed

We do not follow rules very well.  Notice the sign says this table is reserved.

 This was our trusty steed for the "Road to Hana"

Today was exciting and scary.  We booked the Sunrise bike ride tour with Maui Downhill Riders.  

We started off our day at 1:30 am.  We were picked up outside of the boat at 2:15  and taken to the Maui Downhill Riders office to get fitted for clothes and helmets and were given doughnuts and coffee.  Once everyone was fitted we got into the bus and road to the top of Mount Haleakala - "The house of the Sun"  Our viewpoint for sunrise was at the visitors center along the rail at the backside at the elevation of 9,740 ft.  It was a chilly 39 degrees up there.  We had choice of spots to stand we were among the first groups to arrive on top of the mountain.

"In ancient times the Kahuna po`o (high priests) knew the value of Haleakala as a place to view the planets and the stars, and as a place for meditation and receiving spiritual wisdom. Haleakala is a sacred place and must be treated with respect." - Kahu Charles Kauluwehi Maxwell Sr.

As the sun was rising we heard chanting.  I now believe this is what we were hearing. It is called the Mele Oli.

E ala e Ka la i kahikina

I ka moana
Ka moana hohonu
Pi’i ka lewa
Ka lewa nu’u
I kahikina
Aia ka la.
E ala e!

Translation

Awaken/Arise

The sun in the east
From the ocean
The ocean deep
Climbing (to) the heaven
The heaven highest
In the east
There is the sun
Awake

 You can imagine the Kahuna chanting this hundreds of years ago. Paying their respects to the gods.

 Truly a blessing to have the opportunity to experience this. Absolutely gorgeous view. Something I hope to never forget! Breathtaking!!!!

It was not until after the sunrise that we realized how many of us idiots were on top of the mountain at the butt crack of dawn.

 Maui Space Surveillance Complex - at this complex it tracks and identifies all man made objects in orbit, currently more than 8000 in orbit. 

Now the fear kicks in we are going to ride the bike down the side of the mountain.  Glad we all said a little prayer while we watched the sunrise.  One of us heard all kinds of horror stories of people going off the side of the mountain and getting hit by cars and was extremely worried about not being on a bicycle  for a long time and continued to show me all the way up until the day we left about how this was not for novice bike riders.  I will not mention any names but those of you reading this will know who it was.  Mrs. Worry wart.

Our bicycle safari begins at 6500 foot elevation, we will start our descent down the world's largest resting volcano. We coast through 21 switchbacks on our silver stallions, while enjoying views of the central valley and the West Maui Mountains.  We had a short lesson on hand signals for riding on the way down. Then we each had to take a quick bike riding "test" prior to our descent down.  We all passed with flying colors.

This is our crew with one of the Silver Stallions we rode down the mountain.

Mt. Haleakala is also the nesting area for the Hawaiian state bird the NeNe Goose.

We only seen one Nene while we were on Mount Haleakala and it wasn't the goose.