This page contains pictures of TWO different trips that we took.

• North, then around the island.

• The world-famous Hana Highway.

We took a nice drive north from Napili around to the east side of the island. Our destination was the Nakalele blow hole.

Here is the route:

The red dot on the left is where we started.

The red dot at the top is the Nakalele Blow Hole.

The green B marker is Julia's.

Popup the big map.

Honolua bay, just north of Kapalua.  I have no idea why, but Jamie and June couldn't stop laughing at this picture.

The Nakale blow hole. The hike down was not simple, but we drove an hour or so to get there, so what the hell. Apparently the tide plays a big part in how often the blowhole spouts, and at this time, the spouting was rare. But June patiently trained her camera on the spot and finally it paid dividends.

Check out the hour-long video of the 5 seconds of spouting. Just kidding..June pruned this down to the bare 40 second minimum.

Having come this far, we decided to proceed further on our adventure. We had been seeing signs of Julia's banana bread, the best on the planet. How could we NOT check it out!

At a beautiful lookout was parked this strange, not-so-mobile school bus serving authentic Hawaiian delicacies. Of course, shave ice was on the menu.

Here is the view from the overlook, a magnificent little cove with a village.

As we quickly found out, the road turns a bit hairy here. The road going down to the cove is a lot like the road going up the other side, viewable in this shot.

We made it to the other side, and found this little stand: Julia's. When you pitch "the best banana bread on the planet" for 10 miles or so, it better be DAMNED GOOD!

It was good, very similar to other banana breads I have had. June says the coconut candy was better. The crabby girl tending the stand out in the middle of nowhere, advised us to continue south instead of going back on the harrowing one-lane road.

We decided it would have taken much longer, so we went back and this time took a picture. Notice the school bus in the red circle on the top of this picture.

Here is the one-lane road with a cliff on the right, about a quarter mile going back down into the village, then another back up to the school bus. We realized the best thing to do is to wait here until we didn't see any new cars going down the other side. Then we could be pretty sure there were no cars coming up. If we were to encounter another car, pulling over was impossible, and backing up would have been VERY scary. Notice the white knuckle grip on the wheel.

A - the town of Paia.

B - the Keanae peninsula

The cute little town of Paia, the last town before the Hana highway. This guy is making shave ice. It really looks just like a drill press turning the ice over a big razor blade. Then you get to pick the color of the sugar liquid he pours over the top.  Yippee!

Puohokamoa Falls. the ONLY waterfall we saw on the road to Hana. And we finally saw it on the way back. The book that we had was incorrect in the mileage, and it was not visible from the road. We really lucked out to find this one.

We hiked in a piece off the Hana Hwy to the Keanae arboretum. Jamie checking out these beautiful and very unusual Painted Bark Eucalyptus Trees. Here is a close up of the bark.

We ended our Hana Hwy journey and turned around at Keanae peninsula. Normally there would be 'stunning views' of Haleakala, but it was too foggy on the mountain that day.

On the way back, just short of Paia, we stopped at Hookipa beach park to watch surfers from an overlook very crowded with tourists.

This guy was taking advantage of the situation at the overlook by selling fresh coconut milk. He would very proficiently hack off the top of the coconut with the machete. Nobody argued over the exorbitant price he would charge.

And to top it all off, we had dinner one evening with Brandon and Moye at Mama's Fish House in Paia. This is some sort of dessert Oyster thingy. It was actually a lilikoi (passion fruit) mousse surrounded in chocolate in a pastry seashell, so says June.

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