Aloha!

Our most recent trip to Maui was a memorable one – filled with amazing views, rainforests, winding roads, and…a garden (we’ll get to that later). Two items that were on our Maui bucket list were the Road to Hāna and the Haleakalā National Park, which are some of Maui’s most iconic experiences.

If you’ve ever heard of the Road to Hāna, you probably know it’s a very unique drive. With over 600 curves and nearly 60 one-lane bridges, it’s as scenic as it is nerve-wracking! The road winds through dense rainforests, coastal cliffs, and hidden waterfalls, and while it definitely keeps you on your toes, the views make every intense turn worth it.

We used the Shaka Guide app to help us navigate the route, and it was a total game-changer. It works offline using GPS and gives you turn-by-turn directions, fun stories, and tips on where to stop — all in real time. It honestly felt like having a friendly local guide in the car with us, making sure we didn’t miss any of the best spots. Thank you, Wai Wai!

Our first stop was Ho‘okipa Beach Park. If you love surfing or watching the pros take on massive waves, then this is a must stop. We aren’t surfers by any means, so we chose to watch the surfers for a few minutes and take photos of the view overlooking the ocean. It was a good time to admire the view and stretch those legs before the long day of driving ahead!

Next, we did some hiking at the Waikamoi Nature Trail. It was a short hike through Maui’s rainforest, as we were surrounded by bamboo trees nearly the whole time. It’s not the most scenic trail, but a great hike early on in the adventure to Hāna. Note that you’ll need to park on a roadside shoulder for this stop, so if it’s full, you aren’t missing out on much by skipping it.

If you do one thing on the Road to Hāna, stop at Aunty Sandy’s Banana Bread! It’s famous for a reason. However, please note they are closed on Sunday’s. We were originally going to do the Road to Hana on Sunday but changed our plans around because we couldn’t miss Aunt Sandy’s! The loaf comes out pipping hot, which is our new favorite way to eat banana bread. People say to get the side of butter with it, however we did not because it doesn’t need it! We ended up bringing it back to Wisconsin with us and a week later it’s still as soft and flavorful as when we first bought it. Pro tip, they also had chocolate chip cookies they were selling and those were just as yummy! They were thick and gooey, just the way we like it! The bread was $10 per loaf and they accept cash or card. The cookie was about $5.

Then came the Kahanu Garden…which, let’s just say, was not what we expected. We were picturing a colorful botanical paradise, but it turned out to be more of an open field with a few historical sites scattered around. Definitely not a must-stop, but we had a good laugh about it afterward — sometimes the unexpected stops make the best stories! Beware there is an $18 per person fee for this stop. Seeing as though we stopped for 1 minute, they got a great return on our investment.

If you do want to see a beautiful garden, one we wish we stopped at was the Garden of Eden Arboretum. We skipped this stop but looked at pictures afterwards and we regret skipping it!

Along the way, we pulled over at a few waterfalls and overlooks. The overlooks were stunning, but the waterfalls were a bit underwhelming. Maybe our expectations of towering, powerful waterfalls were too high because the waterfalls we saw were small and nearly trickling water. The Shaka app told us that some waterfalls may dry up from the Summer. We went in October, so that could be why they weren’t as powerful. Nonetheless it was cool to drive through and see multiple waterfalls along the way.

Our final stop before we turned around and made the 2 and a half ride back was the one we were most excited for – Haleakalā National Park! This park has a few Banyan trees similar to the one in the slideshow of photos below. It also is home to the seven sacred pools which features more waterfalls and beautiful scenery. We arrived at the National Park around 3PM, so we had to make our time shorter than we wanted in order to get back through the road from Hāna before dark. We only had time to hike a couple of trails, but overall was a great National Park for hiking. However, this was our second National Park we have been to (Acadia National Park in Maine being the other one), and we prefer Acadia over this one. We do want to come back and spend more time at Haleakalā to give it more of a fair chance! Due to the government shutdown at the time, we were not able to get our National Park stamp so we were incredibly bummed! However, we did get free admission into the Park which made up for the Garden mishap mentioned above.

Overall, the road to Hāna had it’s moments of nerve-wracking turns and underwhelming stops, but is totally worth it if you haven’t done it before. Here are a couple of tips that we learned from our trip:

1. If you plan to make the drive back from Hāna on the same day, we would recommend leaving before 8AM at the latest if you want to make frequent stops and make it back before dark.
2. If you want to spend a lot of time at the National Park, we’d recommend skipping most of the stops unless there are certain ones you really want to check out.
3. Don’t get too cocky with the turns on the ride back! You start to get more comfortable, but go slow because there are many blind turns.
4. Most importantly, have fun! Although the drive can be stressful, it is very fun. Make sure to stop by a local vendor on the ride back to get a “Road to Hana Survivor” shirt!

Mahalo! David and Emma