For our first full day of the trip, we got up early, ate some Costco muffins {such a delicious vacation delicacy}, and jammed ourselves in the minivan.  Anyone vacationing to Maui knows that they can't skip out of the Road to Hana, so that's precisely what we spent the day doing.
  People are always singing about how life is "about the journey," and this was a perfect example to make that true.  Although Hana itself was small and simply, it was the drive itself-- looking out the window, listening to Selena Gomez's Star Dance album-- and taking the little stops along the road that made the experience one of the best of the entire trip.
  It started with the city melting into more wilderness.  On one side lay the sapphire sea and on the other the emerald land, which then scrunched up into densely-forested mountains.  We all took medicine beforehand to prevent carsickness {except Rachel, who refuses to swallow pills} because the road was extremely windy and pathetically-railed and often one-lane.  After an hour, hour first stop was a tiny village with a centuries-old church and black volcanic rock strewn with crabs and sea snails.
We kept driving.  On vacation you are always hungry for something exotic, so we stopped at a rustic shack for coconut-pineapple bread, Cuban bananas and dried coconut candy.   The shack filled with hundreds of pictures on every wall of tourists who had stopped by.  The lady was sweet like the treats she sold, even if her kitten jumped up and snatched Eric's bread.
  While driving through another village, all of a sudden one of the kids shouted "Look! A HORSE!" The other kids all got excited, until someone older moaned, "Are you kidding me?  That's a dog."  And as if this wasn't enough, a few hours later Adam gasped, "A bear!  Look!  A bear!"  Olivia chimed in, "Oh my goodness it's a bear!"  All the kids started shouting, despite mom trying to tell them that bears don't live on the island.  They ignored that fact.  Until one of the older people once again pointed out the flaw in their argument:  "Uhhh... That would be a cow."  We didn't let that one go the rest of trip, yelling out "Look!  A herd of bears!" every time we saw some cows.

  One stop we knew would be pretty important was the black sand beach.  One of my first memories was when I was two, picking up a handful of the strange black substance and not being able to get it off my hands {apparently I resorted to sticking it in my mouth, though I don't remember that}.  It was a lovely place-- the sand that sifted between our toes was the product of thousands of years of volcanic rock being dashed to bits by stunningly blue waves.  We hiked around and found a gorgeous view where the water tumbled into the side of the black cliff and exploded in a high spray of blue mist, where distant mountains faded into the background.  The kids couldn't get enough of the water and were delighted at the sight of crabs camouflaged in the rocks.  By chance I even found a huge cavern; though it looked like just a little hole in the side of a hill, when you ducked inside the ceiling rose and the place extended to the water out the other side.
   One of my mom's favorite stops from our last trip was the Seven Sacred Pools, so we crossed our fingers we could visit.  Crossed fingers doesn't work though-- this famous landmark was still victim of the stupid government shutdown.  Ughhhh.  The ironic thing was, despite the fact that almost no one supervises the place when it's open, there were several people being paid to make sure no one got it.  Oh well.  We stopped for a picnic at the side of a little church and also visited the grave of Charles Lindbergh, a man revolutionary in the aviary world.
  Then we saw a little path from a tiny opening in a fence and decided to be adventurous explorers.  We squeezed through and found people cliffjumping.  Jackpot!  I felt like such a wuss having to be lured into jumping, but my brother was jumping from 45 feet with this guy we found out was a trapese artist.  Crazy right?  I did jump 35 feet after a while and it turned out fun and didn't kill me by hitting rocks or something as my brain expected.  The kids did flips and yelled animal noises such as "Cockadoodle-meow!" {???}

We didn't get to the hotel till dark.  The way back seemed longer despite the fact that we didn't take any stops like the way up, but maybe that's just because we were so sad to leave.  But seriously, even though my lame descriptions must have dulled the heck out of the story, it was honestly one of the most fun days my family has ever spent together.