On the Road Again, Hawaii: Part 4

Haleakala volcano summit at sunset (Photos by Bonnie Schupp)

From sea to summit,

the Island of Maui

was totally wowie!

Super start to a super visit

We flew from the Big Island to Maui on Super Bowl Sunday, and I wasn't expecting to see much of the big game -- especially since game time in Hawaii's time zone was in mid-afternoon.

Our first stop, for two nights, was a stay with fellow members of the international peace organization Servas, in which Bonnie and I have been members of the U.S. chapter for our nearly four decades together. Founded by idealists in 1949, and recognized by the United Nations, Servas International has some 15,000 member households in more than 100 nations and provides an organizational link for traveler members from across much of the planet to meet and stay for free with host members for a minimum of two nights. The goal is to foster friendships across borders and encourage peace on a personal basis... and allows for hosts to travel within their own countries as well.

Hawaii has just two host families, and only one of them was accepting visitors -- which in a popular tourist destination like Maui can overwhelm them with requests. So we felt fortunate to get an affirmative response from Barry and Renee, whose unusually-designed home is located on a hillside near the town of Kihei with a distant view of the Pacific Ocean. Barry built much of the structure, and they reside on its upper floor whose centerpiece is a huge round living room under a domed ceiling.

Renee arranged to meet us at a restaurant in the town of Haiku, where she was having lunch with a group of Friends (with a capital 'F') after their Sunday morning Quaker meeting. Barry was heading to what I anticipated as a small community arts center where the football game between the New England Patriots and Los Angeles Rams was to be shown on a large screen. We all headed there after lunch, and small it wasn't.

Halftime show, live

Barry was watching the game inside a large, and plush, air-conditioned movie theater, and I joined him while Bonnie and Renee headed to a center art gallery to view an exhibit. At halftime, I went outside to find them and encountered a crowd of hundreds seated at tables under an even-larger screen, and a Hawaiian band performing live music under the muted projection of the show from the football game venue in Atlanta. The outside crowd was a lot louder than the insiders during the second-half action.

A snippet of action

As the Patriots finally took command of the low-scoring game in the final minutes, Bonnie and I left ahead of the crowd to escape the packed parking lot and find our hosts' home about half an hour away.

 We spent part of the evening getting to know each other over a dinner of eggplant parmesan prepared by Renee, and shared on their deck overlooking the hillside of homes down to the Pacific. (Our hosts are vegetarians... but we endured just fine!) Retirees now, Renee and Barry first met two decades ago at the local university, where he was a counselor and she had been hired to teach literature. 

Renee and Barry

We made a quick drive to check out a monthly first-Sunday sunset celebration on a beach close to 10 miles away. We enjoyed our first Maui sunset from a wide strip of sand known as Big Beach, but never got to the continuing revel on the almost-adjoining Little Beach. We could hear the distant drumming, but getting there required a risky climb up a darkening dirt and lava rock path to reach the beach on the other side of a steep divide. Some folks were leaving, though, and as we walked back toward the parking area could not help but notice their throwback attire so reminiscent of the Hippie era  of the early 1970s.

Chirpers near the deck: Java sparrows and a lovebird

The next morning, we had more time to enjoy our surroundings -- the property of close to an acre full of tropical foliage and fruit trees, and the chirping of dozens of birds, mostly java sparrows, attracted by the bountiful feeders hanging next to the upper porch deck... barely out of reach of their interested cat and indifferent dog.  Gary and Renee used to live downstairs, and built the upper area for parents now gone. So the lower area is rented, and a separate cottage is home to their son, his partner and her young son.

 The parents had bought the property many years ago,  obviously a good investment. A neighboring house was on the market... its asking price recently reduced, but still more than $1.5 million.

Later in the day, we drove further south beyond Big Beach and past several pricey oceanfront resorts, to the end of oceanside Makena Road in Wailea, to check out the historic Keawala'i Congregational Church, built of lava stone and wood in 1856 -- which replaced a grass structure built two decades earlier.

The church was locked, but a gentleman doing paperwork in its office cottage -- the church music director -- opened its doors so we could get inside. The adjoining cemetery was fascinating -- many of the stones bearing photographs of the graves' occupants. Some of the remaining white blossoms of otherwise winter-bare plumeria trees had fluttered down and adorned the gravesites.

After photo session on the beach, a quickie near the church.

 A sign warns visitors that beach access is not allowed from the church grounds, but about 150 yards further at the end of the road  is a small, scenic public beach popular for weddings and romantic photo shoots... one of which had just ended.

Tricky drive at wildlife refuge

Kealia Pond National Wildlife Refuge, along the road between the airport and Kihei, attracted our interest. But the migratory season seemed to have ended, and there was more mud to see and trying to avoid in walking around its ponds and salt marshes than birds to admire. Even the narrow road looked tricky, but fortunately the water flowing across it was only about hubcap deep.

So many beaches, so little time... naturally, our next stop would be another, at Ho'okipa Beach State Park -- one we had passed the day before on the road to Haiku, where windsurfers play in the waves. But the best thing we found there was a couple of sunbathers near the end of the sand strip, a giant sea turtle and an endangered Hawaiian monk seal.

Sunbathers at Ho'okipa beach

The lifeguard on duty had put out signs saying the seal was not sick or dead, only sleeping, and not to disturb, and used yellow warning tape to cordon off a wide perimeter around the animals.

That evening, we joined Renee for a long sunset walk along the curving paths of a sprawling luxury oceanfront condo, and treated for a carryout dinner for us to bring home and share on our last night together.

Blowing in the (chilly) wind

We moved that Tuesday afternoon to the Maui Seaside Hotel a short distance from the airport, which served as a comfortable base camp for two days of exploration of Maui highlights -- with emphasis on the high.

We drove on Wednesday many miles up a switchback road, hoping, despite increasing cloudiness, to see sunset from the 10,025-foot summit of the long-dormant Haleakala volcano. Bonnie, thanks to the recommendation last year of our friend Kathleen Rutledge in northeastern Colorado, had brought along her bottle of chlorophyll concentrate -- drinking a dose of 18 drops in small bottle of water to improve respiration in the oxygen-thinner air at high altitudes.

About 8,500 feet up, at a roadside viewpoint, I took a cell phone picture of Bonnie standing almost level with the tops of fluffy white clouds. It is one thing to be flying at and above cloud tops in an airplane, but standing there seems magical. (And a little chilly -- and about to get chillier.)

Disclaimer: I took this one.

We reached the parking lot perhaps 50 feet below the summit of Haleakala about 5:30 p.m., nearly an hour before sunset. We had sweatshirts, and I had my all-weather Baltimore Business Journal jacket, but with temperatures dropping toward the mid-40s and a brisk breeze, they were not enough to stand near the summit's edge for long -- and Bonnie realized she had left her down vest in her suitcase. I was offering up my jacket, and to stay in the warm car while Bonnie took photos up top, when a couple from northern Virginia who had parked in the next space came to the rescue. The husband-wife team of serious amateur photographers had brought a car trunk full of camera equipment and sweatshirts, and had extra hoodies to lend.

Haleakala is most famous among photographers for pictures at sunrise, so much so that the National Park Service requires reservations to enter the gates in the early hours before 7 a.m. Our new friends had reservations for sunrise a week earlier and never went, their hopes dampened by an all-day rain. I had asked the ranger at the admission gate about the likelihood of actually seeing sunset, and she allowed as how the sun always sets. (But seeing it can still be subject to the whims of weather.) 

The Haleakala crater is enormous, larger than any we'd seen on the Big Island, with multiple lava cones that have fortunately behaved since about the year 1790.

View from the summit

Despite the wandering clouds, sunset up there turned out spectacularly fine. Photographers and gawkers lined the edge of the summit as the sun dropped to the horizon, and an orange-reddish glow commandeered the sky.

Then came the amusement -- one of the funniest moments witnessed on any of our journeys. Minutes after the 6:25 p.m. sunset, an airport cab SUV arrived at the parking lot, and about half a dozen Chinese tourists jumped out and ran up the summit path carrying cameras. I can only imagine the cab fare they paid for the winding, hours-long ride to the top, only to just miss the most dramatic moments. 

(Worth noting, there was a sunset up there nearly a week later that no one got to witness. A storm system blew across the Hawaiian islands, and access to the road up Haleakala was closed -- because of snow and ice. Hey, this is Hawaii!)

We drove slowly down the volcano mountain in deepening darkness, but there were plenty of taillights to lead the way after the curtains came down on the solar spectacle.

The Road to Hana... and beyond

 On our final full day in Maui, we took on the challenge of the Road to Hana. There's a reason the "road" is named along with the town" -- because it's more about getting there than being there.

I didn't count them all, having been busy steering our rented Nissan Sentra, but an online Maui tours site says the road's 52 miles has 617 hairpin curves and 59 one-lane bridges. And throughout the slow-speed drive (the limit is 25 mph, with cautions and slower speeds for the never-ending curves) are distractions like roadside waterfalls, ocean views, parks and trails... and vendors offering the likes of barbeque, rice and veggies served on a banana leaf, and marvelous loaves of banana bread.

Banana leaf of plenty

At a glance, you figure it's just 52 miles and you can make it there and back in a couple of hours. It took us six hours to reach Hana, and the tough decision on whether to head back the same way or continue around the back side of Haleakala -- a route that includes an eight-mile stretch of rugged dirt, gravel and choppy asphalt pavement. And even the good sections aren't all that good.

Rough road beyond Hana

So, of course we kept on going. As we've long observed on drives along rough (and even nonexistent) roads, "That's what rental cars are for." 

We got back to the seaside hotel well after dark, the adventure having taken a bit more than nine hours to complete. We missed lots of sights along the way... including hiking trails, some of them quite muddy -- and we missed finding the grave of Charles Lindbergh. (Have to wonder, when he visited here in life, to this place that brought him peace, whether he drove or flew.)

It was time to wash and dry a load of clothing in the hotel laundry room -- a bargain at $1.50 for each machine, although the job needed two wash loads and two rounds of the dryer -- and repack for a noontime hop to our third island of the journey.

Next chapter teaser: Almost blown away on Kauai

 

Road report, Part 10 (Amazing Turns)

Detours can turn up

some crazy encounters

That bastard Lincoln!

Often for us, the best moments on a road trip are unplanned – and so it was yesterday when we turned a corner in Bryson City, North Carolina, and discovered 72-year-old sexologist Richard Allison pedaling an exercise bike in the bed of a red pickup truck.

Bet that got your attention, too.

It was, in fact, a crazy day from start to finish – also featuring the formerly drug-addicted counter woman at a two-bit Chinese restaurant grappling with religious concerns, and a vision of beauty in a sunless sunset at the top of the Smokies.

And who would have guessed that Abraham Lincoln might have been a real bastard?

We’ll take it from the start, as we changed direction leaving Cherokee after a night in a Sleep Inn (a chain that moves well south on our list of future choices), and headed away from Great Smoky Mountains National Park so Bonnie could check out photographic possibilities in the town of Murphy for a travel magazine.

The route took us through Bryson City, where Dr. Allison (doctorate in psychology, specializing in sexology, earned at age 70) was pedaling away at a strategically well-traveled intersection while reading a copy of the Smoky Mountain Times in his Dodge Ram 4X4 pickup displaying campaign placards for three local Republican candidates.

We did a double-take passing by, and turned around 100 yards down the road to check him out. And we found that Allison is a Democrat and can’t even vote in North Carolina because of his registration at his other home in Vero Beach, Fla. He just happens to like the folks he was promoting – John Odom for insurance commissioner, Susan Pons for state Senate and Dodie Allen for the House.

“We need more estrogen in the legislature,” Allison said of the women.

And he knows a bit about estrogen. A former elementary school teacher who developed a business in Florida called the Reading Skills and Counseling Center, Allison said his psychologist wife’s work in sexology got him to exploring the field and pursue his doctorate – and enjoying the opportunity to “go to class and talk about sex for six hours.”

“We’re made up of a lot of hormones – men and women hormones,” Allison said.

Well, enough about sex already. I wanted to know about his politics – particularly his leanings in the presidential race. He managed a delicate strip-tease of a dance in avoiding a full-frontal answer, allowing only that he had cast a write-in vote in the Florida primary for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

“Obama would be good – if he turned out to be like Kennedy - in bringing people black and white together. I really believe he could be part of a healing process.... I just hope that this will be a healing process for the United States.”

Somebody call Oprah – gotta turn this Allison fella into the Dr. Phil of politics.

First intermission (rest stop)

We stopped at a roadside rest area, where I did a double-take at a car with a Texas license tag and an Obama sticker in the window. I confronted the 60-something driver as he stepped out, pointed out the contradiction of tag and sticker and asked: “Fleeing Republican country?”

“I’m from Alaska,” he replied. “It’s a rental.”

Palin country, huh? And this guy wearing an Obama T-shirt on a cool, barely 60-degree day.

“It’s winter up there,” he said.

Yeah, I thought, and if Palin wins it’ll be a very long night for the liberal soul.

Second intermission (restaurant stop)

Arriving about 1:50 p.m. in Murphy, we saw a $4.95 Chinese buffet sign near the end of a declining strip of retail stores and decided it would make for a quick lunch stop.

As we sat in a window booth in the tiny restaurant, the young lady behind the counter spoke up, telling us about the two preachers who had been in for lunch shortly before us, and how one of them wanted to cast out a couple from the church because “they were not saved.”

She was greatly bothered by this, questioning how a preacher would want to ban people from the church rather than offer them his religious help and counsel, and rambled on about what happens after you die, and whether there is a heaven and a hell, and what they say heaven is like, and how there’s a room for you and a better place.

She told us she was a mother of five, had come to the area from Texas 10 years ago to help her parents, and how she got into trouble with drugs and only recently managed to overcome addiction with the help of her church and religious beliefs, how she had been hired by the restaurant owner just three weeks earlier (“There are no jobs in this town!”), and how it was her 31st birthday, and she loved watching horror movies.

“You’re from Maryland? Do you know where that movie was filmed?” she asked.

“You mean ‘The Blair Witch Project?”

“Yes, I just love watching that movie.”

“Burkittsville. We’ve been there. It’s a pretty little town.”

Then her husband and a friend stopped by, and the boss arrived so she could leave – her lunch shift ended. I offered her a little advice, to try her best to make herself happy and how that would spill over and help others find happiness. A nice thought, given her relatively bleak life and worries pitting the here-and-now against the hereafter.

She was gone before we got her name.

“You know,” I told Bonnie, “we just met the most ordinary woman on the planet.”

As we were leaving, I told the owner that she was a very nice employee and doubtless would work very hard there. And I thanked him for her presence.

It just wasn’t the kind of place where such things are commonly said. But maybe tomorrow, he’ll see her, remember the words and give her a warm smile.

Memorable Murphy and the Lincoln Myth

The town of Bonnie’s photographic endeavor has a lovely courthouse, with a decorative eagle mounted above the blowing U.S. and North Carolina flags on its soaring rooftop. (The eagle blew off during a deadly 1974 tornado, and was found bent and with bullet holes long after and miles away. This year, the restored bird and the flags were restored to the lofty perch.)

In history, Murphy was a way station for the region’s native Cherokee Indians on their deadly “Trail of Tears” forced march into Oklahoma exile. Some of that unfortunate history is told in the town’s county historical society building just down from the courthouse. It also had some excellent displays including a log cabin constructed of logs from a dismantled early 19th century cabin, an old-fashioned classroom with authentic old desks and other furnishngs, and huge cases with hundreds of children’s dolls dating from more than a century ago to the more modern likes of Princess Di and Dolly Parton.

Across the street was a cemetery chapel donated to a local church well over a century ago by a chap named Harshaw, for whom it is named – and whose walled family plot outside was badly in need of some yard work.

A typed sheet of paper taped inside a window listed a few of the notables resting in the graves, including Abram Enloe – by one account the father of Abraham Lincoln.

Seems that Nancy Hanks was a house servant to the Enloe family and managed to get pregnant. This very much annoyed Mrs. Enloe, who wanted poor Nancy gone. And the story continues that Abram Enloe may have paid Thomas Lincoln to marry her.

The newlyweds then moved away, presumably to Kentucky where Abraham Lincoln was born.

And this is all recounted in the window of a chapel, the narrative concluding: “This has been disputed by many but proven false by none.”

So we bought half a pound of fudge at a corner candy shop and fled.

Smoky Mountain Memories

The side trip to Murphy delayed our planning crossing of the parkway through Great Smoky Mountains National Park until very late afternoon, as clouds began to take over the sky. We had to drive all the way back to Cherokee, and stopped at a few overlook sites along the parkway before turning onto a seven-mile dead-end road up to Clingmans Dome.

“At 6,643 feet, Clingmans Dome is the highest point in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It is the highest point in Tennessee, and the third highest mountain east of the Mississippi,” says the National Park Service’s Web page on the site.

It was also likely the coldest spot in Tennessee or North Carolina at the moment of our arrival – a breezy 41 degrees that was being braved by a good dozen other photographers including a trio who mostly spoke Chinese. (One of them has been in the U.S. for a decade, having had jobs as a sushi chef and delivery man, and lives in Atlanta – and brought his visiting son and a friend to a spot he visits every year to see the autumn spectacle).

They were shooting pictures, as were Bonnie and a line of other photographers waiting on an appearance by a reluctant sun whose presence was only hinted at by brighter patches behind the clouds.

Still, it was beautiful there – the hazy mountain peaks stretched out in panorama, the colors muted by the waning light. And just as Bonnie began packing away the camera and tripod, and my new Chinese friend was walking toward his car, the clouds exploded into a brilliant pink.

It was a stunning sunless sunset.

I wish we could have shared it with our restaurant lass. It was just heavenly.