Balabanova All Over

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I spent a full week on Maui on my 4th trip to Hawaii. By now, I knew to split my time between the different parts of the island to save on driving time. Between the national park, the beaches and the road to Hana, it was easy to fill up 7 days. Although my week in Maui didn’t turn out exactly as planned because of bad weather on Haleakala, I managed to… Read More

[West Maui, HI, Nov 24, 2022] For my 5th day on Maui, I planned on taking a tour of the west side of the island. The towns of Kaanapali and Lahaina are the most popular and are home to most of the resorts on the island. But I planned on taking the scenic route there, starting with a hike on Waihee Ridge (A on the map below), then continuing on another precarious… Read More

[Hana, Haleakala National Park & Kihei, HI, Nov 23, 2022] I originally planned to go back to central Maui the way I came, through the Road to Hana. I just assumed that the road dead-ended past Hana and it didn’t complete a full loop around east Maui, which would not be all that unusual for Hawaii. But I needed to go past Hana to visit the Kipahulu unit of Haleakala National Park,… Read More

[Hana, HI, Nov 22, 2022] The Hana Highway (colloquially referred to as The Road to Hana) is a 64 mile-long road connecting Kahului in central Maui to the town of Hana in east Maui. The term “highway” is probably the opposite of what this road actually is. It’s a twisty, windy, narrow thing with 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane wide, and approximately 620 curves. Modern road construction to… Read More

[Haleakala National Park / Makawao, HI, Nov 21, 2022] Unfortunately, not only did the bad weather at the Haleakala summit hold, it got worse. At dinner last night, as I was refreshing the web cam yet again, I noticed a wind advisory for the summit pop up. 30 to 40 mile-per-hour winds with wind gusts up to 50 mph! Yikes! It didn’t look good, but I decided to rely on the live… Read More