Nate Rosenberg

With our failure to find adventure the previous day still fresh in memory, we returned to basics Saturday: lazing by the pool.

After my morning run (the St. George marathon is only a week away) and breakfast, we headed to the pool for a quick snorkel lesson, and then I began a monster Harry Potter reading session. I love how I can sit at the pool at these places, and the waitress brings drinks, lunch, and snacks (nachos!) all-day without me having to move from my seat.

As I was saying, a monster Harry Potter session. From Thursday to today, three days, I flew through the 759 pages of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The last battle is amazing and will be even better on screen, I’m sure.

We finished the day with a surprisingly affordable dinner at a Thai restaurant in Lahaina and came back to the room. After Shannon fell asleep reading her second book, I finally reached the end of Harry Potter.

Photos below: the view from breakfast and Nate reading Harry Potter by the pool.

Shannon planned Day 2, so Day 3 was my choice.

The guide books said that the Road to Hana was a must: a long drive through a lush rainforest. “Stop often, look at the beautiful views, swim in pools under waterfalls, and breath in the smells of guava and Ginger,” they said. Plus, I had seen the Kipuhulu part of Haleakala National Park on Discovery Channel, where there are a series of pools and waterfalls you can swim in that come down from the mountain and feed into the ocean.

Well I don’t know what road they were talking about, but that wasn’t the drive we did. It was three hours before we saw our first real waterfall (pic below) and we only saw one other really good one later between Hana and Kipuhulu. And the views were okay but definitely not worth the drive.

Still, there were the pools and waterfalls at Kipuhulu. Oh wait, except they close off the pools and waterfalls to swimmers when there is rain on top of the mountain because a flood of water can rush down the mountain and has killed more than a few people in the past. So basically, it was too dry for us to see waterfalls but too wet to going swimming? Huh?

We managed to grab some good fish tacos at a roadside stand, but otherwise the ride home was as unremarkable as the ride out (at least, that’s what Shannon tells me. I fell asleep half-way from home.)

Thankfully, we left so early we got back to the hotel in time to spend most of the afternoon by the pool drinking lava flows, getting back to how Harry and Hermione were going to find You-Know-Who’s Horcruxes, and forgetting what a lame morning we had on the Road to Hana.

Pictures below: View from Road to Hana, Waterfall #1, Waterfall #2, Oheo Gulch at Kipuhulu in Haleakala National Park