Today we tackled the Road to Hana – or, rather, we let our tour guide tackle it for us. The Road to Hana is a 64.4-mile stretch on Hawaiian highways leading to the little, relatively untouched, town of Hana. The tour picked us up from our hotel at 6:45 in the morning and dropped us back off around 7:30 at night.

We booked our tour through Valley Isle Excursions and the tour was done on a shuttle van. We had two other groups with us – a mom with her two kids and a married couple. Our tour guide, Travis, is actually from the town of Hana so he had all kinds of insider info we wouldn’t have gotten with any other tour guide. He was awesome!

We started our adventure with a quick breakfast provided by the tour company. It included muffins, fruit, and scones, which were all really good even though it wasn’t super filling.

Along the way we stopped quite a few times for various sites. One bathroom stop was right on the water and had massive rocks the waves crashed up on, which was cool to see.

Another stop was for Auntie Sandy’s famous banana bread and let me tell you – it is famous for a reason! Both Jared and I LOVE banana bread and this was some of the best we’ve ever had! It was fresh out of the oven too. Jared also got a pork sandwich and I got a smoothie and both were delicious.

We stopped at a little Hana farm/gift shop area where there was all kinds of local goods for sale. Jared bought a handmade shot glass to add to his collection.

For lunch, we stopped at our guide’s aunt’s house and were fed boxed lunches. She also had a little shop on her porch with jewelry she and her husband make. Jared found a bracelet for himself and I got a pair of dangly pearl earrings.

Then, we went to the black sand beach, which was unlike anything we’d ever seen before. The water was pretty chilly and the waves were bigger than we expected. We only dipped our toes in and spent most of our stop there people/ocean watching. Right now with COVID, you have to make reservations to go to the black sand beach. Our guide told us so many people show up without a reservation, having driven hours to get there, and get turned away. The nice thing about our tour was that we didn’t have to worry about any of that!

Our last adventurous stop was at a waterfall with a swimming hole. Talk about freezing water! Our guide told us we all had to get completely in because his last tour group refused and we couldn’t say no to a challenge. It didn’t feel too bad once you pushed past the mental block and just dunked yourself under. We swam under the waterfall from the backside, too.

There was a spot where people could jump from the top of the waterfall. A few people from our group were brave enough, but Jared and I decided to watch them from the swimming hole.

To round out the trip, we stopped at Halfway to Hana on the way back for another snack. Jared got a hot dog and we each got shaved ice with vanilla ice cream. I got passionfruit flavor and Jared got strawberry. It was the perfect refreshing end to the long day.

When we got back to our hotel, we had to go pick up our rental car for the rest of the trip. Throughout the trip, we’ve used the app Turo to rent cars through local people renting their cars out. Renting cars in Hawaii is really difficult and super expensive, so we found Turo the best way to go.

The pick up location of the car was close to a bar with food called Spanky’s so we went there for dinner. We were EXHAUSTED at this point, but hungry too. It was really hard to find somewhere to eat because every place in Hawaii closes at 8 or 9 due to Covid and a worker shortage.

While we were sitting at the bar, we felt something furry walk under our legs! It was a big ole boxer mix dog! We had no clue where he came from, what his name was, or where his owner was, but he wanted to hang out with Jared and me, so we gave him lots of love (and some taco meat).

I tested out what tricks he knew and saw he could sit, give me his paw, and put his front paws up on my lap when I patted my lap. Eventually, a guy came over claiming to be his owner. He said the dog’s name is Sam Elliot and asked if we tried “shooting him.” He then proceeded to show us how Sam plays dead when you shoot him with finger guns. It was the cutest thing! He also told us Sam is 12 years old, which we would have never guessed! I’d say he was 8 maximum! He said he eats a pound and a half of raw venison every day. Maybe we should all start doing that to be as spry as Sam!

We crashed so hard when we got back to the hotel, knowing we’d have to wake up early the next morning for our snorkel boat cruise.