I Love You, California!

It was Demo week for the Elemental Excelerator, which is the company that provided TerViva with a large grant for their work in Hawai`i. Will is always invited to be a part of the week and during one of the sessions he spoke a bit about his work. Crushin' it like usual.

Most people do the drive to Hana in one day, which is about six hours of driving depending on how often you stop along the way to enjoy the beauty. We were so pleased with our decision to do it in two days so we didn't have to rush. (It also meant we were one of the only cars going in our direction most of the day so we didn't have to get stuck behind anyone.) When we woke up in the morning we got to enjoy sunrise from our cottage and have a relaxing cup of coffee on the lanai. Our cottage was across the street from the access point to Venus Pool which even though it is Kapu (private/forbidden) the owner of our cottage told us was ok for us to visit. We thought a dip in the waterfall pool would be a great start to the day so we went on our first adventure of the day. Unfortunately after cutting our way through the brush and fighting off mosquitoes, we found that the pool was all dried up. So back we went to the cottage to shower up and continue our advent...

We woke up to another beautiful Hawaiian morning. I was so happy we had more adventuring ahead of us and we weren't leaving the island just yet. The street you see is the access to the beach! A little known secret on Maui is that the South route to Hana is just as adventurous as the North route. There is a stretch of about five miles that is unpaved and pretty rocky, but the coastline is beautiful and there are some fun stops along the way. So we were off, headed toward Upcountry Maui. We stopped briefly to walk through the Sun Yat-Sen Memorial Park. Will though it was funny that someone had dumped junk right by the "No Dumping" sign. You can see Koho`olawe and Molokini! Our next stop was Maui Wine in the `Ulupalakua region. Will had a tasting (I had a few sips for taste - yummy!) and we took an incredibly informative tour of the winery. I couldn't begin to explain the facinating history of this winery, but you can read up on it ...