Maui, Day 8

Thursday we woke up ready for another adventure. We had planned on driving the road to Hana with the girls but since the island was hit with significant rainfall while we were there, one of the bridges had washed away in the flooding & the route was closed. We headed to lao Valley instead to do some hiking:

Isn't it beautiful? We were literally in a valley between all these green mountains. We walked up a bunch of stairs to get to the top:

Then we headed back down & did some hiking around the river:

The river was flowing really good with all of the rain they had:

When we left lao Valley, we drove to Paia, had lunch & shopped:

Lunch was amazing & totally worth the drive. Bryan & Sophie were excited to try local Hawaiian root beer:

This is where we would have started the road to Hana but instead we turned around & headed towards Laperouse, which was back towards our hotel:

This is where a lava flow once was & it looks totally different than the rest of the island. It is very rocky, black beaches, & lava rock was everywhere:

It literally looked like mounds of dirt everywhere but it was really hard, black/brown lava rock! We hiked about 3 miles along the coastline & then the girls got tired & wanted to turn around:

We found a blow hole along the way which was pretty cool:

And every now & then there would be a beautiful, clean beach hidden among the lava rock. Who knew?!

It was a fun day getting off the property & being a little more adventurous. We were kind of disappointed not to see the waterfalls on the road to Hana, but I think we made up for it with some beautiful hikes. When we got back to the resort, it was sunset & we got back just in time to hear the conch shell:

Then all of the kids had fun chasing him around as he lit all of the tiki torches:

It was a fun ending to a fun day!