billeisenhauer.com — Life

The Lookout

Originally uploaded by bill_eisenhauer.

While returning from a venture to Kapa’a to escape the rain, Suzanne made a snap decision to pull over to check out a shop as we were entering Hanalei. In a neighboring shop, we found a Kim McDonald Gallery!

We had discovered Kim’s work while dining at The Beach House on the South side of the island in our trip last year. And after returning from Kauai, we eventually bought the piece that we saw. You can see “Night Shift” here.

This year, we didn’t even make it off the island before adding to our collection. We bought the piece above to go with our previous piece. As a bonus for buying on island, we also will receive a third giclee for free.

We’re really looking forward to the arrival of these new pieces, but our private collection of Kim McDonald art is now complete. Any more than three pieces and we need to call our home one of her galleries!

We left Maui yesterday morning after a week’s stay. Suzanne and I both agreed that we didn’t fall in love with Maui as we have Kauai, but we had a good time nonetheless.

We had a few missteps along the way which may have influenced our opinion. The Road to Hana made Suzanne carsick and washed out that day. Then, two days later I began feeling poorly and really haven’t felt perfectly since. Bookending our nights were battles with the rental house’s fire alarm which seemed to go off randomly; the last time with a lasting series of piercing bursts. We grudgingly called the homeowner over to have it removed so that we didn’t have an early morning reprisal. Then, 30 minutes after this event, our car alarm goes off. This, of course, was my fault for getting the key fob wet while at the beach. That said, it was embarrassing and I’m sure the homeowner was wondering what was up with us (they live on the property as well).

So we almost felt like we were escaping Maui.

We arrived on Kauai yesterday around noon and Maui took one last swipe at us. My bag was lost for about 30 minutes as it was apparently mistakenly unloaded in Oahu, but sent soon on a later flight. A little temporary heartache, but all turned out well.

After arriving, we had lunch at Duke’s in Nawiliwili Harbor. Still one of the most perfect venues to enjoy a hamburger! We then enjoyed the wonderful drive up to the North Shore. There is just no describing one section of that drive where trees form a grand tree tunnel (see, I didn’t even try).

We gathered up groceries in Princeville before driving into the River House. We were at the River House last in mid-May in 2007. We are deeper into the Summer this year and its possible that this has something to do with what we’ve seen since we’ve been here. The water level is down considerably, so the mini-falls are not so beautiful and many of the flowers are not in bloom or just flat out gone. Its still very beautiful, of course, but last year was near perfection. We may not take so many pictures of the grounds this year, because last year’s pictures provide a better account of things.

We have worked through one complication. The refrigerator was not cooling when we arrived. This was a problem since we had just bought a load of groceries. We called the emergency numbers and they eventually brought us a large ice chest filled with ice. This got us through the night and miraculously, the refrigerator appears to be cooling this morning. My theory is that they had cleaned it out before we arrived and let all the cool air out of it and that its just an inefficient refrigerator. Needless to say, we’re being judicious with our accesses.

Today looks like a beautiful day and we’re heading to a beach. We’re just not sure which one. We are looking forward to a beach that will be less windy and a little bit more shady than the ones we enjoyed on Maui. A couple of those Maui beaches exfoliated us pretty well!

With some free time after hanging out on Ho’okipa Beach, we decided to drive south into the Upcountry town of Makaweo. Our guidebook had tipped us off that this was a Cowboy town and so we were curious to see what it looked like. Also important, it was past lunchtime and we were hungry.

We drove only a few miles from Haiku (where we’re staying) and the ride was a bit surreal. There were rolling hills and ranches! Had I been teleported to that area of Maui, I might not have guessed that I was in Maui. Of course, at various places along the road you could look back to the North and see the sea, so that might have been telling. But anyway, it felt weird.

Once there, we dropped into Polli’s Cantina — yep, Mexican food in Maui! What were we thinking?! The food was actually pretty good, although we knew we weren’t in Texas when we had to pay $2.00 for chips and salsa. In Texas, you hardly get comfortable in your seat before you have a delivery of chips and salsa (for free). Curiously, the place was jumping even though it was around 2:30 pm.

Done with our meal, we then walked the main street and stopped into the various shops along the way. Suzanne bought a couple of things along the way, while I mostly chatted with the storekeepers. Its my hobby while here to glean as much information as I can from the storekeepers while Suzanne is trying something on. She jokes that I’m never so charming as when I’m doing this. Sad, right?

We thought the town was pretty sleepy, but we were told that its off-season for them. Strangely, the travel industry claims its high season. But often, we were the only ones in each store unless a neighboring storekeeper had temporarily closed her store to make the rounds. I jokingly told Suzanne that they just must sell to each other.

The merchandise, as is the case on Maui in general, was pretty expensive and definitely meant for tourists (too dress for locals). I’m no fashion expert, but some of the clothes looked a little stale. As in, the inventory might not have turned over much for some shops. Maybe they are targeting the older tourist demographic, I don’t know. We did enjoy one shop whose inventory was completely hand-made by their family (paintings, etchings, carvings, jewelry, etc.).

All in all, it was a fun three hours after a morning on the beach. Getting more relaxed by the day.

Falls on the Road to Hana

Originally uploaded by bill_eisenhauer.

Today we woke up extra early so that we could be on the road by 8am to take on the Road to Hana. All our research indicated to us that this was a must-do with many must-see sights. We were expecting spectacular at every turn.

But that would be asking a lot since the Road to Hana has 600+ turns and 50 narrow bridges over its 32 miles. It never occurred to us and never was mentioned in our guidebook how challenging this road might be. After about mile marker 3 the turns came fast, furious, and unrelenting.

The night before our trip, we had highlighted mile markers for stops based upon what was contained in our guidebook. Unfortunately, we ran into a couple of problems with this approach. First, our guidebook was about 3 years out of date. This was enough time for the quality and availability of a sight to have changed. We found in a couple of cases that areas were no longer accessible. Secondly, in many cases we needed to track the location of the site to tenths of a mile beyond a mile marker. Well, our car didn’t have this precision. This made finding a few areas challenging.

Maui has been going through a dry spell of late, so many of the Falls are only a fraction of what they normally are. As such, the payoff was pretty low in almost every case. I do realize we’re still in Hawaii, but the expectations were really high.

What we enjoyed most was the black sand beach which was at mile marker 32. It was as advertised and we lingered there for quite a while and enjoyed lunch.

Unfortunately, if you take the Road to Hana, you must also take the Road back from Hana. So by the end of your drive, you’ve navigated 1200+ turns and over 100 narrow, often single lane bridges. Suzanne was car sick as we neared Hana and managed to beg some dramamine from a well-stocked family and while this helped for a while, she was just barely holding on at the end of the road.

So, bottom line, we don’t think we’ll ever try the Road to Hana again even if we’re here in a more favorable time. The winding roads detract too much from the enjoyment of the sights along the way. We know we’re probably in the minority, but that’s okay. Here’s hoping this balances out the reviews on the Road to Hana and saves someone a vacation day sometime down the line.

Morning Rainbow II

Originally uploaded by bill_eisenhauer.

Suzanne admonishes me often for letting significant events go by without a blog entry — things like seeing the Foo Fighters (best concert ever), putting in a backyard garden, freelancing for Google, etc. For whatever reason, it takes relaxing surroundings and something I’m really excited about to get me writing.

We arrived yesterday after a long direct flight from Dallas. The trip was mostly smooth, though our flight was delayed one hour and we were made to wait till the bitter end to get our bags — they were the last ones delivered off the plane.

Flying on American these days is not a culinary delight, so we were famished by the time we arrived. We drove the short drive to Paia and found the Paia Fish Market where we promptly spurned the fish for burgers and fries. We’re saving our fish quota for other venues. It was quite satisfying and we enjoyed a couple of Bikini Blonde Lagers, a local brew.

With daylight fading and with our own energy running low, we made our way to our cottage which was as nice as advertised. Perhaps not as fantastic as the River House on Kauai, but that bar is set unfairly high. We have a glorious view overlooking a valley with Hookipa Beach off in the distance. We can also see the larger city of Kahului across the bay.

It rained most of the night which made it easy for us to sleep through to nearly normal morning hours. We were still up at 5:45am, though. We took this picture of a dawn rainbow across the bay. What a start to our day and our trip!