Images of the Road to (and from) Hana – Maui Hawai'i, taken in January 2016.

I’ve driven some of the most famous roads in America; the Pacific Coast Highway, the Blue Ridge Parkway, the Moki Dugway dirt switchbacks in Utah (look it up!), Highway 12 on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and the Seward Highway in Alaska but one of the most well-known roads in the world is on the Hawaiian Island of Maui, the Road to Hana.

With 620 turns and 59 bridges, most of them one lane, this 68 mile stretch of road is heaven to anyone that likes to drive! The road, the view, the ROAD! I left early to avoid the traffic of the middle of the day so the road was nearly empty. I threw myself into every turn, skillfully guiding my 4 cylinder 2016 Nissan Versa through each corner…okay, this isn’t exactly the car I dreamed of driving on this road but I still enjoyed the driving…while imagining what it would be like in my old Porsche! It was fun any way you slice it!

One thing about driving the Road to Hana is that if you’re the driver there’s not a lot of time to sightsee, and there are few pull outs. So I made it to Hana in a little over 2 hours and moved right along to the rainforest area of Haleakala National park to hike a few trails. Once done there I decided that one drive down the Road to Hana was enough and elected to take another route, the Pi’ilani Highway along the southern coast of Maui. A lot of this road was dirt or not well maintained but passable, or so I was told by a park ranger. Turns out that there were some places where you had to tread lightly but hardly anything the Versa couldn’t handle. And the wide open coastal views were spectacular!