The Friendly Isle

We toured the self-proclaimed friendliest Hawaiian island. Aloha required to enter. All in all, it seemed like a pretty friendly place. The librarians were certainly amongst the most friendly librarians we've ever encountered anywhere. They gave the kiddos books (for keeps), let them feed the library fish, and weren't even annoyed when the kiddos were their natural loud selves! There was a lot of aloha in that library! Thank you, nice Molokai librarians!

We first arrived to our Molokai house after dark. At roughly 3 AM the following morning, we discovered that we would not be missing Uncle Regan's baka-bakas on this trip. From the sound of things, our house was actually situated within a large Molokai chicken ranch, or possibly cock-fighting breeding compound. As it turns out, our first perception was mistaken. There were just a dozen or so chickens next door, roosting mere feet from our wide open (of course!) windows.

The kids were pumped! For the most part, we all slept through it. One of the mama hens had a few chicks in tow, keeping Pax and Stokes highly entertained.

We started our first day with a trip to the coffee shop at the coffee plantation, followed by a walk in the woods on top of the island.

The walk is rewarded by a great view of the former Leper Colony.

Leprosy is now known as Hanson's Disease, and it is super easy to cure. But they still don't let anybody under 16 visit the colony. This is because they were super mean to people with leprosy back before they figured out how to cure it.

The other neat thing in the woods is the turtle rock.

Yeah, it looks like a turtle. Amongst other things.

Fay-lick rock, as we heard it described by some good ol' suth'n folks who were also visiting. The kids called it weiner rock. Supposedly, the ancient Hawaiians would hike all the way up here and rub it for magical fertility powers. I think it worked on Genevieve. Lately, Stokely's telling us he is having a baby too, so it may have worked on him as well. Time will tell.

After the ancient Fay-Lick rock, we headed East, to sandy beach and Halawa Bay.

Sandy Beach was a lovely little sliver of beach, with big waves to romp about in. We had it all to ourselves most of the time. That's Maui in the distance.

Halawa Bay.

Getting out there is quite a fun drive down a single lane, very windy road.

Like Kodiak, Halawa was completely destroyed by a tsunami. It wasn't really rebuilt.

Not much is there any more, but there is a neat tiny little church, and lots and lots of aloha-free KEEP OUT and NO TRESPASSING and PISS OFF AND DIE signs all over the place.

Just joking about the last one. We didn't see anything like that. It's not a stretch to think the sentiment might be kind of implied, though. The Woodie Guthrie in us is kind of sensitive to those type of signs. After Halawa, we wandered home to enjoy a glorious sunset. All told, a pretty awesome first day in paradise.