Twin Falls, Paia, and a 7 hour (de)tour

Hopped in the cars around 8:30am and set off for Twin Falls on the northern side of the island. This was a much milder hike than the Waihee Ridge mudslide the other day. Lots of interesting foliage, flowers and waterfalls. Some folks hit the roadside stand and rewarded themselves with a coconut with a straw plunged into it.

The day was EXTREMELY windy. Keep this in mind as you read on. 

  

Jackie insisting on scaring the you-know-what out of her mother. 

Twin Falls

North Shore, Maui

The windsurfers were FLYING through the water!

On the return trip, we stopped for lunch in Paia (the seaside town we cycled to from Haleakala). We grabbed a relaxing lunch at a little cafe called Mambo Cafe and poked around in some shops. 

We left Paia around 2:45pm intending/expecting to be back at the house between 4-4:30pm. We were close to making the turn to Lahaina onto route 30 when police started forcing everyone to do u-turns. Remember the wind? A brush fire had started and was engulfing the entire side of the mountain, all the way down to the road. We tried another route that would drop us down further south but that was closed off as well. With no idea when the road would reopen, we hung out in Kihei--on the beach and at small shopping center. We grabbed an afternoon tea/coffee/snack at Starbucks to kill some time but frequent monitoring of MauiNow and Maui 24/7 showed the roads were still closed. With nothing else to do, Caroline got her hair cut while the rest of us watched and Jackie learned to swing dance with the other stylist (an older gentleman from Montana). 

We refueled the cars, bought some water and a phone charger (just in case) and hung out at the beach until the road reopened. Amy tried to squeeze through when they reopened it for locals at one point, pulling the baby card, but she was refused, told that "only God knows when the road will open" and then directed to a shelter. Eventually, we got back on the road and this is what we saw:

These pictures don't convey the vastness of this fire--6,000 acres according to this morning's news. 

We were forced off the road again (as you can see, the fire was blowing embers across the road) into a parking lot where we waited for another 90 minutes before we could proceed. The fire had spread all the way to a little east of Lahaina. We finally reached the house around 10:30pm, passing 10 miles of traffic heading east.