Browsed by
Author: liran

A view from the driver's side window of the Piilani Highway
Should You Drive The Piilani Highway aka The “Forbidden Road” After The Road To Hana?

Should You Drive The Piilani Highway aka The “Forbidden Road” After The Road To Hana?

Comments 4 comments

This is Part 2 of a series on The Road to Hana and the “Forbidden Road” aka the Piilani Highway aka “the back road” to Haleakala. If you’d like to read about our experiences heading towards Hana, check out Part 1 by clicking here. The Piilani Highway has a legendarily bad reputation due to a sometimes literally lethal combination of really rough road patches, blind turns (some with cliff walls on one side and cliff drops into the Pacific ocean…

Read More Read More

The Pools of 'Ohe'o
The Road to Hana and the Piilani Highway (aka the “Forbidden” Road)

The Road to Hana and the Piilani Highway (aka the “Forbidden” Road)

Comments 3 comments

So I wrote this right after we got back from a rather epic driving day. After leaving the house at 8 am in the morning heading east via the Hana Highway, we staggered back at about 7 pm after heading west on the Piilani Highway. In short, the trip was incredible. But you already knew that, right? The Road to Hana is one of the best-known drives in the entire world. Nicknamed “the Divorce Highway” because of all the supposed…

Read More Read More

Exploring Oahu With A 4 Year Old: The Polynesian Cultural Center, Lanai Lookout, Kailua Beach, And A Diamondhead Fail

Exploring Oahu With A 4 Year Old: The Polynesian Cultural Center, Lanai Lookout, Kailua Beach, And A Diamondhead Fail

Comments 0 Comment

The second half of our Oahu adventure (aside from LOST film site searches, which I already talked about), included our very first Hawaiian luau, and an exploration of the east coast of Oahu. For our luau experience, we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie. This effectively completed our Oahu island circuit, as we had previously been in this town during our trip to the sea turtle beach earlier in the week. The Polynesian Cultural Center is far more…

Read More Read More

Exploring Oahu With A 4 year old: Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantation, Haleiwa Beach, Sea Turtles, And More!

Exploring Oahu With A 4 year old: Pearl Harbor, Dole Plantation, Haleiwa Beach, Sea Turtles, And More!

Comments 1 comment

So now that we’ve been all over Oahu with our 4 year old, we can definitively answer the question of whether or not you can enjoy Hawaii with a small child. The answer – at least for us – was a definitive yes. I’ll break down the highlights of we did, what worked, and what didn’t (spoiler it was all mostly awesome) work. It’s a lot – so I’ll be doing two posts on on this. One of my top…

Read More Read More

Mokulē‘ia Beach
‘Lost’ In Oahu

‘Lost’ In Oahu

Comments 5 comments

So we’ve been in Hawaii for about a week, traipsing around Oahu to literally every corner of this island. Tomorrow we’re heading for Maui, and in a week we start the journey home. Oahu is great, and I’ll try to put together a post with more details on what we’ve been up to while we’re on Maui, where we should have a little more down time. This post is going to be dedicated to talking about a sidequest I had…

Read More Read More

Hawaii
50 States! We Made It To Hawaii!

50 States! We Made It To Hawaii!

Comments 2 comments

Well, it’s official. I’m now a member of the 50-state club. A journey that started on a whim, almost 12 years ago when I had a free summer and decided to try and see as much of America as possible finally reached its conclusion when we landed in Hawaii. It’s… a really odd feeling actually. I’m obviously really happy and excited to have reached this point. It’s been almost five years since I was within striking distance, but then fatherhood…

Read More Read More

Santa Monica Pier
On The Doorstep

On The Doorstep

Comments 2 comments

So here we are, at the Marriott Residence Inn right outside Los Angeles International Airport. Tomorrow, we board a plane to Hawaii, and I will finally complete a journey I started about 12 years ago. Tomorrow, assuming all goes well, I will finally set foot on my 50th state, which happens to be the 50th state admitted to the United States. Five years after reaching Alaska with Ariel, which was my 49th state (coincidentally the 49th state admitted to the…

Read More Read More

Tolkien's illustration of the Doors of Durin
What everyone gets wrong about the Tolkien race discussion

What everyone gets wrong about the Tolkien race discussion

Comments 0 Comment

Going to try something a little different for this blog and talk a little bit directly about J.R.R. Tolkien and his works. Generally this blog is focused on travel, specifically adventure travel that is often partially (and sometimes directly) inspired by Tolkien’s writings or adaptations of them. But with all the controversy about the new Amazon Prime Rings Of Power series (much of it in bad faith), I wanted to weigh in about the issue of Tolkien and race, which…

Read More Read More

Crystal Cave in Bermuda lit up
Bermuda: Take Two

Bermuda: Take Two

Comments 0 Comment

Last time we were in Bermuda, it was just the two of us and I lamented the fact that we really didn’t get a whole lot of time to just relax. There was just so much to see and do, that we felt compelled to do it all. And I thought we DID do it all. Well it turns out that we really didn’t! First of all we missed out on the largest fort on the island, when we arrived…

Read More Read More

Ariel and I on a boat in Bermuda
On Pandemic Travel And Getting Back In The Game

On Pandemic Travel And Getting Back In The Game

Comments 0 Comment

So this year we resolved to get back to plane travel and go back to doing the things we love best – going on adventures in far off places that cannot be reached by car. After over two years of not being in an airport, it was a little bit of culture shock. Jacob is also much older than the last time we travelled somewhere with him all way back in 2019 when we went to Toronto and Niagara Falls,…

Read More Read More