Last year I won a photo contest sponsored by the awesome Wend Magazine. The theme of the contest was “Northwest adventure” and the haul was impressive – a whale watching trip, a hotel room on San Juan Island, some outdoorsy clothing that included adventure underwear and—far and away the best part—a round-trip seaplane flight from Lake Union in Seattle to Friday Harbor on San Juan Island.

We tried to take the complete trip last June, but the seaplane portion was foiled by fog in Friday Harbor and we were forced to take the ferry from Anacortes instead. The hotel and whale watching were lovely, but for the last year I’ve longed for that seaplane trip. For a guy like me who isn’t necessarily inclined to kayak wild northwest rivers, surf the rugged coastline, climb stuff or jump off of anything, including most diving boards, taking a seaplane to an island port epitomizes my kind of northwest adventure.

So with just one month left before the free flight voucher expired, we finally found a weekend where we could try again. Our hearts sank a bit on the three hour drive from Portland to the Kenmore Air seaplane base on Lake Union in Seattle, when a torrential September rain seemed destined to foil us again. But by the time we pulled into Seattle, the rain had dissipated and the weather reports from Friday harbor belied the gray pall that draped the Emerald City. Clear. Sunny. Seventy degrees with a light breeze. So we boarded the plane with seven other travelers and were on our way, ahead of schedule and giddy with anticipation.

As a rookie of small plane flying, there are a lot of things I didn’t know about seaplane flights, like how incredibly loud it is (earplugs provided) or how the smell of diesel fills the cabin from the moment the doors are closed or how there are often multiple stops to load/unload passengers at different ports. The latter was a pleasant surprise, because while “multiple stops” may as well mean “sharp stabbing pain” on a commercial jet flight, it’s a bonus feature of a seaplane flight. That shouldn’t have been a surprise, I suppose, because the whole joy of a floating plane is the novelty and excitement of taking off and landing on water in remote and beautiful places.

The bits of turbulence were easier to take than I expected, in part because flying so low somehow feels safer and you’re emboldened by the knowledge that in the event of a water landing, well, your plane floats. Safety concerns aside, everything about the experience was magical, takeoffs, landings, pastoral island scenes drifting by the window in miniature, everything, right down to the salty pilot who flew us back home again.

Pilot: And who would you be?
Me: Schang. And Hojnowski.
Pilot: Ok then, all we’re missing are a couple of Ludekins.
[looks down the dock at two people casually strolling towards us]
Pilot: If those two speedballs are the Ludekins then we’ll be on our way. C’mon folks! We’re ready to fly!

And we were ready to fly. So ready that we didn’t want to stop flying. “That was incredible,” Amy said when we skittered to a stop in gloomy Seattle. “I would have stayed on that plane all the way back to Portland.”  Not that there would have been less gloom in Portland.  Just more glowing.

We were in Maui, sun soaked and sand stuffed, for four days before we worked up the motivation to take on the much-hyped ROAD TO HANA. I’m putting it in all caps because folks tend to treat this 8-10 hour round trip drive with the kind of adventure reverence that would better be reserved for those who are climbing Everest with a bum lung and a newborn baby in one arm. But it’s on the must-do list for a week-long stay on the Valley Isle, so we must-did it.

Things got off to a rocky start when we read the instructions for the CD “Self Guided Driving Tour” that was thoughtfully provided by our rental house.

Amy: It says turn onto Dairy Road and then after four lights, turn right at the K-Mart.
Me: You’re kidding me. The K-Mart? We’re in Hawaii and the best goddamn landmark they can come up with is the K-Mart?
Amy: That’s what it says. It’s on the map too.
Me: The K-Mart’s on the map! Throw this thing out, it’s junk. I’m not starting the ROAD TO HANA at a K-Mart.
Amy: Oh no, I’m going to really enjoy watching how annoyed you get.
[puts the CD in]
Narrator: If you have reached the K-Mart, tun right on the Hana Highway…
Me: Bastards!

The good news is that shortly after the K-Mart, the ROAD TO HANA starts looking decidedly better. Acres of sugarcane, swaying in the windward breeze on one side and smoldering from a fresh burn on the other, mark the transition from the underwhelming center of Maui commerce, Kailhua, to the steep tropical wilds of the northeastern island. And I will say that once you’re in the thick of it, this is one intense and beautiful road. We have driven in the single lane, cliff-hugging backwaters of Ireland and New Zealand and careened around mountaintops in India and China and this sketchy little 50-mile ribbon of Hawaiian blacktop competes with all of them. Especially when you factor in the massive volume of tourist traffic that takes on the challenge every day.

Me: What would it be like if you lived down here and had to drive this every day?
Amy: Awful.
Me: Like every time you needed to get milk you’d have to join the most annoying small town parade in the world, full of bald men in rented convertible Mustangs.

For such a small, slow road though, I found it remarkable how little you notice the other traffic. Everyone is so universally terrified of tumbling into the ocean or being sandwiched by an oncoming gas tanker that there’s plenty of length between cars, save for those pissed off locals locked in behind my rental Dodge Caliber Magnum Shotgun Whatever. So yes, it is a bit of a tense drive but the rewards are as plentiful as promised: Black sand beaches with deep turquoise bays, roadside waterfalls parting pristine pools, breathtakingly sharp twists and turns and thick jungle everywhere, fragrant with the smell of fallen guava fruit. So after about six hours of jaw dropping stop after stop, we finally rolled through the tiny town of Hana, a little speck of tin-roofed buildings and dreadlocked wanderers that’s cute, but hardly worthy of such an infamous drive.

No surprise there, because every guidebook warns that the ROAD TO HANA isn’t about Hana, it’s about the actual ROAD TO HANA. Obviously.  So we rolled on through, deciding to ignore every map that changes the eastbound road to a scary dotted line, annotated with text like “Road Closed” and “Hazardous Conditions.” Obedient or timid touristas are meant to turn around at Hana and head back the way they came, at which point I suppose it becomes the ROAD TO K-MART. Amy, for one, hates going back the same way.

Amy: I hate going back the same way.
Me: Me too, let’s go forward and see what happens.
Amy: The lady at the shrimp stand said from here on out it looks like Arizona.

Which is a damn lie, because there’s no way that this palmy, windswept lump of lava in the South Pacific could ever look like Arizona. So we kept driving east from Hana, where the smooth pavement ends, the climate turns abruptly Arizona-arid, and the boomers in convertibles slowly give way to doughy young honeymooners bouncing along in 4×4 Jeeps. And as the lush jungle confines of the ROAD TO HANA fall away, the endless horizon and ocean stretch out on your left and the rocky scrub slope of the Haleakalā volcano disappears into the clouds on your right. This is the road from Hana, the Piilani Highway.

It was late afternoon, creeping into the evening hours when we drove this 3-hour road away from Hana, which meant the gentle slope of the volcano was draped in storms, a stark landscape buffeted by high winds with ranch fences and improbable middle-of-nowhere churches the only signs of civilization. The effect was fantastically moody. I’m already sweet on windswept desert vistas, but to also have the blue ocean crashing into jet-black jumbles of lava below was almost intoxicating. And it’s the sort of gorgeous desolation that’s easy to relax in because you know if you just drive just a little bit further, the road will straighten out, the sun will shine and you’ll be stretched out and groggy on the soft sand beaches of Maui. So the ROAD TO HANA: Recommended. And the road from Hana? Essential.

Giving Aloha a Chance: Do you know the only weird thing about Hawaii? It’s America. No American travel experience feels as foreign as flying hours over blue ocean to touchdown on a dollop of lava where they have a special way of saying hello and flora and fauna that you can’t find anywhere else on this side of Fiji. But there it is, “home soil” as they say, a more convenient tropical escape for us than any point south, so we decided that this year we’d have a very different Thanksgiving vacation.

We picked O’ahu for our virgin Hawaii visit, because the flights to Honolulu happened to be cheapest that week. We were immediately clouded with doubt as an endless procession of friends and associates announced that Maui was their favorite island because it’s “more relaxed.” On the other hand, all of those Lost episodes were filmed on O’ahu and it looked pretty deserted and relaxing to us. And there’s the truth: The sum total of our knowledge of our nation’s youngest state comes from pop culture and the doe-eyed recollections of friends.

Which also means we were loaded with preconceived Hawaii Five-0-notions about what constitutes a traditional Hawaiian Holiday – primarily the luaus, hula girls, bus tours and cruise packages of our independent travel nightmares. And while we imagined those activities primarily populated by throngs of middle American boomers in sandals and billowy Aloha shirts, the reality was that there are nearly as many Korean and Japanese tourists to contend with – two nationalities that can rock the packaged tour with the best of them.

So we landed in Honolulu armed with our two favorite talismans against the mainstream tourism scene: A rental car and a place to stay in a quiet residential area void of hotels. In this case, that car was a perfectly functional Hyundai and that area was Kailua, which turned out to be gorgeous and as peaceful as promised, despite having its own baggage in the form of an obscene real estate scene where one bedroom bungalows sell for millions. Location, location, exploitation.

Amy and I will out-relax any of you any day (invite us on your next trip to Belize and we can have a relax-off) and we may have set a new bar in the eight days that we spent lolling around O’ahu’s mostly deserted weekday beaches. As logic would dictate, the further away you get from Honolulu the emptier the beaches are, so it took very little effort to find entire bays all to ourselves (Amy being partial to those on the eastern shore for their calm waters and ample afternoon shade). We took a pass on the shopping harangue and obvious eateries and opted instead for any grubby drive-in diner and shrimp truck with a decent line and good Yelp chatter. I ate the hell out of the North Shore’s garlic shrimp truck circuit, which should be a mandatory part of any Oahu visit.

We also slept late, often and always with the windows open. We took a break from the beach just long enough to respect the Pearl Harbor memorial  which, interestingly, was the only place we bought a souvenir – an unbeatable hat that says “THE BEST MARINE IS A SUBMARINE.”  And in the end, we revised what we know about Hawaii and paid it the best compliment you can pay any vacation spot – by starting to plan a return visit while we were still there.   We’re looking at you, Maui.

]]> http://reasontowander.com/2010/12/no-198/feed/ 4 http://reasontowander.com/2010/09/no-197/ http://reasontowander.com/2010/09/no-197/#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 02:28:11 +0000 sloanschang http://reasontowander.com/?p=525

Desolation and Day Trips: We flew to the moon for Labor Day Weekend, or at least what passes for the moon around here, the vast rocky desert of southeastern Oregon. Seven hours from Portland, deep in the Fremont Wilderness we found a scrubby peak called Bald Butte. And on that peak, we found an eighty year old glass box fire lookout, whitewashed against a dark blue sky and a completely unobstructed wraparound view of the world beyond.

This is the third Oregon fire lookout we’ve stayed in this year and there’s no question that Bald Butte was the most breathtaking. In large part that’s because this is a starkly isolated yet comfortably equipped cabin, where you can enjoy a spellbinding view of both the sunset and sunrise, galaxies of twinkling stars and raptors soaring on eye-level updrafts all from the same cozy bed. But the full enjoyment of this place is also owed to the reward of merely finishing the bone rattling journey there – the most direct route requires hours of driving on unpaved Forest Service roads, a rocket trail of dust stalking the rearview mirror and a constant spray of gravel crackling against the undercarriage.

With perhaps too much blind faith in our little Toyota hatchback, we ignored somber warnings from the USFS that the last few miles of road would be “minimally passable for low clearance vehicles.” But optimistic is how we roll. And rattle and shake.

WHAM CLANK
Amy: Oh my god that was a bad one! Be careful!
Me: Ugh, that did sound pretty bad.
WHAM BOOM
Amy: There is going to be bright green stuff pouring out of the bottom of the car and we are going to be stranded.
Me: I don’t think they put that bright green stuff in cars any more since it was always leaking out and stranding people. I’m being care-
WHAM THUD
Amy: Aaaaaaaah! Slowdownslowdownslowdown!

And so on. But we made it to the to the top, checked under the car to confirm that there was no bright green stuff pouring out, and then reveled in the reward. No sign of civilization for hundreds of miles in every direction – save for an outhouse, a picnic table, a flag pole and a stout little cabin strapped to the windy butte by four thin guy wires. It was late in the afternoon, but sunset was still hours away thanks to our height above the horizon. And the flipside to all that extra evening light is a whole lot of extra morning light, because you’re also among the first to see the sun rise. Eye masks are mandatory if there’s going to be any sleeping past 5:30AM.

But it’s hard to stay asleep anyway when your first bleary glimpse of the world is the sun burning deep orange over a moonscape of sheer ridges and salt flats. There isn’t much to do but wake to watch the sun rise then start waiting for it to go down again on the other side, the hours between melting by with books, naps, games, whiskey and well timed day trips. We had a couple of those day trips, the most notable a bumpy drive back out of the forest to the hot mineral pools at Summer Lake Hot Springs. We happened to make that day trip just scarce hours before the place was inundated with dusty revelers returning from Burning Man. The current owner of the hot springs has done some wonderful things with canvas sails and old timey wood fencing and the effect has not gone unnoticed to the hundreds of burners who pass this way en route to and from Black Rock City, looking for a place to relive the glory of the Man and wash the playa from their leathery hides.

We didn’t stick around for that eyeful, retreating instead to our own burn of afternoon sunlight, wine and another competitive round of Charley Harper Memory Game, interrupted only for long, distracted looks at the horizon. Same as the day before. Same as tomorrow.

(see more photos on flickr)

(find out how to reserve PNW lookouts and cabins)

Going Somewhere to Say Goodbye:  We laid my Grandfather Donald Schang Sr. to rest last weekend in a remarkable way, by scattering his ashes amongst the brackish mangrove backwaters of the Ten Thousand Islands in the Florida Everglades. It was one of the most quietly powerful moments of my life, watching that cloud of ash roil and bloom in the stillness of Alligator Bay. This is the kind of travel moment that touches you in a way that no other can.

If you’ve never been to the Everglades, you should know that there are two faces to this vast subtropical wetland. One is the expansive sawgrass prairies and cypress swamps mythicized in pop culture and marketed to tourists by way of alligator-peppered airboat excursions. The other is a maze of mangrove forest that slowly gives way to the Gulf of Mexico. It was in this latter tangle of bays and rivers sixty years ago that my Grandfather, a dentist in Miami, managed to buy a small sheltered patch of muck with two friends – another dentist and a pilot who first spotted this particular sportsman’s paradise from the air while flying training routes for American Airlines.

They enlisted the help of a carpenter to design, cut and number the lumber needed for a small one-room cabin. They hauled the lumber out on skiffs, drove pilings by hand deep into the shifting soils and built the cabin just behind the first line of mangroves, out of sight of passersby who might be tempted to investigate. By day they reeled in giant tarpon and snook and shot ducks from a nearby blind. By night they reveled in isolation to a symphony of insects and the distant idling of midnight alligator poachers. Schang-ri-la. These were good old days.

The cabin was burned by the government in the 1970s when the land was annexed as part of an expanded Everglades National Park, so I’ve never seen it outside of faded photos and grainy film footage. Nevertheless, this side of the Everglades was the one I came to know in my youth through early morning fishing casts, afternoon swims and fond recollections of cabin days. Journeying 3,000 miles to pay tribute here was awesome, a lifetime away from the dour affairs at mortuaries and cemetaries that are conjured with most family memorials. We told stories, cried and laughed while morning clouds drifted apart to throw the hot southern sun on our faces. Manatees lumbered by, porpoises raced the bow and a manta ray caught flight in the distance. Then, when my Grandfather’s remains had finally settled to the sandy bottom to forever ebb and flow with the tides, we did exactly what he would have wanted us to do. We went fishing.

Our guides Norman and Houston, two men born and raised where the asphalt ends at Chokoloskee, knew my Grandfather either in person or through the recollections of their own fathers. The outdoors in their blood and thick rural Florida accents on their tongues, they taught Amy to cast a line for the first time and coaxed shy redfish from their shoreline hides. C’mon big reds.

We did eventually catch some of those redfish along with a few notable sea trout and much to everyone’s delight, casting came quickly to Amy. She’s a natchral, as they say, even though she quietly confessed to me several times that she really hoped she wouldn’t catch/kill anything. Mission accomplished because much to Houston’s chagrin, she caught only a tiny, bait-snatching yellowjack that was scolded and thrown back. Guides don’t like to bring newbies back to the dock without any keepers, so when a massive afternoon thunderstorm threatened to swallow us whole, Houston dallied too long for our tastes, trying to find some reassurance from the weather radar app on his iPhone.

Amy: Oh my god that lighting is so close, I can’t even look in that direction any more.
Houston: Now hang on, I want to figure out how far away it really is.
Amy: Really, I’m totally fine with not catching any keepers.
Houston: Naw, look, if that storm is ten miles away and moving ten miles an hour, we got another hour of fishin’!
Me: He really wants you to catch something.
Amy: The only thing I want right now is to not be struck by lightning.
Houston: Dang this thing is slow, I really wish we got 3G down he-

KABOOM

Houston: Woo that was close! We gotta get outta here!

We made it back to the dock a moment before all hell broke loose around us, the kind of oh-my-God-are-you-kidding-me moment that seems to come so easily to my family and which Amy has branded “Schanganigans.” I’m sorry Grandpa wasn’t around to hear that term, because he would have loved it with a clap of his hands and a deep belly laugh. Loved it the same way he loved the anticipation of a boat launch at dawn. Loved it like the midday frenzy of hungry fish and busy nets. Loved it like the spray in his face as he raced his boat home, surrounded by the crackling thunder that comes this way every day.