Skip to main content

Dragon's Teeth

One of the really cool things we saw on Maui was an area known as the "Dragon's Teeth" on the North West side of the island.

Now, it is not a difficult area to find. Our guidebook told us exactly how to find the parking area and to "walk toward the shoreline along the golf course next to the short hedge to a long point of lava that separates two large beaches".

From the parking lot, we could see the golf course on one side and a long, low hedge running along next to a sidewalk. I had thought this might be something of a hike and was surprised to see that we would be walking on a sidewalk through the manicured grounds of the nearby hotel.

Let me tell you now: if you are walking down the sidewalk, you are going the wrong way.

When you wander down the sidewalk you will eventually come to a very pretty beach.....

.....with a great view of a rocky area jutting out into the water.

I stopped a lady who was walking by and asked her how to get to the Dragon's Teeth. She told me I was on the wrong side of the island, and that the Dragon's Teeth were way, far away from there.

I figured she was wrong because the guide book had given us perfect directions to the parking spot. Plus, we had followed that short hedge and spotted the golf course. We couldn't be that far off.

We decided we must need to walk down the beach and clamber over the rocks up to it. Only after we had climbed over a good chunk of rock did we realize we couldn't possibly scale our way up to the top. We could see people walking around up there, so we knew there had to be a way.

Finally through lots of backtracking, and trying to cut through the woods (which turned out to be impossible), we managed to stumble out onto a big green field and wind our way back to the van.

Then we re-checked the guidebook and realized it must mean we should actually walk across the golf course. And we also realized the grassy field we had walked along the edge of was an ancient Hawaiian burial ground which was forbidden to the public. Yeek.

Once we got our directions straight, we came to the Dragon's Teeth, so named because of the way the lava juts straight up like teeth. When the volcano was active and the lava was busily flowing down to the ocean, the wind and waves knocked it backwards and as it cooled it formed these "teeth".


Very cool. And free.

And that lady was wrong about it being way far away.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ben's Feet

Ben went camping with his youth group this weekend. He said it was the best weekend he's had since we've been in Hawaii, and possibly in his entire life. The one negative part was that he stepped on some coral out in the water and cut his feet up pretty good. He swears it was all dead coral - you shouldn't touch live coral, much less walk on it because it damages the coral. No one ever mentions that it also damages your feet. They just tell you not to damage the coral. Also, coral is a living organism . If you step on live coral and a tiny piece breaks off in the cut, it will continue to grow. Did you see the movie Alien ? If some creature incubates in Ben's feet, then breaks out and eats us all one night, I'm going to be quite miffed. (Make sure you read the inscription on his tee shirt in this picture. It's quite appropriate.)
Post a Comment
Read more

Mammogram

I'm having my annual mammogram today. I always hear about how painful they are, but honestly, I've never thought they are that bad. Not the most comfortable, but not painful either. Every time I have a mammogram, I'm reminded of this story. It won the Erma Bombeck Writing Competition and I still get a kick out of it every time I read it. So I'm posting it here today for your reading pleasure: Erma Bombeck Writing Competition 1st place in Humor Category Winner Leigh Anne Jasheway of Eugene, Oregon "The First Time's Always the Worst" The first mammogram is the worst. Especially when the machine catches on fire. That's what happened to me. The technician, Gail, positioned me exactly as she wanted me (think a really complicated game of Twister - right hand on the blue, left shoulder on the yellow, right breast as far away as humanly possible from the rest of your body). Then she clamped the machine down so tight, I think my breast actually turned inside o...
1 comment
Read more

A Week After Surgery

Katie went back to the surgeon yesterday to have her foot checked.  It was the first time we saw the stitches.  When we saw her after surgery, her foot was already wrapped up in three inches of gauze and it's been wrapped like that ever since. The doctor decided that the sutures were not quite ready to be removed. There are stitches in the side of her foot where they inserted one of the screws.  The surgeon told us that she has to be very, very, very careful not to put her foot on the ground.  Any pressure at all could cause the screws to shift or break and that would be very, very, very bad. They knew we were going out of town for the wedding this weekend.  In order to protect her foot as much as possible, she was put in a hard cast.  It will come back off on Monday so they can check the sutures again.  This cast has a very limited time to be signed! Katie may not get to have a lot of people sign her cast  but she currentl...
Post a Comment
Read more