Day 18 of the Hawaii trip is a travel day, so we stayed fairly close to the airport for our late afternoon flight. We found a number of interesting artistic and historic sites to visit.
First up was the Sacred Gardens. This location seemed to be part gardens, part religious, part cosmic and more.
They did have a ‘Buddha Garden’, with some nice sculptures.
Their claim to fame though is their labyrinths.
Just down the road is the Hui No’eau Visual Arts Center. Situated on the grounds of a former sugar plantation owner, there are a number of buildings for various uses including a tiny high school.
The grounds are immaculate.
Makai Glassworks is located in another former sugar plantation. We were able to observe the artist at work.
In the same area, but off the tourist path, is the Dingking surfboard shop.
A true find, they make custom surfboards.
In addition to the surfboards, they do other custom woodwork including this great canoe.
But their specialty is surfboards.
Our next stop was the Surfing Goat Dairy, and as our directions had us turn into the road we were amazed that a dairy would have such a fancy entrance – until we realized the entrance was for a neighborhood of multi million dollar houses, and the dairy was off to to the side.
But they did have goats, and surfboards.
While most of the employment in Maui now is tourism, they once had thriving businesses in agriculture, primarily the sugar plantations and pineapples. They even once had railroads to bring the goods to the port, as evidenced by this former railroad office.
In my 3 weeks in Hawaii I did not see 1 railroad track (although there are apparently a couple of historic railroads around).
Sugar cane processing was once a big business, but it is all now gone. This was the last processing plant, and it closed a few years ago.
The history is celebrated by a museum housed in the former superintendents home.
The interior has a nice display of the people and lifestyles of the plantation life. Outside they have some of the equipment used in the processing.
This truck and trailer was used to bring in massive amounts of the sugar cane into the factory.
While these large claws picked up the cane in the fields.
A quick stop at Target – where they are ready for Christmas Hawaiian style.
And a great Hawaiian pizza – and it was off for our flights to Kauai.
RDZ Photography 