She wins her family's race to get to all 50 U.S. states, with an adventure on beautiful Maui

By CHRISTIE VILSACK
February 28, 2005
DES MOINES, IOWA

On the first day of our family vacations, a few blocks from our home, my dad would park the Ford sedan at Martin’s Conoco station in our hometown of Mount Pleasant, and walk to the center of the intersection of U.S. Highway 34 and U.S. Highway 218.

My mom, my brothers and I watched the ritual from the car as he reached into his pocket for a coin. We knew from experience, “Heads we go east, tails we go west.”

I couldn’t understand how my mom always had the right clothes, whether it was Kitty Hawk, North Carolina; Leadville, Colorado; New York City, or the California redwood forests. By the time I left for college, I’d visited over 40 states and several countries.

In 1987, during a volunteer experience in Jamaica with my older brother Tom,we discovered we’d both traveled to the lower 48 states. The official challenge was never voiced, but ours is a competitive family, and we both knew what we intended to do.

A few years later, I received a postcard from Hawaii. On the back it read: “Tom 49, Christie 48.” He’d sent the postcard during a layover at the Honolulu airport on his way to a volunteer experience in Tonga. When he died unexpectedly in l996, he was still one up.

In 2002 the First Lady of Alaska invited me to Juneau. My husband insisted I go. “Your brother would expect it,” he argued. In Juneau, I bought a post card. On the back I wrote “Tom 49, Christie 49.” I put it in my scrapbook and vowed I’d never go to Hawaii.

Last December, I convinced Tom that we should stick with practical Christmas presents, that we could be creative without being extravagant. He agreed, reluctantly. On Christmas morning, I opened my final present – a can of pineapple tidbits and tickets for the two of us to go to Hawaii.

“Mom, you know that Uncle Tom would have gone to Alaska if the roles were reversed.” our son Jess reasoned. “In fact, I’ve now been to the lower 48 myself, and if I could get to Alaska and Hawaii before you, I’d do it too.”

I was fascinated when Hawaii gained statehood in l959 when I was in fourth grade, but I knew it was one more state capital I’d have to learn. Membership in our family includes learning the capitals. Even as an adult, my dad would turn to me during Thanksgiving dinner and ask, “What’s the capital of South Carolina? ” He loved geography, and we had a basket full of maps that came with our monthly “National Geographic.” If we couldn’t afford to go some place, we could at least read about it.

So our trip to Maui became the vacation we didn’t have time for last year. It certainly was not our normal family vacation, which typically includes driving through 10 states in seven days. And I felt a little guilty to be missing library events and meetings about universal pre-school. But I justified it as a warm geography lesson.

On day one, we tested the beach, wondered what makes that water turquoise and studied the distant mountains on the islands of Lanai and Molokai.

On day two, it rained. A good day to travel, just to get a feel for the countryside. I have to admit here, that my family refers to me as the “trail boss” named for Gil Favor on the l950s’ TV show, “Rawhide.” Remember it? “Head ’em up, move ’em out!” Gil used to holler as he herded the cattle.

Of course, the concierge didn’t know this when I asked him about the Hana Coast drive I’d been looking at on the map. The brochure promised “...waterfalls, fresh pools, king trails, colorful exotic plants and flowers and endless tropical scenery.” (The key word there is “endless.”) The concierge said the Hana Coast isn’t a good idea. We wouldn’t get back until after dark, he warned, because the road winds for miles along the coastline on hairpin turns.

There is something in his words that called up a memory – the day my dad decided to take a short cut across the “Million Dollar Highway” in Colorado before it was finished. We wound between bulldozers, around boulders blasted from the mountain a few days earlier. My brother cried because there was no guardrail, and I lay on the floor, carsick

Yes, the Hana Road it would be, I said. I wanted to see the Hawaii that James Michener described in “Tales of the South Pacific.” I knew we wouldn’t find it at the Maui Westin. If it’s going to rain, we might as well visit a rainforest.

We purchased a CD guided tour which gave us island history and directed us where to stop to get the best views, and where to see tropical plants and waterfalls. It’s only 60 miles from the airport in Kahului to the end of the Hana Road at Kipahulu National Park, but the 41-mile coastline takes 600 turns and crosses 54 bridges, so double that for a round trip.

In my 50th state I proved that I am my father’s daughter—well, almost.

Instead of corn and soybean fields beside the road, we saw bamboo, sugarcane and pineapple. Our first stop along the Hana Road was Ho’okipa, one of the best surfing and windsurfing beaches in the world. Before noon, the waves are surfers’ turf, but the afternoon trade winds bring the windsurfers. The waves looked enormous, but we were told by a nice couple who come annually that these waves are unusually small – good for novices.

We trained our binoculars on humpback whales playing with their young just beyond the surfers. It was hard to tell who was having more fun. During the winter months, the whales come from Alaska to Maui to spawn. The babies leaping from the waves were 13 feet long and weigh two tons, we learned.

The nice couple noticed Tom’s “Iowa Law” T-shirt. “I was born in Des Moines,” the woman said. “I haven’t been back since I was three. My parents went to Washington State to get away from the cold.” It figured that the first people we actually talked to in Hawaii would have an Iowa connection.

It’s hard to drive and enjoy the breathtaking scenery, of course. As a matter of safety, Tom encouraged me to stop often. Each vista seemed more spectacular, as the waves beat against the black lava shore. There are no billboards in Hawaii to obscure the view.

We stopped for a walk into the Ke’anae Arboretum, where we encountered Rainbow Eucalyptus. These towering trees look like someone has painted their trunks with bright green, pink and blue stripes. The red ginger, mountain apple blossoms and Hawaii’s state flower the hibiscus, were a feast for the eyes.

For lunch, we descended a steep gravel road into Ke’anae, a small village by the water. We stopped at a fruit stand in the yard of a private home for a sandwich and homemade banana bread. There was a wedding at the little church down the street. The guests were having a luau in the shelter house, some dressed in traditional Hawaiian attire. No one seemed to mind the rain. This side of the island gets most of the rain, which is carried by special ditches to the center of the island to water the pineapple plantations.

Just before we got to Hana, I followed a side road I thought would take us to a state park – to what the guide had told us was “a black lava beach and a blue pool.” When the pavement ended, we considered turning back, but our curiosity got the best of us and we bumped along until the road ended. We were forced to walk through a field of rocks and boulders to reach this “blue pool.” Each step was a sprained ankle waiting to happen and the tide was coming in, so the waves were crashing against the rocks threatening to drench us or pull us into the sea. The journey was more interesting than the destination.

A few other intrepid souls were also picking their way along the boulders. Tom muttered that this reminded him of the day I made the family walk two miles to the Morning Glory Pool in Yellowstone National Park. With each telling the four-year-old is crankier, the baby in the stroller more cumbersome, the thunderstorm more imminent.

We finally reached small, quiet Hana, supposedly the site of the Peter, Paul and Mary song about “Puff the Magic Dragon.”

My favorite part of the drive was just beyond the town, where we wound through a rural residential area. At the end of each drive there is a mailbox and a tiny covered fruit stand. Families with more than enough pineapples, fresh cut flowers or coconuts leave them there with a small sign telling the price and a box to leave your money. It reminded me of home during sweet corn season. I stopped at a stand that held baskets woven from palm fronds. The sign read, “I am trying to earn money to pay for college.” The baskets were $5. I’m not one for souvenirs beyond the memories, but I couldn’t resist.

We finished our tour at the Hakeajala National Park, home to a dormant volcano, which we couldn’t see because it was overcast. We visited Charles Lindbergh’s grave in a tiny churchyard just beyond the park.

Then came the big decision of the day. The quickest way home to our hotel near LaHaina was to continue on seven miles of unpaved road and then l8 miles of pavement plagued with potholes. It was five o’clock and I wasn’t excited about retracing our steps around 600 curves at night. I thought of my father and the Million Dollar Highway and suggested we go for it.

My husband, however, read me a box marked “Caution” on our map. It said of the area we were considering driving into: “If you get stranded along here, you are on your own because when you signed your car rental agreement, you stated you wouldn’t drive through here.”

I thought about my dad. Then I thought about the state troopers on our security detail we’d left behind in Iowa, assuring them we could take care of ourselves. I imagined explaining to them how I’d ripped the bottom out of a Saturn on an unpaved road in a remote part of Maui, with no gas stations for miles and unreliable cell phone service.

There wasn’t much traffic on the winding road going back, the same one we’d used on our way to Hana. As I maneuvered the 600 turns, I pretended I was a slalom skier in the Olympics. It had rained hard enough that waterfalls pounded down the sides of the mountains. The ocean disappeared reluctantly in the dark.

Hawaiian mythology tells us that the demigod Maui fished up the islands with his magic hook, and snared the sun with a net from atop the volcano to slow it down and lengthen the day.

On our final day, the sun shined and we ate local fish and watched the sun set into the ocean. I wanted the god to hold that sun a little longer.
As we were leaving Maui, I saw a T-shirt in the gift shop that read, “I survived the Hana Road.” Instead, I chose a postcard – a Maui sunset. I wrote: “Christie 50, Tom 49.”

By the way, the capital of Hawaii is Honolulu. I didn’t get there, but I’ll be back, and next time I’m going to rent a jeep.