Stepping Back in Time

After lounging around the condo Saturday morning, we split a spinach-bacon wrap during a quick lunch at the Kihei Caffe after running a few errands "uptown," then drove a few miles north past the sugar cane plantations to the sleepy little town of Wailku.  In Kihei, Everybody and His Brudder was out and about; in Wailuku, Everybody and his Brudder was taking a nap or had left town.

Our first stop was the Bailey House Museum, on the site of the 19th century Wailuku Female Seminary, a boarding school for local girls.  The two-story main building where the principal lived houses a three-room exhibit area with native Hawaiian artifacts, and landscape paintings of the area by Edward Bailey, the teacher and principal after whom the place is name.  The dining hall-now the gift shop-is the only other building remaining from that era; the other, abode buildings, weathered away over time.

The surrounding grounds are landscaped with several plants and trees, some endemic (ones that evolved on Hawaii), indigenous (those that arrived by wind, sea, or by "hitchhiking" on birds), others brought in by Polynesians who came to the islands in double-hulled canoes nearly two-thousand years ago, as well as "exotic" species that normally would not be found here.   A long fishing canoe made from a single koa log on the Big Island at the turn of the 19th century rests under the protective eves of a building on the edge of the gardens.

We picked up a map of Wailuku's historic district that runs about a block downhill from the museum, then another block or so along South High Street.  There is a weird mix of architectural styles here:  Stone buildings like the 1908 Courthouse and the Wailuku Union Church, Mediterranean Revivial-Hawaiian Style with colorful Spanish/Mexican tile work as at the Public Library, and the wooden, tall-spired Ka'ahumanu Church that looks like it was shipped in from New England in a big box and then re-assembled in Wailuku.

After finishing our leisurely stroll through the Historic District, we had a brief "meet-up" with our friends Bill and Bonnie Prucha who had been working at the outrigger canoe races down at the nearby Kahului Harbor.  After we came up with a plan to rendezvous for tomorrow's play at the Iao Theater in Wailuku, they led us back toward Kahului and the Iron Maehara Stadium where we'd take in the evening baseball game between the local, Na Koa Ikaika Maui team, and the Scorpions from Yuma.