One time, I took a ferry there from Lahaina and camped up in the mountains.

I took a mule ride down these sea cliffs to Kalaupapa, which is actually a literal leper colony. Leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, has been cured as of like the 1950s, so at the time I went there, there was only like 7 people left who had suffered from the disease and they were like 70 or 80 years old. That alone is an interesting story, but I’m kinda going off on a tangent, it’s an interesting story should you ever want to go down an internet rabbit hole.

People in Molokai were generally friendly, but even a decade after the fact, there was still “Save La’au” signs and anti-Sheraton propaganda. They were overgrown in the vegetation, and sun faded over time, but you could feel the anti-establishment sentiment in the air. There was not much to do, in a sense of commercial outlets. I rented a jeep and drove from one end of the island to the other. There was like one little bar and a little gift shop, and that’s pretty much all I remember. I got a lot of suspicious looks and mean mugs, but I sort of expected it because I knew I would stick out like a sore thumb. But you could basically pull off the road anywhere and have miles of beach to yourself. I think i stayed two nights, and while it was a unique and memorable experience that I think outshines every other adventure I’ve had on any of the other islands, I don’t think I would go back. Like I said, people were nice, but I definitely didn’t feel like I would be welcome there for very long.

Another story about Molokai that I thought was funny/interesting:

The island was overrun by an Axis Deer population. They are obviously not native and are invasive to the land. So, the island or the government or whatever, hired a guy to go up in a helicopter with a machine gun and just pull up on these herds of these monstrous deer and he would take out like 300 a day or something, and did that for a couple weeks until the herd was thinned out. Crazy stuff.

To me, Molokai is like the Florida of Hawaii.