It was Jane’s birthday today, so the girls decided to take her out for a mani-pedi after all the kids went snorkeling in the morning and we babysat. We had wanted to hike to Lahaina-Pali trail ever since starting to plan our Maui vacation, so we decided to squeeze it into the already-full day by having Pedro take us out to the trailhead (since we wanted to do it as a one-way shuttle hike, we needed a ride) as well has picking us up when we finished – while we were gone, the idea was that the kids would cook Jane’s birthday dinner (rock on, said we!). So, Pedro dropped us off  about 4:45pm at the west end of the 5-mile trail, about a half mile west of the tunnel on the main Lahaina road. The Lahaina-Pali trail is one of historical significance for Maui – the original footpath was the principal route between Lahaina and Wailuku, rising to over 1,600′ of elevation as it crossed the arid southern shoulder of the West Maui mountains. Although the footpath was replaced by first a graded carriage road and later the modern highway, the original trail has been restored and is maintained as an important cultural resource. Our condo’s lanai looks directly out onto this desert-like expanse, so we had become familiar with the landscape devoid of trees and marked with a row of tall windmills running north to south along the area’s central rift zone. We started up a rocky path connecting the trailhead with a remnant of the paved carriage road, and we followed the old pavement east for a few hundred yards before coming to a signed junction with the footpath. This side of the island is largely in a rain shadow, and the lush jungles of the north side and the wooded thickets of the upcountry stand in stark contrast to the sparse vegetation here – the rocky trail climbs moderately as it heads northeast, but the barren scenery and the absence of cooling breezes made it seem much steeper than it was. We ascended through several gulches, each followed by a secondary climb over an adjacent ridge, and we enjoyed the wide views to the east, south, and west – those only got better the higher we climbed. Still, it was more work than we expected to gain the principal ridgeline – when the windmills finally came into view, we were still more than a mile west of them, and that last mile involved losing more than 200′ of elevation, dropping into the rift valley, before having to gain that back plus some in order to crest the ridge. The windmills were enormous – they look large from miles away, but they are gigantic up close. We got a few nice pictures and then began our descent down the east slope of the mountain. While the trail was more gentle at first, it steepened as it followed the southern side of a deep gulch running due east, and we got into more of the stair-stepping terrain that we had passed through on the way up. What was super about this side of the ridge was the steady breeze, plus the views of the valley as the setting sun changed the colors of both land and sky. Eventually, we reached the bottom and made good time across the flats toward the eastern trailhead. Although that terminus is furnished with a little parking area, it lies at the end of a dirt road that sounded somewhat complicated to find, so we had told Pedro we’d walk out to the highway where we had seen other cars parked earlier in our visit – that added a little less than half a mile, and it was nearly dark when we reached our trail’s end at the highway gate. Pedro arrived less than five minutes later, and we drove back to the condo to find Jane’s birthday dinner preparation in full swing. It was a really nice evening – a great walk, pretty views, and a sumptuous dinner cooked by others.