Early in our planning for this vacation on Maui, we had talked about walking through the Haleakala crater, and it sort of became the keystone around which the rest of our trip was built. Because the kids arrived the day before on the 2nd, the 3rd had been the date for this hike ever…
The kids all came to join us on the 2nd, so, before anyone’s body clock had a chance to adjust to the time zone change, we rustled everyone out of bed at 3am in order to make the sunrise at the top of Haleakala. It was a little less rushed than our first visit…
One of the stops we had bypassed the previous day on our way east was the Waikomoi Ridge trail, a short nature walk that ascends a low ridge south of the main road to a couple of picnic areas – it was described as offering views over a deep canyon to the east and…
After checking out of our hotel and leaving Hana behind, we planned to head back west up the Hana road to Kahanu Garden, located off the main highway down Ulaino Road toward the ocean. The garden is near the end of the road and abuts an enormous temple site – we had seen some…
Day 2 of our Hana Adventure Extraordinaire began with an absolutely glorious sunrise – since our body clocks had yet to fully adjust to Hawaii time, we were up in plenty of time to see it. We decided rather than check out and leave Hana directly, we had time to drive west up the…
The long day ended with our return to Hana and a walk up to Fagan’s Cross, a local landmark placed by one of the area’s earliest cattle ranchers atop a prominent hill overlooking the town and serviced by a trailhead that also serves a community walking trail. It looked like we could combine the two paths…
We decided to continue exploring the area around Hana after checking into our hotel and cleaning up. It was early in the evening and our hotel room was a studio condo with a full kitchen – we had brought food to cook for dinner, so we figured we had time for a couple of more hikes…
Our hiking guidebook noted some oft-overlooked pools located not far from the road back to Hana, so we wanted to pay these a visit after returning from Waimoku Falls – the roadside trailhead was fairly obvious from the 8-10 cars parked against the fenceline along the road (which was also a bit discouraging as…
We’ve quickly discovered that Maui has many micro-climates and diverse ecosystems, and this hike was our first foray into a true jungle environment. The Kipahulu area of Haleakala National Park is on the southeast coast of the island, where lava flows from the volcano have been eroded by water into patterns of deep gorges…
We got up early Sunday morning (again – we have even yet to fully adjust to Hawaii time) and hit the Road to Hana – we got a hotel room in Hana for the night, so instead of driving the road and back in one day, our plan was to do it in two. We…