We hadn’t spent any time at the trailer in Pismo since the end of May, so we were looking forward to a long weekend here (made a little longer now since Chris didn’t have to be back home for Sunday afternoon music obligations). So, we planned for Friday a long loop through the northern…
We just couldn’t get motivated for a long drive this weekend, so we had decided to simply hike up, down, and along the bluffs first thing in the morning before the day got too warm. However, Jane proposed that, since we’d be up on the east side of town already, we should just keep…
After nearly three weeks of no hikes since our last outings in Hawaii, we were eager to get back in the saddle, so we planned to drive to Quaking Aspen and tackle the 10-mile roundtrip up and down Slate Mountain early this Saturday morning. However, after Jane got very little sleep Friday night and our…
One area of Maui that we had yet to visit was Makawao State Forest Reserve, so we decided to spend Chris’ last full day exploring here. Makawao is in the “upcountry”, the farming and ranching region strung out north-to-south along Haleakala’s western slopes, lying on the northwest shoulder of the volcano. The landscape is…
On our way back down from the summit of Haleakala, we decided to stop just prior to exiting the national park and walk the short but remarkable Hosmer Grove nature trail. There is a campground here as well as the park headquarters, but the main attraction is a unique alien forest, meaning that the…
After returning from our short hike down the Halemauu trail, we drove up to the top of Haleakala once again, not really because we wanted to go there a third time but because we wanted to check out the short overlook trails along the west rim, the uppermost one of which can only be…
We went out for dinner after Mass on Saturday night, discussing a wild hair idea to revisist Haleakala early Sunday morning – we were hoping to catch the north side of the mountain without cloud cover so we could see the views we had missed when completing our hike through the crater in a…
The West Maui mountains are some of the wettest places on earth, receiving over 400 inches of rain each year. Throughout our trip, we had looked at the rugged peaks maintain an almost constant cloud cover that typically obscured the tops of all but the lowest ridges. Another hike we had wanted to do…
After the easy walk at Iao Valley, we returned to Kihei a little dissatisfied, so, after some lazy time at the condo, we headed back out to walk the other paved trail on our list: the Wailea Boardwalk. Beginning at the south end of Kihei Town, the walk begins with a short stretch of…
One of the places we had wanted to take the boys in their double stroller was the Iao Valley, which we knew had some paved trails – the area is famous for the Iao Needle, a lava pinnacle that towers over the valley just west of Kahului and Wailuku. Well, we never made it…