Fun With Chris and Jane

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 variable here, with grassy fields interspersed with deep woods. We had read about a couple of different options for hikers in the area, the first being…

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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 plantings are not native to Maui – a half-mile trail meanders through the grove, and includes an upper loop that leaves the forest to wander through…

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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 reached when driving down the mountain from the summit. We did stop for a few at the lower visitor center near White Hill, browsing in the gift shop…

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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 rain cloud, plus there were some short trails to crater overlooks that we also wanted to check out. So, Sunday morning found us rising early again…

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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 from early in our planning phase was Waihee (Vye-hay-ay) Ridge, a 4-mile roundtrip trail that gains about 1,600′ to reach Lanilili Peak, elevation 2,563′, located not…

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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 beach travel, then becomes a paved sidewalk running south for over 1-1/2 miles between the water and the string of resorts that make up the Wailea…

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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 by while the kids were here, so we swung through on our way elsewhere this day (of all things, Chris had come down with a cold,…

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The kids all left today – it was super that they were able to come for 10 whole days, and we missed them as soon as we left the airport. After doing some errands on the way back to the condo, we decided to walk later in the evening and catch the sunset from somewhere south of us near Wailea. Our guidebook lists several hikes in the remote area south of Makena – we had visited Big Beach with the kids…

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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…

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The kids were all busy with their various activities this afternoon, so we drove out north of Wailuku to check out some trails on our list. One, the Waihee Valley trail, requires users to get a permit from the current landholder (we’ve since discovered that hiking on this trail has been completely disallowed, unfortunately), and low clouds in the area meant that views from the other trail, Waihee Ridge, would be poor. So, we backtracked to Wailuku in search of…

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