Polipoli State Park

Last Sunday I went hiking at Polipoli State Park. Several people had told me I should check it out. I had tried to go earlier this year, but the road in is a dirt track (you're supposed to have 4WD, but I managed in my car) and part of it had been washed out in the flash floods this past past "winter." I was able to get in this time and go hiking. I had not realized that the area where the hiking trail is is also where we had a large fire about a year and a half ago. The park is a hardwood forest in the Kula Forest Reserve, high on the side of Haleakala.

Here's some shots of the hike. You'll see a lot of evidence of the fire, but I mostly didn't take pictures of the really dead and burned parts of the forest.

Maui Sea Caves

Last year when Chris came to visit me we went on a boat trip to see the sea caves along the Kanaio coastline of Maui. It was an awesome trip. The Kanaio coast area, past Wailea and Makena, is accessible only by boat. It is the site of Maui's most recent lava flows (about 200-300 years ago). The lava formed amazing arches, grotto's and sea caves. The trip was in a zodiac, which was bumpy at times, but not punishingly so. Our captain was able to drive us into one of the caves for a minute or two at one point, then zip back out before the next big wave came crashing in. Getting good pictures was difficult with all the movement of the boat. I had more than a couple photo's of the sky, the bottom of the boat and random people's head's, but I think I still managed to snap a few good ones :)

House of the Sun

These past weeks (5 to be exact), I have been very busy with my Finance class. I haven't had much time to update my blog or to get out and do a whole lot. My time is mostly consumed thinking of balance sheets and cash flows, debt vs. equity, acid test ratio's, Net Present Values, the time value of money and the like. Thus, due to my lack of recent material, I am going to share photo's of Haleakala from February of this year.

Haleakala means House of the Sun in Hawaiian and it is the dormant volcano that forms approximately 75% of the island of Maui. At just over 10,000 ft in elevation the summit of Haleakala is the highest point on Maui. Haleakala's crater is approximately 7 miles long, 2 miles wide and about 2,600 ft deep.

From the summit of Haleakala you can see the Big Island on a clear day. As you can see, Mauna Kea was snow covered.





View from the summit into the crater with the ocean beyond.
As you can see, clouds often surround Haleakala, but many times the summit is still above the clouds.

Start of the trail down into the crater.

As the afternoon wore on, these clouds crept up the side of the crater and then slowly across the floor of the crater- pretty cool to watch.

Not sure what these birds are, but they hide good then run when you get close.

The trail across part of the crater.

The Silver Sword plant which grows only on the slopes of Haleakala and is endangered (not hard to imagine since this is the only place it is found).