Reflections of My Travel

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We slept in a bit this morning and ended up getting up and about around 0400. We headed up to Haleakala for a second volcano-top sunrise, this time from the summit (10,023′). We got up there just in time. It was a pretty sunrise, but I don’t think it was as inspiring as the first one. I actually liked the lower vantage point of the first one too because it looked like the sun rose straight out of the crater, whereas this morning the sun came straight up through clouds. It was still beautiful and peaceful and worthwhile. We stuck around after the sun came up and went up to the observatory so that we could actually get some pics looking down into the crater. And then we decided that while we were up there, we might as well hike into the crater. We started out on the Sliding Sands Trail from the summit and made our way approximately 2.5 miles in to the crater to the first cinder cone, Ka Luu o ka Oo. We walked all the way around the rim of it which was not only further around than it appeared, but also much more intimidating. The rim was relatively narrow and covered in small shifty lava rocks that made my footing feel quite precarious. Couple that with the fact that falling into the cone and falling down the side of the cone were both equal in their lack of survivability. It was intimidating, but I did make it around. And then we started our 2.5 mile hike back up out of the crater. Up was certainly more tiring than down. Down seemed like it was actually a fairly gradual descent (I generally have more trouble with down because of my knees). However, going up proved it to be much steeper. It took us a bit longer going up but we were in no hurry since we didn’t really have anything else planned for the day. It was definitely good exercise. And it was beautiful in there. When we did finally make it back out to the car, it was about 1530. We started back down the volcano and then headed to the south central coast of Maui. We had a well-deserved dinner at Outback, walked around a bit, and then set up camp for the night. Though we were trying to stay up later so that we could sleep until daylight, we’ve ended up in bed by 2000 again.