Maui and Haleakala National Park

June 24, 2018

The cruise ship traveled during the night to Kahului, Maui. Jeff and Darla's cabin was on the starboard side and he got an early view of Kahului as we approached.

Jeff and Darla got up probably earlier than us to exercise, so Jeff was at the rail to watch the tugs in operation for docking.

Brenda and I were sitting in the nice Skyline dining room having breakfast when the ship moved in to dock in Kahului. 8:25am.

Kahului was very pleasant as a first destination on our ship journeys. It is a sizable city on the north shore with population 26,000 in 2010 compared to 144,000 for the whole island. The population of Maui is third among the islands after Oahu and Hawaii.

As we found to be usual, the cruise ship dock was close to the freight handling docks. I found the freight handling very interesting.

The docking process was quite efficient and the gangway was open at 8:30 for people to leave the ship. We exited to a large warehouse, and on the far side of that warehouse were the buses for tours, taxis, etc.

My tentative plan for the day was to rent a car, travel to Haleakala Crater, and then do the loop around the east end of Maui through Hana. That plan led to a long and adventurous day, mainly because I had not adequately researched the nature of the road along the south side of Maui.

I had reserved a car with Enterprise, which did not pick us up at the ship (despite their advertising slogan), but it was a half mile walk so I had planned for Jeff and I to walk there. That worked, except that the half-mile neglected the fact that it was a half-mile from the ship to the port entrance. Then there was the laborious process of bringing the rental car through multiple security points to get close enough to the ship to pick up Brenda and Darla. Once all that was accomplished, we were outside in Kahului and free to explore.

This is the docking location in Kahului. On returning to drop off some of us, we had to go through 4 security checkpoints, the third one shown here at the little shed. The last one was an airport type checkpoint where we put our bags through the equipment.

Kahului was pleasant and open, and the weather was nice. We made a stop by Walmart for food and supplies and were on our way down Hwy 36 toward the east side of town. This was a fine highway which led to the airport - we would encounter very different highways later!

We are headed up that green mountainside to the cloud level and above! We are on the open road at 10:20am.

We turned on Hwy 37 and started climbing. In just 15 minutes we gained enough altitude to look over the ridge and see the southwest coast of Maui. That surprised me! We didn't get any closer to this southwest part of Maui. Note the line of large wind machines going up the mountain from the coast. We saw another such line of wind generators later, so Maui has a lot of wind power.

About the time we turned onto Hwy 377 for the climb to Haleakala, we realized that we needed gas. The car had been given to us with less than half a tank, and it was now clear that there weren't many gas stations out here. Darla guided us with her phone down a steep winding road to this little hardware store and gas station, which may have been the only source of gas out here! This was very fortunate, because I don't remember seeing another gas station the rest of the day! And the gas was not expensive. This was apparently a working agricultural community on the side of the mountain and everything showed reasonable and practical care.

I snapped off the picture because of the horses, but now I have another agenda. Note that the house above is nice and well maintained, as was characteristic of this entire area. The picture is that of a modestly well-off community with an agricultural agenda. As an old farm boy from Arkansas I have a strong prejudice in favor of hard-working farmers.

The larger picture above is toward the southeast coast of Maui, which we were to travel later in the day. In fact the squiggly road shown is almost certainly the road we traveled.

We are back on track on Hwy 377 and headed steeply upward after our fortunate diversion for gas. This is a higher view of the southwest coast of Maui, almost directly south across the island from our dock at Kahului on the north coast. It is now notable that there are numerous, though scattered, houses down on the south coast here, and the whole area may be in agricultural use. As we proceeded later on the southeast coast, there was little sign of habitation there.

We are climbing steeply on a road that is nicely maintained, but very steep and twisting. You can see houses well below, which may be the place we bought gas.

The road is now a set of great sweeping switchbacks through jumbled volcanic rock. And note that we are now above the cloud level!

We catch sight of the observatory structures and we know that we are nearly there.

Darla got this amazing shot of the sea from near the top of Haleakala. You can see the road that we had just traveled, and we had been in the cloud. But now this view is over that cloud and shows the beautiful blue of the sea. At first I thought we were seeing small islands out there, but the dark patterns on the surface are the shadows of the small clouds above the surface.

This is a segment of Jeff's shot of the sea from Haleakala. It was beautiful enough that all three of us shot it. It's not immediately clear what land we are seeing right on the horizon, but both Lanai and Kahoolawe are out in that general direction, so it could be either or both.

Haleakala Overlook, Haleakala National Park

Brenda, Jeff and Darla at the 10,000 foot altitude of the Haleakala Overlook. We reached there at about noon, so the journey from Kahului took us an hour and a half including our gas stop.

This is Haleakala crater! It is not as barren and moonscape looking as when we first saw it in 1987, partly because of its shroud of white puffy clouds. But I was pleased that it was not cloud-covered since we had come up through that heavy strata of cloud. This was one of the things that I really wanted Jeff and Darla to see.

This is one of Darla's picturres of Haleakala Crater from the hill across from the visitor center.

If you looked south from this 10,000 ft vantage point, you were looking over the clouds and directly at the sea.

Brenda and Rod hanging around in the enclosed lookout area.

We hiked over to this open viewing area after having a look from the formal Lookout.

They had some nice poster exhibits. The one at left shows the road that Jeff has just driven up. Below shows the layout of the observatory complex.

Jeff gets the prize for the best picture of the the Haleakala Observatory with its multiple instruments.

It was interesting to be up on a high mountain looking down on the clouds!

The barren moonscape appearance of the crater is softened by the white cloud cover.

Rod and Jeff poking around in the open overlook area.

Jeff and Darla were over at the open observing area at cloudtop level.

Darla on the open observing area, above cloud level.

This is a view of the main crater from the open overlook.

The above view of the crater shows one of the hiking trails leading into the valley. Zooming in at left shows part of the trail down below.

The silversword plant is one of the unusual plants growing in the volcanic rock.

Darla, Brenda, Jeff, Rod - recording our presence at the 10,000 foot level. It was a great privilege to be here with Jeff and Darla.

There was a lower parking lot that gave access to a trail out into the crater. It was also above the cloudtop level. We walked out to the trailhead to get the view of the trail below.