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Yesterday was the first day of 2015 and what an adventurist day it was. My significant other and I decided to go to the top of Haleakala. I packed a pic-nick lunch and we loaded the car with lots of coats, most of them for me. We started out early, leaving the condo by 8:30AM. Our first stop was the visitor center headquarters at 7000 foot elevation. at this point we put on our tennies. I haven't worn shoes in a very long time so my feet were feeling a bit cramped. We purchased a couple of books on native plants and picked up a map of Haleakala National Park. We reached our next stop, Hosmer Grove by 11:30. We hiked a short trail that led us through pine and eucalyptus trees. This area is a great place for bird watchers. Plenty of native birds make their home. I saw only a few but heard many. We spent about an hour exploring this area before we moved on. As we headed up the road we took advantage of a few pull outs to photograph the seen. The views were quite picturesque but the wind was getting quite strong. At elevation 9740 feet we reached Haleakala Visitor Center. It became very clear I was going to need more then just the one jacket I had put on at the last visitor center. So I layered the lightest one first, then the fur ( fake fur) lined one I borrowed from my neighbor and lastly put on my boyfriend's coat he had been waring. No, I didn't let him freeze in that 42 to 47 degree wind, he had brought his heavy down parka for this occasion. We eat our pic-nick lunch in the car, out of the cold and wind. Then headed to the shortest of the two hiking trails we wanted to do. At the top of the first trail the wind had picked up and was to strong to spend to much time photographing. The second trail called keonehe'ehe'e Trail ( Sliding Sands Trail) takes you down into the valley where the colorful cinder cones are and leads deep into the wilderness. We only went a short distance do to the cold wind. Going down the trail was not bad be cause the wind helped push us. Coming back up was another story! We had to stop ever 25 to 50 yards to catch our breath and to rest. I made a short video of the top of the trail and posted it on my facebook, but the wind was so loud it drowned out my narrative. Once we got back to the parking lot we headed farther up the road to the top of the Pu'u'ula'ula summit, 10,023 feet elevation. There was a protective, enclosed viewing area that allowed you to see the Big Island of Hawaii and the West Maui Mountains. We didn't stay long because sunset was getting close and we wanted to head down the mountain for a different vantage point to take sunset photos. We managed to get about half way down to a nice pull out just as the sun began to set. We were rewarded with a spectacular one as you can see from the photo posted here. I'm really happy with how the first day of 2015 started and ended. I'm now looking forward to making the rest of the year adventurist and exciting.
