Thread: Haleakala National Park and Volcano

No place you have ever been can prepare you for the experiences and feelings you will have on the summit of Haleakala volcano. The landscape - deeply sculpted, richly colored, and intensely evocative will be unlike any landcape you have known. Visually expansive, the summit area continually eludes any attempt to understand its scale or dimensions.
You may spend a few hours hiking in the cinder desert landscape, or a few minutes looking for native birds in the shrubland - whatever you choose to do, you will do it surrounded by native Hawaiian plants and animals. The mountain summit is one of the only easily-accessible areas of Hawaii where our rare and endemic species survive and thrive.
Already impressive in the light of day, the summit takes on a new dimension at night when the darkness reveals the brilliant night sky.

Here's our experience. I drove, I'm always the one that gets to drive when we go places with roads that tend to get a little dicey and by dicey, I mean straight up on one side and straight down on the other. It's either I drive or I lay on the floor of the back seat crying. So, here are some photos as we are getting above the clouds. You go from sea level to over 10,000 ft in no time. Some quicker than others however, I went slowly

Can you see the ocean way off in the distance? We're just starting get above the clouds



Now, we are above the clouds

This is at the first Lookout area you come to. There is a nice little parking lot on the right to park and after a short hike up a small hill, you come over the crest to a magnificent view of the volcano.



more clouds "beneath us! "



It's just a tad breezy up there, hehe

Back to the car and a drive up to the summit, or so we thought

Here's the Visitor station where you go in and get your "I Survived The Drive Up" certificate.




More views of the volcano.....

While up there, we figured out the fact that we STILL weren't to the summit. Back to the car and a sweet little drive up even higher. Finally, we made it to the actual summit of the volcano.

Here's proof that my DH made it, anyway

Following is something we didn't know existed until we were up there. There is a big observatory up there. It's the Haleakala Observatory and it's located just off the park property. It's closed to the public. It's largest scope can track something as small as a basketball 20,000 miles away. Pretty awesome, I think.



Here's the sign, I don't think you can read much, tho

All in all, it was something that we were very glad we did. It's an awesome thing to see. We'd do it again.

Here's coming back down the mountain, back into the clouds and down to a much needed cocktail. I think was about 9am





PS We were going to do the bicycle trip off the mountain and someone (a local) had mistakenly told us that the tours had been stopped for awhile. They were operating some still. We saw several. I'm glad we didn't do it because it seemed to take them longer than it did us to get to the nearest cocktail lounge

Thanks for those great pictures and descriptions. I am checking airfare right now.