More Hawai’i

Day Six: Waipi’o Valley and Mauna Kea
Waipi'o Valley Shore

After rous­ing from deep sleep Angela, Meg, and I went for a morn­ing run. Since Hilo is the raini­est city in the entire Unit­ed States, you can imag­ine that the humid­i­ty is pret­ty high there. How­ev­er, it felt good to run and any suf­fer­ing due to the moist air was noth­ing a show­er and break­fast could­n’t cure. After­wards, we decid­ed to walk down to the end of our block and explore Waip­i’o Val­ley. A few years ago, Back­pack­er mag­a­zine ran an arti­cle show­ing one of the hikes up through this incred­i­ble val­ley. This inspired Travis to sug­gest this trip in the first place, and is to where we owe many thanks in the end for such a great time. Now get­ting down into this val­ley means dri­ving a four-wheel dri­ve or walk­ing down a very steep and nar­row road. One of the peo­ple who was rent­ing us the Cliff House had kind of scared us off from dri­ving down so we walked it. All things being said, I’m glad we did, not because the Jeep would­n’t have made it (Travis drove down to the beach lat­er), but because we were able to see so much more of the view on the way down.

Waipi'o Valley Head

The split in the val­ley cov­ered in clouds.

With­in the val­ley are sev­er­al water­falls, includ­ing Hiilawe Falls (1,100 feet) and Nanaue Falls, both of which we were able to see from a dis­tance. We walked down the tar and grav­el road, pick­ing up many strange fruits along the way. A few tour busses passed us head­ing off for horse rid­ing tours and sight­see­ing. After cross­ing the stream(s) sev­er­al times, we reached what looked like the end of any road that led to any­thing oth­er than some­one’s house. I asked one of the tour guides if we could pro­ceed across the prop­er­ty up to Nanaue Falls and he kind­ly told us to just fol­low the grav­el dri­ve beside his prop­er­ty. Now, as to what con­si­ti­tut­ed “his” prop­er­ty, we could­n’t deter­mine after he left, so we asked some of the neigh­bors we passed a lit­tle while lat­er. They were pleasent enough, and polite­ly explained to us that no, we could­n’t go through there, but we were wel­come to turn around and make our way down to the beach. From there we could pick up the King’s Trail that went to the falls. Well, we knew we were going to have one heck of a climb back out of the val­ley, so we just decid­ed to head back for lunch.

Cinder Cone

A vol­canic cone that stands near the begin­ning of Sad­dle Road

After lunch and some ice cream at the Waip­i’o Art Gallery (who was also the man­age­ment of our rental house), we head­ed out to reach the top of a vol­cano. Travis and I had ori­gion­al­ly though that hik­ing six miles up to the sum­mit of Mau­na Loa might be fun. How­ev­er, there isn’t real­ly much to see up on Mau­na Loa and we real­ly did­n’t have the time for a twelve mile round-trip hike (and at alti­tudes none of us Vir­gini­ans were accus­tomed to). Angela decid­ed that the dor­mant vol­cano, Mau­na Kea, might have more to see and do, plus we could dri­ve right up to the top. Sure, that’s cheat­ing to the moun­taineer­ing crowd, but when you’re lim­it­ed in time, you take what you can get. We drove up Sad­dle road, across the cen­tral part of the island, which creeps ever upward through min­ing areas and mil­i­tary instal­la­tions into end­less lava fields which were cov­ered in fog. We stopped at the turn to the access road which leads up to the sum­mit to spend at least a cou­ple of moments get­ting acli­mat­ed to the alti­tude2. After all agree­ing that we felt fine, we head­ed on up. We drove up past the Astro­naut Elli­son S. Onizu­ka Space Cen­ter, stop­ping for one road-side pho­to, and on up to the obser­va­to­ries near the sum­mit. The view from there is absolute­ly spectacular.

Travis and Mauna Loa

Travis pos­ing with his new friend, Mau­na Loa.

Travis and I real­ized that the true sum­mit was a small peak away from the obser­va­to­ries, so we hiked across the small sad­dle between to take in an incred­i­ble view of Mau­na Loa above the clouds. Sad­ly, this is where the bat­ter­ies in my cam­era died, but for­tu­nate­ly, Travis’ trusty 35mm kept going. He was able to get some pho­tos of a sim­ply unbe­liev­able sun­set before we head­ed back down. How­ev­er, before head­ing all the way to the bot­tom, we decid­ed to do some more explor­ing. Mau­na Kea is also home to one of the high­est glacial lakes in the world, Lake Waiau (more). We parked near where we though the trail­head should be and, at about dusk, Travis, Angela and I set off with our trusty head­lamps to try and find it (Meg stayed behind to ensure the Park Rangers would have some­one to chew out). After much shuf­fling over sharp rocks, Travis made the dis­cov­ery for the three of us: a per­fect 300 yard-wide glass mir­ror sit­ting under the moon­light. Travis made many attempts to take a pho­to of it, but this is like­ly to be one of those moments when amat­uer pho­tog­ra­phers sim­ply can­not cap­ture what they’ve seen with their eyes.

Upon return­ing to the vehcile, Meg informed us that the Ranger had instruct­ed us to dri­ve down the 6+ miles to the vis­i­tor’s cen­ter with only our park­ing lights, as not to dis­turb the stargaz­ers below us. For­tu­nate­ly, years of dri­ving like this as a teenag­er in the coun­try pre­pared me for this (thanks, Dave!). We stopped off at the vis­i­tor’s cen­ter, where Travis and I decid­ed to talk to some of the folks with tele­scopes what they could see and had seen ear­li­er in the evening. Before the cloud cov­er came in, appar­ent­ly it had been a very clear night for see­ing things above. I was impressed at the equip­ment, although I’d have loved to have checked out one of the large tele­scopes at the top of the vol­cano. How­ev­er, it was late, so we head­ed back down to Waip­i’o, stop­ping for some late night fast food along the way. It had been a long day and we were in some desparate need of sleep.

Mauna Kea Observatories
Day Seven: Volcanoes National Park

We slept in for quite a while the next morn­ing, tak­ing a break between naps for a pan­cake break­fast. We even­tu­al­ly made our way down to Vol­cano and the Vol­cano Win­ery. We sam­pled the fare, which con­sists of many sweet wines, which usu­al­ly aren’t my taste. How­ev­er, their “Sym­pho­ny Dry” was very good. Many of the wines are sweet because they’re not from grapes at all or have oth­er fruits blend­ed in, since grapes aren’t real­ly native at all to Hawai’i (but then again, many plants there are native, like cof­fee and pineap­ples). One of inter­est was the sug­ary “Vol­cano Red,” which was made par­ty from local­ly grown jabot­i­ca­ba berries. It was main­ly inter­est­ing because jabot­i­ca­ba was so fun for Angela to say and also because the Brazil­lian jabot­i­ca­ba berries grow on their trees bark, rather than from the ends of limbs. We all loaded up on wine and then drove to the Vol­ca­noes Nation­al Park Vis­i­tor Cen­ter. Here we found a nice pic­nic table and had our lunch.

Thurston Lava Tube

Look­ing out of the Thurston Lava Tube into the rain­for­est beyond.

We went from there to the see some of the steam vents (which remind­ed me of Yel­low­stone) and to the Jag­ger Muse­um and Hawai­ian Vol­cano Obser­va­to­ry. Next was the Kiluea Iki Crater over­look and the Thurston Lava Tubes, which are real­ly incred­i­ble. These tubes are like sub­way tun­nels beneath the rain­for­est. The next part of our tour of the park took us down the apt­ly-named Chain of Craters Road, where we actu­al­ly saw both ends of the same rain­bow (a first for me). Hawai’i is known for it’s rain­bows, because where else do you have that much sun and rain in the same place? We stopped a lit­tle ways down the road and actu­al­ly found the end of the rain­bow. Sad­ly, it seems to end in thin air just below the rim of a vol­canic crater.


Full Rainbow


Lava

My fee­ble attempt at cap­tur­ing one of the red lava flares.

Now, for I keep men­tion­ing lava-rock-this and vol­cano-that. Where’s all the action at, you ask me? Well, that was exact­ly what was on our minds as we head­ed down the Chain of Craters. We want­ed to see some flow­ing lava. If you’re in the youngest place on the plan­et, would­n’t it be great to see some of it form­ing right before your eyes? We final­ly made it to the end of the road, where lava over­took the pave­ment just a few years ago. This could just as accu­rate­ly be called Chain of Cars road, since there were hun­dreds of cars parked along the side of the road, with peo­ple walk­ing across the lava fields like this was Dis­ney­land or some­thing. This was right at dusk, so we again broke out the head­lamps and flash­lights. Meg and Travis got a good head start, but Angela and I did our best to catch up and get a good glimpse at Pele her­self. The “trail” is noth­ing more than plas­tic reflec­tors attached to the lava rock in some­thing of a zig-zag pat­tern. Although peo­ple walk this any­time, dur­ing the night is when you can real­ly see the light from the lava. We were for­tu­nate in that the steam and gas plumes were vis­i­ble on the dri­ve down and the orange and red glow of the molten rock was vis­i­ble in the dark. My pho­tog­ra­phy skills just aren’t good enough to have tak­en any mean­ing­full pic­tures, but I did my best to try and cap­ture what we could see while there.

Day Eight: Waterfalls and Going Home

Honaka’a

Aka­ka Falls

Rain­bow Falls

Flight Home

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2Alti­tude sick­ness sets in at around 8,000 to 9,000 feet for most peo­ple. Gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, alti­tude sick­ness does­n’t hap­pen all at once, so a day trip is usu­al­ly okay. How­ev­er, we did climb every foot of the sum­mit’s height of 13,796 feet from sea lev­el that morn­ing, so we want­ed to be care­full and at least give our bod­ies a chance to react. I can hon­est­ly say that I began to feel very short of breath, had an intense headache, was very dehy­drat­ed, and had lost all appetite by the end of the day. That could have been exhaus­tion, but I can’t help but think that the alti­tutde had at least some­thing to do with it.