treadnorth: Maui 1

This post was written a couple weeks ago, but just added now due to computer issues...

It’s taken me over two weeks to get back to some sort of rhythm at home since returning from Hawaii. Between home projects while settling into our new place, bike projects (to be announced), and flying trips for work, I’ve barely had time to sit down and get everything blogged about our trip, which was a great winter escape. Rather than attempt to squeeze every detail that I’d like to about Maui trip into one stretched out post, I’m going to break it up into sections. I’ll begin with, well, the start of the trip.

We’ve tried to fly standby to Hawaii a few times, with some success and some failure. More failure in recent years, so we decided to try a trick that another pilot clued us into. We searched for flights on the west coast that didn’t connect from anywhere before heading to Maui. I guess they tend to be more open. We found a great early morning option out of L.A., so we flew out there the night before and got a well, economy is what we’ll call it, hotel room to spend the night. Not much sleeping- just listening to a very loud and half hysterical (in a humorous way) Asian couple through the wall. I don’t know what was so funny because I only speak English and a bit of Spanish, but they had a better night than us. We managed to sleep a couple hours, and then headed back to LAX and caught our flight to Kahului. Five hours later, we were flying by Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on the Big Island and descending past Haleakala on Maui to land. I like volcanoes. Riding Haleakala, which is a Maui favorite, was on my list, and flying over it’s huge slopes got me pretty excited for the trip. Until then, I’d been so wrapped up in working and the house that it hadn’t really settled in that we were going to get to spend a week on a beautiful island in the Pacific.

We claimed all our bags (to include my coupled Long Haul Trucker which made it just fine), got our rental car and some groceries, and headed out down the Hana Highway, which skirts around some beautiful scenery along the northeast to east side of the island, and leads to some of “old Hawaii”. Hana and the areas around it are the places to see if you’re looking for laid back agricultural Hawaii where people are selling fruit out of their pickups and basically just hanging out all day. It’s pretty relaxing. I think that fruit was the best food I ate the whole trip, including the expensive Luau we went to at the end.

We camped at the Kipahulu end of Haleakala National Park that first night, which is a free campground just above the ocean down the road past Hana. I was pretty bummed out to find it full of loud party crowds since I’m all for solitude while camping, but everyone quieted down and slept at nightfall. Our site wasn’t really a site but a grass patch next to our car, but it was a free place to sleep. All in all, I can’t say I was impressed with our beach camping experiences on the trip, as it seems to be where all the inebriated and baked people pile together, and a lot of the beach campgrounds we saw seemed to be half gypsy camp than tourists. If your play your cards right and learn the convoluted permit system in Hawaii, you can plan better than we did and find some peace on permit required beaches. We’re going to try for those places next time. I think the Kipahulu camp may be a good place, but we hit it on a Saturday night, which was probably the reason for the crowd.

Anyhow, the next morning, our first full day in Maui, we hiked the ‘Ohe’o Gulch on the Pipiwai Trail, which is some of the only hiking in Haleakala National Park down on the rainy side of the Island. It’s a hike full of rainforest, bamboo stands, wild fruit (we enjoyed ripe passion fruit this time of year), and beautiful swimming holes (watch for flash floods signs though- people get flushed here), and Waimoku Falls.

We spent the rest of the day retracing the Hana Highway, where we met a guy selling banana bread who was a transplant from Uptown here in the Cities. He bakes a great traditional macadamia nut banana bread for being a non-native. He gave us some camping tips for future trips too.

After getting back from Hana, we headed up Haleakala Hwy, with Hosmer Grove Campground as our destination for the night. We came prepared not only for beach camping, but for camping at 7,000 feet, which is where Hosmer is at. It’s the second Haleakala National Park campground, and I liked it much better than the people pile down in the warmth, but it was chilly at night. Much like MN in the spring and fall. Not what people think of when they think of Hawaii.

The next couple days brought some great experiences on the volcano, both via boot and bike, but that’ll be my next post…

Flying in past the Big Island and Haleakala...