Ascent of Haleakala

Closely watching the completely unreliable weather forecasts, we reserved Monday for our ascent of Maui's big volcano, Haleakala. (I keep trying to tell Vicki that the intersections of alpine and maritime are really bad places for weather forecasts...). But first we visited pretty little Paia and then, after Haiku (no poetry festival), the beautiful Hui No'eau Visual Arts Center.

At the wonderful Visual Arts Center, Vicki

stands by perhaps the largest Norfolk Island

Pine I have yet seen

Fuller view; but now I wonder whether this

is really a Cook Island Pine--both "discovered" 

by Captain Cook--but the latter with a more

curved appearance; anyhow, it's a big one

We are now about half way up the 10023 foot mountain,

with a great view of southwestern Maui, looking toward

Maalea

Two nene, at the Haleakala National Park mountain visitor

center

Silversword plant, endangered, but thriving in this weird

environment

At the summit; the parking lot is at 10000 feet; it was a tough

23 foot slog, but I did it; Vicki joined me later, after a nap

Unfortunately the place was in a complete white-out, high

wind, rain, etc., with nothing to look at but the nearby

observatories

Well, there was the white rainbow like the one I saw on

Mauna Loa a couple years ago; properly called a "fog bow,"
I understand, or "sea dog" if you're a mariner

After an hour or so, it cleared enough to see a bit of the

"crater," actually a severely eroded canyon

And a bit of the lowlands

And some of the summit terrain

And the one thing I really wanted to see, Hawaii's two great

mountains in the distance

We rewarded ourselves with dinner at the Haliimaile General

Store, Vicki the ribs, me, the incredible cocoanut seafood

curry, with cocoanut porter; yum