I spent two weeks in Hawaii with my parents. The first week was in Maui, which I haven't been to before. The second week was in Kauai, where I've been a number of times. The weather for both weeks was great. We only got sprinkled on a couple of times, with the only hard rain coming while we were safely ensconced in our hotel rooms for the night.
Our first Maui reconnaissance hike was just south of our hotel. The maps showed a 4x4 road leading to La Perouse Bay, but it turned out to be a freshly paved one-lane road. So we drove down and took a short hike partway around the bay. The most recent eruption on Maui was here in 1750, and the coastline was a mix of dark lava and broken white coral. The wind was pushing some pretty good waves into the bay, but the Hawaiians need to have pretty tough feet to hike in with their surfboards while wearing flip flops.
The next day we drove up the main volcano on Maui, Haleakala. We lucked out in having clear skies until we were on the way down. We poked around at various viewpoints on the road, then hiked a little ways down into the crater. At 10,000 feet elevation, the top is usually above the clouds, so it's pretty dry.
Day 3 took us to Iao Needle on the slopes of Maui's smaller volcano. Unfortunately, most of this terrain is private property, and they've stopped allowing hiking there. The park only has some short paved paths.
The next day my step-dad Richard and I left my mom at the hotel so that we could go on a real hike along Waihee Ridge. Once again, the clouds held off, closing in on the mountain tops only as we were on the way down.
The next day we took the long drive to Hana. It's not actually that far, but much of it is on a narrow, twisty road that narrows to one lane for just about every bridge, which is pretty often on this wet side of the island. We ended up stopping at Waianapanapa beach. It's called a black sand beach, although it's really made of small pebbles. Near the water they're 5-10 mm and very smooth, but they get larger and sharper away from the waves.
A short tunnel from the beach leads to an opening on the water.
I left my parents to enjoy the serenity of a beachfront cemetery while I scouted up the coast. Once again, the scenery was mostly rugged lava, which sometimes does a good job of directing the waves into the air.
Finally, on the last full day in Maui, Richard and I went for a real hike at La Perouse Bay. After rounding the bay, we started off on the "King's Highway". If this is a highway, I'd hate to see the King's Side Streets.
As it turned out, we need to take one of the King's Side Streets to circle back to the bay. This mostly involved following an unimproved route marked by chunks of coral set at each high point to mark a path that avoided the worst hazards.
It came time to leave Maui and head to Kauai. I was looking forward to Kauai mostly for the higher quality hiking, but also for its better hotel. The Wailea Marriott on Maui doesn't have its own beach (although beaches are nearby on either side), and its main pool is designed for relaxation.
On the other hand, the Lihue Marriott on Kauai has its own beach, and the pool is much bigger with plenty of room to splash around. Plus, since it's a public beach popular with the natives, it gets a younger crowd with surfers always in the water plus the occasional volleyball game on the beach.
We spent the first day doing nothing and the second day snorkeling, so I have no pictures from those days. On day 3 Richard and I went hiking at the Na Pali coast. We were eager to get back to this trail since it'd been closed during our last visit. Just as we were arriving at the beach at the end of the road, the lifeguard was posting a "beach closed" sign due to high surf. Apparently two women had been swept to their deaths the day before, but at least the trail was still open. And beautiful.
Unfortunately, while we were on the trail we encountered a couple hurrying back towards the beach. The man was trying to get a signal on his cell phone, while the woman was saying, "The best thing we can do is get back to the lifeguard as fast as we can." Uh oh. It turns out that a guy had just been swept off the trail-side beach where we heading. So for the rest of the hike, we got to watch the search and recovery operation. Ugh. Once we got to the beach, we could see the big waves breaking directly on the shore, and how they could easily grab someone who wasn't paying enough attention.
After another rest day, we went kayaking on the Wailua river, then hiked up to the "Secret" Falls. There were a ton of tour groups also there, but they were all well behaved, so all we had to worry about was to not get sucked too deep into the mud. Since I didn't trust my camera to the kayak's dry bag, I have no photos.
Finally, on the last full day of Kauai we did the best hike of the trip. The plan for Richard and I was to hike a combination of the Cliff and Black Pipe trails to make a 4 mile loop. However, we made a wrong turn which took us back up to the highway at on overlook. There we met another couple who wanted directions to get to the Cliff Trail, so we hitched a ride with them back to where we'd parked. Then, since we'd already scouted the first section of "4x4 trail" and found it passable, we drove in with our rental SUV, saving ourselves a repeat hike along that boring section.
This time we found the proper turn to the cliff overlook, although it turned out to not be the view we were looking for, so we took yet another side trip on the Canyon Trail out to the real overlook.
There are no native Hawaiian predators, so the mice here are relatively fearless.
Around the corner from the overlook is the upper part of Waipoo Falls, where some scrambling let me look over both sides.
After returning on the Black Pipe Trail, we found another overlook on the highway to see where we'd been.
