Haleakala

I have been a bad bad blogger lately and I am staying in my pj's today as long as I can and get in as many posts as I can because they have been piling up!

 

If we look sleepy in the picture below it is because we were TIRED!  We had scheduled to take a sunrise bike tour from the top of Haleakala which is one of Maui's large volcano's.  Basically you ride up the volcano in a tour bus, watch the sun rise and then bike down.  It sounded like fun when we signed up but we had just spent 12 hours the day before doing the switch back roads on the way to Hana.  This would be another long trip full of twists and turns in a dark bus of strangers.  Needless to say I don't think we thought it through all the way and I started to get nervous that I would get sick.

We had already paid though so we went on ahead with our plans.  You have to get up early for this experience.  And by early I mean 2:00 A.M.!!!!  They tell you to dress warm and we came prepared with coats and gloves and lots of layers.  We got down to our lobby at 2:30 and the bus never showed.  We ended up getting refunded our money and were able to drive up on our own and avoid me getting sick...wahooo!  The valet gave us some blankets even though we were already bundled and boy am I glad he did.  It was only 42 degrees by the time we reached the top! 

 

Basically you get to the top and you go and stand in the dark for about an hour or so and wait.  And then little by little the horizon goes from pitch black to glowing to yellow to orange to all sorts of amazing colors and before you know it the sun starts to peak it's head out and then within seconds it is all the way up.  They even tell you not to look at it too long because it will hurt your eyes.  Funny how you get up at 2:00 am to see something that then you can't even look at for more than  a few seconds!

 Once the sun comes up you realize that  you are actually standing on the edge of a huge crater.  Again, this darn picture does not even begin to show the size of this massive crater.  It was breathtaking.

 This is one of my most favorite pictures of the entire trip.  We were literally on top of the world even above the clouds. 

 So in the end we missed the bike ride down but I was totally OK with that.  I was cold and tired and somehow riding a bike down the side of a volcano in the freezing cold after being up since 2 did not sound like such a great idea anyway.  We got back to the hotel by 8 and we had already been up for 6 hours.  We spent the rest of the day chillin at the hotel and sleeping by the beach.  Not a bad way to spend the day!