Day 3, Round 2

After our rainy trip to 10,000 feet the day before, we woke up at 3am yet again, but this time we were prepared.  A quick check of the Haleakala Summit Weather Station showed a brisk but oh-so-much-warmer-than-Boston-in-February 42 degrees, with a nice 43 mile visibility, and no rain.  All conditions were go for yet another trek up the mountain.  After showing our receipt from the previous day's failed attempt at the gatehouse, we made it to the summit visitor center and settled in for the view.

And boy was it worth it.
The sky started as a faint series of oranges, greens, and blues silhouetted against the crater.

 

And as sunrise neared, the clouds that filled the crater, 2,000 feet below, emerged:

And the moment of sunrise, 6:04, came and passed.  People were wondering 'is this it?', but then, the bright glowing orb of the sun itself rose, leaving little doubt.

 

It's truly a sight that you have to see to believe; Denise's pictures, although amazing, don't even begin to describe it.

After seeing the sunrise that made the second three-hour trek up the mountain worth it, we hiked a few thousand feet down into the crater to get a different perspective.  With its lack of any vegetation and the eroded cinder cones, we could have easily been on another planet.

On the way back down, we stopped at a few different overlooks, that were each different and gave a different perspective of the crater, which is technically just a valley.

And we did all of this before 8:00 am.

Once back down from the top, we packed up, said goodbye to our hosts in Kula, and set out for the other side of the island, in Hana.

The road to Hana is justifiably famous in itself, as it is 52 miles of road with 59 bridges, 46 with a single lane, approximately 620 curves, and a speed limit of 15 mph.  Of course, this would be simply just a big headache if it wasn't also the lushest, greenest tropical rainforest in the United States.

 

And with the rain that we had received the previous day, the waterfalls were in full force.  In addition to the typical waterfalls that everyone sees from the road, we followed our guidebook and tried to make the most of the less-visited but even more spectacular waterfalls no more than a ten or twenty minute hike from the road.

The first was lower Puohokamoa Falls, which may have involved hiking down a muddy trail and crawling through a fence.  There was another waterfall that fell into a small pool just a hundred feet from the road.

However, the best of the day was a secluded waterfall that involved hiking a half-mile over boulders in a streambed to find a lacy waterfall that plunged 100 feet down from the cliffs above into a pool that we had all to ourselves.

There was also another gushing waterfall that was a short hike up a hunter's road.  Unfortunately, while the water did flow downstream to the road, it had been dammed before that to irrigate the sugarcane fields.

 

Our last stop on the way to Hana was a black sand beach in Wai'anapanapa Park.

  

We made our way to Hana at last, just in time to view a rainy sunset.  A sunrise and a sunset in the same day, separated by a mere 800 or so curves in the road.