Somehow we managed to get ourselves up at 3am while on vacation to drive ourselves almost 3 hours to Haleakala National Park. Haleakala is the big volcano on Maui and seeing the sunrise from there is one of the things we heard is a "must do" while you're in Maui. A lot of people take tours up there and then ride a mountain bike down at sunrise. I am SO glad we didn't do that. It was 40 degrees at the top, at 6am. I am glad we had the time to dink around up there as long as we wanted and after getting up so early I'm really glad I didn't have to ride a bike down a treacherous road.
Sunrise was unparalelled up there. The clouds were interesting and we had a beautiful sunrise. There were a lot of people up there in flip flops and shorts! We were in jeans and sweatshirts and we were freezing!
I love how the clouds are pouring over the hills
Brrrr!!!!
The sun making it's first appearance
It's not often you get to drive to 10,000 ft, and be higher than the clouds!
Here is my first attempt at putting a video on blogger. I need to do it more often!
This is just what we were seeing while we were up there.
This observatory is not technically in park grounds but I think it's pretty cool that it's up there
Back in our car thawing out
The sun and clouds over Haleakala Crater
Looking into the crater
The visitors center on the crater rim.
The volcano is pretty much extinct, but since there are still some a few active lines near Maui they call it dormant and not extinct.
Short geology lesson: our Cascade and Rocky mountains are made from the oceanic plate subducting under the N. American plate and pushing up mountains. Hawaii's volcanoes are made from one stationary magma source with a plate moving over it and creating new islands.
Lava fields
Us and the crater (and still freezing!)
The valley between Haleakala and the West Maui mountains
During the majority of the day this day we napped after our early excursion then laid around and watched the DNC. I don't even know if we hit the beach this day!
That night we had a very nice romantic dinner at a place called the Plantation House, on a golf course, way up on the hill overlooking the golf course and ocean
The view
We weren't lacking beautiful sunsets on our trip!
Rick and the hillside behind him at dinner
Dinner at the Plantation House
Ok, I only have a few pictures left! I am almost done, which is good, because I have new pictures to upload and a very busy picture taking weekend ahead of me :)
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