After Queen's Bath with the kids, they were tired so they stayed at the house. Lora and I went for an adventure, driving fully around the island, east to south to north, and visited Waimea Canyon and Koke'e State Park. To say it was worth the trip is a huge understatement.
Waimea is referred to as The Grand Canyon of the Pacific. It's not near the size of the Grand Canyon, but it is absolutely beautiful to look out on, millions of years of sediment layered deep. Our earliest peeks came from the highway on the south edge of the island, but eventually the road started to climb and we took an embarrassing number of pictures, stopping every few hundred yards to capture the clouds changing over the top of the canyon.
From the highway south of the canyon:
The highway on the way north:
After arriving at the official canyon stop:
At the Kalalau Valley overlook:
From the overlook and then into the Pihea Trail. The Pihea trail walks one along a ridge overlooking the valley and the Napali Coast. From the ridge, the drop to the ocean is about 4000 feet. This area is one of the wettest on each, and is near perpetually in cloud cover with some manner of rain happening. The trees and ground cover are terrifically thick, laden with ferns and ginger and other things.
The trail is a mudball! While short (1.25 miles to the peak at Pihea), it's one of the hardest trails we've ever done - slippery, muddy almost beyond belief, and very steep in spots. Eventually we turned back with about .2 miles to go - it was a choice between keeping our clothing and belongings or finishing the trail. We chose to keep ourselves as we were, since we had a two hour drive back to the kids and it was growing dark quickly.
The mud was a sticky substance, almost like a thickened cake batter. It stuck to our boots up to a couple of inches thick, so traction was a real problem.
Lora is the coolest. She found and ate wild blackberries along the Pihea Trail. How many people ever get to eat wild blackberries in Hawaii? That's pretty spiffy. :)
This yellow thing is some type of ginger plant, according to Google. It looked like something you'd see on an alien planet in a movie.
The trail was like living and walking in a cloud, most of the time. Occasionally there were breaks to see the coastline below, but mostly it was poofy full time.
Ferns were absolutely everywhere.
Lora looking incredulous at the number of ferns.
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