Maui, Hawaii February 16 - 26, 2016

Haleakala National Park

We packed up a lunch and headed early this morning up to Haleakala. We knew we were not trying to see the sun rise but we wanted to beat the rush of other tourists. The views were amazing and the wind was blowing like crazy!!

The beautiful view across the crater

We are freezing!!

We did a short hike to a small knoll above the visitors center.

Our "little kites" they would almost get blown over when there were big gusts of wind.

Hiking back down

The Sliding Sands hiking trail. There are some fantastic backpacking hikes in this National Park, maybe next time we visit....

Haleakala also hosts the rare Silver Sword plant. They had a really neat garden with this plant in all of its different life stages. It only blooms once if conditions are right and that is after like 50 years.

The girls almost getting blown away in the Silver Sword garden

Our rental van, very comfy for all 6 of us

a view of the observatories located up at the top

Another view of the crater and the road up

Elyse had a Show and Share project on Maps when we got back home.
We planed on finding her a map to take into class, but ended up taking a photo instead.
We printed it off and she loved taking it in to class

We stopped a few time on our way down, to see a few different views spots and short hikes.

Brynn enjoying the view from the glass walled view point.

We were watching out for the Nene the whole time we were driving.
We stopped at the visitor center when you first enter the park on our way back down.
After doing some reading, we discovered that it wasn't the season to see Nenes and they are a
distant relative of the Canadian Goose.... with that piece of information
they lost their luster, just another goose, but it would be neat to see one.

We had lunch near the park entrance at a camp ground called Hosmer Grove. It was still really windy so we ended up picnicking in the van to stay warm. There was a really neat short hike through the grove of trees and then into the natural vegetation.
Mr. Hosmer had tried a forestry experiment to see what trees would grow on the slopes of Hawaii. There were trees in this area from all over the world, the smell of the eucalyptus was amazing.
After lunch we headed back to the condo to spend our afternoon swimming and playing.