Something I forgot to mention before... I've never seen so many lifted pickup trucks in such a small area. It seems that 1/2 of the local residents have heavily-modified pickups for off-road use. And, in some places, they actually need them just to get around. Once you leave the main road here, conditions deteriorate rapidly.
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Anyway, we opted to skip the sunrise bike ride down the mountain, mostly because you have to get up at about 3 AM to do that. Also, it's been noted that you focus a lot on not dying, and miss many of the sights anyway. Aside from that, they don't let bikers start at summit anymore, because: 1) the road is very narrow and steep, 2) there are no guardrails and 3) people have died. On top of that, it's cold up there. The temperature drops about 3° per 1000 vertical feet. So, it was almost 80 at sea level... and just above 50° at the summit. Apparently it can get below freezing at night, and is often in the 30s just before sunrise.
The road to the top is nearly 30 steep miles of curves and switchbacks. On the way up, we stopped at a lookout point, but it was too cloudy to see much.
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The summit was incredible, even though we couldn't see into the crater itself, again due to clouds. Not much lives at this elevation, so it looks like the pictures from the Mars rovers; just lava rock as far as you can see, with little to no signs of life.
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It's an odd feeling to look out over the tops of clouds, and also to see clouds come blowing up the side of the mountain. Off in the distance, the two snow-covered peaks of "the big island" are visible.
The clouds were rolling up the mountain, churning and swirling at the top. By the time we got back down to the visitor center, we were driving in a cloud.
That poor, poor transmission in the rental car... well, you know what they say: "drive it like it's a rental!"
Continuing south from the bottom of that steep descent, we hit some rain, but got some nice views across the flat interior, towards the mountains on the west side of the island.
We decided to head towards Hana again, sort of finishing the part of the drive that we couldn't finish yesterday, but on the other side of the road closure. The first stop was the Maui Winery and their tasting room. They have a few tasty pineapple wines, that even I (not-usually-a-wine-fan), enjoyed. They were so good, in fact, and the price was pretty great, that I bought a whole case. They were kind enough to throw in a styro-lined box so that we can check it on the remaining flights.
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A few miles down the road from there, we encountered a sign warning about the road closing. I had just been chatting with some people in the wine tasting area that had come from Hana, though. They had asked a park ranger in the visitor center near the Sacred Pools (where we were yesterday) if there was any way through. Apparently, the ranger told them that they would be okay if they just took it easy. When I asked the day before, I apparently chose the wrong ranger to ask, because she was snotty about it, and told me that the road was definitely closed, and that we had to go back the way we came.
So, we decided to go see for ourselves. What we found was... several miles of really, really terrible road, and some amazing valleys. Oh, and some construction equipment, and another warning sign.
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Right around the corner, it's obvious why the road was closed. There are ugly, jagged cliff edges, with freshly-exposed rock. The guard rails were battered and torn, as if they were made of aluminum foil. There was obvious evidence of ongoing work to put up wire mesh on the cliff faces. I parked on the middle of what looked like a brand-new bridge and took a few pictures.
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We were still a solid 12 or 14 miles from the location of the road-closing sign, coming from the other direction. There were still several more miles of crappy, patchwork pavement, and then about 5 miles of "regularly-graded gravel". From the look of the area on the map, it appears that the reason for not paving that section could be that it won't support the weight of the construction equipment.
Even though I was pissed that we could have come this way the day before, but got overly-conservative advice, I didn't bother going any farther. Using google maps, I estimated that going back around the way we came added a full hour of driving yesterday. Luckily, the road from Hana to the airport is the crazy, winding, fun road, so I didn't mind too much. Also, we wouldn't have had time to go up Haleakala anyway, or, if we did, the drive down would have been in the dark.
Aaaaanyway, on the drive back along the southern coast, towards the winery, we finally saw some of the alleged cattle of which the signs had been warning. I learned something new, as well. It's called a cattle guard, and it apparently stops the cattle from wandering off the open ranch. So the cattle can roam freely in the road (and they do), but can't get past the fence, or past the cattle guard where the road breaks the fence. These beasts were walking down the road, and were kind enough to step aside so we could drive through. They actually looked annoyed and angry at the inconvenience, however. They did, of course, walk back into the road as soon as we passed.
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On the drive back to the hotel, we stopped at a scenic overlook on the west coast, to watch the sunset.
Pictures start on page 67, with the sun rising.
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