An Early Christmas Present: September 23 - 29, 2024

       Monday was the only day we were going to be at work at the Polynesian Cultural Center this week, so we both put in an extra-long and busy day trying to get as much done as we could of the week's work in each of our areas to make it easier for those having to cover for us.  I ended up doing all of the Monday's purchase orders and most of the Tuesday's purchase orders before leaving for the day.  Elder Rappleye serviced 8 of the 20 carts that needed serviced for the week.

Nine-Square Game

  At our YSA's FHE activity, we played nine-square.  It's a combination of 4 square and volleyball.  Each person has a square they stand in and you can't let the ball drop in your square or you are out.  You can't hit it out of bounds either. If the ball comes into your square, you must hit the ball up and over the top of your square into another person's square to stay in the game. The object of the game is to move through the squares and get to the middle square and then stay in the middle square for as long as possible.  The person in the middle square gets to serve the ball.  This was the first time I've played this game.  it's like a tight volleyball court and faster paced, so you have to stay on your toes.  Of course, the taller players have the advantage.

  

 For those who didn't want to play nine-square, there was a card game called Spot It.  As always, at the end of the night, we took our usual group picture in front of the nine-square court.

Sugar Beach Resort

     On Tuesday, Alex Tam, who works out in the motor pool with Elder Rappleye, drove us to the airport in Honolulu and we hopped on a plane for a 20-minute flight to Maui.

     When we started our mission, we were informed that we were allowed to go off island for short trips if we had the okay of our mission president and our supervisor at the PCC.  We decided we would try to visit as many islands as we could in the next 18 months.  Last April for our anniversary, we took a 3-day trip to Kaui.  With it being a slow time for the PCC and knowing that it wouldn't be as slow in November or December, we decided to go to Maui for an early birthday celebration/Christmas present to us.  The picture above shows the view we had from our condo's lanai in Kihei.  It was very windy, but still a beautiful relaxing view.

  

   This time we stayed for 5 days (two of the days were our days off).  We got in on Tuesday afternoon and had time to drive to our condo, go grocery shopping for food for our stay, and relax on the beach and watch the sunset.  We were able to watch the sunset every night we were there, but the first night's sunset, I think, was the best.

Sunset Day 1

     We went to bed early because we needed to get up around 2AM to drive to Haleakala National Park and arrive up at the crater's summit to watch the sunrise at 6:08AM. So many people want to experience this event that you have to have a reservation to get into the park and go to the summit. I had read conflicting reports of how long it would take us to drive to the summit, so to make sure we were up to the top before the sun rose, we went with the longest time - 3 hours.  We definitely made it to the top with lots of time to kill, but we didn't have to worry about a parking spot or traffic going up the twisty road.

  

  It was a lovely morning to watch the sunrise.  There was pretty much no wind and absolutely no rain.  The temperature was 50 degrees, the coldest we've felt since arriving here in Hawaii 10 months ago.  With our jackets and a blanket from our condo to wrap up in, it was quite pleasant and peaceful to watch the sun come up over the horizon and above the clouds.

   I took way too many pictures of the sunrise, but they are all so amazing.  Here are just a few of the best ones.

Here we are at the top.  The sign behind us shows the elevation - 10,023 feet.

You can see from the sign that Haleakala means house of the sun.  Right after the sun had cleared the horizon, the park ranger gave us an oli - a Hawaiian chant given to greet the sun.

The pictures to the left show the observatory (top) that is located at the summit of Haleakala, and the lookout (bottom) where we stood to watch the sunrise.  We stood on the outside along the stone wall.

From the summit looking south, you can see the big island of Hawaii.  It's the land mass you see way behind us in the picture to the right.

After watching the sunrise, we took a couple of short hikes to explore the area.  The pictures to the left show the terrain from Kalahaku lookout.  It's quite barren with cinder cones dotting the landscape.  Each cinder cone has a Hawaiian name, mostly having some reference to their god, Pele, the god of fire.

One of the most famous native plants in the park is the 'Ahinahina.  The Haleakala silversword species is only found on Maui in the Haleakala National Park and is extremely rare and highly endangered. The plants live from 15 to up to 50 years, but only blooms once and then dies.  We saw them, but they were past their prime blooming stage and were looking pretty dead.

The last place we hiked was the Halemau'u trail out to the lookout and rainbow bridge.  The pictures on the left are views from that hike.  The top picture shows lava flows and the bottom two pictures show both me and Elder Rappleye on the narrow part of the trail called Rainbow Bridge.  When the clouds are not too low you can look down into the valleys on both sides of the "bridge."  The top picture is the valley on one side of the bridge, but the other side was covered in clouds.

Since it was only about 11AM when we finished the Halemau'u trail and we weren't feeling too tired, we decided to drive over to the Road to Hana and go to Twin Falls, a stop we had planned to do the next day.  It was a perfect sunny day to go, the problem was since we didn't plan on going that day, we didn't bring our swimsuits, so we didn't get to swim in the pools at the bottom of the waterfalls.  It was still a fun place to visit.  

To get to the smaller waterfall pictured to the right you had to do a stream crossing.  Elder Rappleye had his hiking shoes on and didn't want to get them wet (the water in places was deep enough to cover his shoes), so he climbed over to the rock edge in the left-hand picture and sat in the shade and waited while I waded the stream in my water sandals and got to see the waterfall.  On the far end of the pool was a cool rock wall covered with Banyon tree roots and ferns.

I don't know why they call it Twin Falls, there are more than two waterfalls in this area we hiked around in.  I think the first waterfall pictured is the actual Twin Falls because, at times, it looks like two separate falls.  It turned out to be the nicest day weather wise on the Road to Hana and the best place to get into the pools.  I'm really wishing we could have a do-over.

Sunset Day 2

     After a couple hours at Twin Falls, we headed back to our condo to relax at the pool and take a nap.  Our second night's sunset was pretty good, but since I walked the beach alone (Elder Rappleye opted out of a walk on the beach) it wasn't as nice since I had no one to share it with.  I walked the opposite direction up the beach and came across a whole bunch of canoes along the beach.  I thought the pink ones were so very cute with the flowers painted on them.

Waterfalls on the Road to Hana

The next day, Thursday, we spent the whole day driving and seeing the sights on the Road to Hana.  We got an early start.  Not as early as our crater sunrise, but we were on the road by 6AM.  It was a rainy, cloudy morning. 

    There were lots of waterfalls to view along the roadside.  The pictures of the waterfalls to the left were ones we could only pull off the side of the road and take a picture.  I don't know the names of any of the waterfalls except the top right picture with three waterfalls is called the three bears - the tallest one is papa bear, the middle one is mama bear, and the smallest one is baby bear.

Ke'anae Point

The rain stopped for just a little bit as we reached Ke'anae Peninsula.  We got out of the car and walked around a little bit exploring the rocky black lava coast.  When the rain started up again, we headed for our car.

When we reached Wailua Valley state wayside park it wasn't raining too hard.  We got out to climb some stairs up to a lookout.  By the time we were at the top of the lookout it started to pour down rain.  You can see in the top picture to the left the view obscured by the rain and clouds.  The bottom picture shows a waterfall (right above my head) way off in the distance.  That waterfall had to be a pretty high waterfall to be able to see it that far away.

Our next stop was Pua'aka State Wayside Park.  There were a couple of waterfalls by the roadside.  The picture on the left side shows the waterfall that you could walk right into the pool.  It was probably the easiest waterfall pool to take a plunge in.  The picture on the right side shows the large waterfall on the other side of the road with the left-hand pictured waterfall in the upper right corner in the background.  The large waterfall you could access by going under the bridge and stand right next to the top of the falls, but no access to the bottom of the falls.

Lava Tube

Just a little further down the road was a lava tube we stopped at and hiked through it.  It wasn't a very long tube, but it was big enough in most places to stand up in as we walked through it.  The bottom left picture is Elder Rappleye at the entrance of the tube, and the top right picture is me at the exit of the tube.

Hanawi Falls

The next two stops were quick views of waterfalls from the road. Hanawi falls above and Makapipi falls below.  The traffic on the Road to Hana was not heavy all morning so we were able to find places to pull off the road to take pictures of all the waterfalls.  Makapipi falls was hard to get a good shot because of all the vegetation surrounding the road and falls.

Makapipi Falls

We were making such good time along the Road to Hana we decided to continue all the way past Hana to the Kipahulu District of the Haleakala National Park and do some hikes in that part of the park.

Wailua Falls

This waterfall was on the way to the Kipahulu District.  It's Wailua Falls.  It drops 80 feet into a small pool at the base of the falls.  

Pipiwai Trail

When we arrived at the Kipahulu District of the Haleakala National Park, we did a 4-mile hike called the Pipiwai Trail.  As soon as we started hiking it started to rain, but we didn't have time to wait for the rain to stop, so although the trail was a little muddy, we kept going.  The pictures on the right are a few sections of the trail - a big banyan tree (bottom right), a bamboo forest (top left), stairs (middle right), bridges and boardwalks (top right), and a very shallow stream crossings (bottom left).

The destination was two more waterfalls.  The first one (pictured on the right-hand side) is 200-foot tall Makahiku Falls.  It was only accessible to view from a lookout about halfway up the trail.  Waimoku falls (pictured on the left-hand side) was the final destination.  It's the tallest waterfall we saw with a 400-foot drop.  We were a little disappointed that we were not allowed to go to the base of the falls.  We had seen pictures online that showed people right at the pool at the base of the falls, but I guess now no one is allowed any further than where I took the photo pictured here.  It was still an impressive sight.

After hiking the Pipiwai Trail, we hiked a short half mile loop trail, the Kuloa Point Trail, that took us past some ancient Hawaiian ruins (pictured bottom) and 'Ohe'o Gulch or seven sacred pools.  The top picture shows the top of the seven pools.  There was so much foliage that it was hard to get a good look at it.

"Ohe'o Gulch

But here's some other views of the pools.  There are actually more than 7 pools in the 'Ohe'o Gulch as the water flows from two miles inland to the ocean, but most of the pools are further up the gulch so you can't actually view them unless you are in a helicopter.  The top right-hand picture shows the last pools before the water flows out to the ocean.

      After the hikes it was time to make the long three-hour drive back on the Road to Hana to our condo.  We did stop at a couple of spots we missed.  The top view to the left is of Ke'anae Valley.  There just happened to be some goats grazing on the grass by the lookout.  They were totally uninterested in all the tourist taking pictures of them.

We also stopped to view the rainbow eucalyptus trees along the side of the road.

The last stop of the day was at Ho'okipa lookout and beach.  From the lookout you can watch surfers and wind surfers and then you can go down onto the beach and see the green sea turtles. They say sometimes there can be hundreds of turtles on the beach.  Can you count how many turtles are in the bottom picture to the left?  It's sometimes hard to tell if it's a turtle or a rock.  They love to nap on the warm sand and sun.

Sunset Day 3

We saw some canoers out on the water that night as we viewed the sunset.  See if you can spot them in the bottom right picture.

Friday morning, we decided to relax a little bit and get a later start on the day since we saw most of things we wanted to on the Road to Hana the day before.  One of the things we missed was the Waikomoi nature trail. We were able to get a good parking spot, but it had just been raining hard right before we got there so the trail was pretty muddy.

We headed up to the lookouts, but the trail was just too muddy, so we ended up turning back before we reached a lookout.  That was a disappointment.   The pictures to the right show parts of the trail.  A lot of the trails we have hiked in Hawaii look like the bottom right picture - lots of roots covering the trail.  It's also amazing to see how big the exposed roots of trees are here.  I've always thought roots needed to be underground for the tree to flourish, but apparently there are trees that do just fine having their roots exposed above the surface.

We also tried to do another hike to a waterfall.  We had pulled off the road and were trying to situate our car so it wouldn't be sticking out onto the road and also not run into a big root that was right in front of our car. Another car pulled up in front of us and the girl driving the car got out and started yelling at us because she didn't like the way we had parked and told us we shouldn't be driving on the road if we don't know how to drive it.  She mentioned that she was a local and it seemed like she was indicating that she had more of a right to be parked there then we did. WHAT? She also used a few choice words in her tirade.  We decided it wasn't worth sticky around this contentious person who should have been displaying "aloha" to visitors if she was a local, so we told her we were leaving, and her and her friends (in two other cars) could have our spot. It was a little upsetting and disappointing that we didn't get to do that hike.

Instead, we drove up the road a little bit to Pua'aka wayside park.  We had stopped there yesterday, but I'm glad we stopped again because we discovered a waterfall that we didn't see the day before (pictured far left.).  We also took the time to explore the stream that flows under the bridge.

 

We stopped at the Nihiku Stands this time.  I think we passed by there too early yesterday because they weren't open.  There were these fun photo op spots. We had to get our pictures taken there. 

We also bought some banana bread with chocolate chips and macadamia nuts.  All the articles I read about travelling the Road to Hana mentioned that the one food we shouldn't miss out on was the banana bread. YUM! 

 

The picture to the left was our main stop for the day - Wai'anapanapa State Park, aka the black sand beach.  It's the first time we have seen a black sand beach.  It was mostly a black pebbles beach, but there were a few spots along the beach that actually had black sand and not black pebbles.

   

   There was a short lava tube on the right side of the beach that we went in and explored.  The tube exited out into the ocean.  It started to pour down rain while we were in the lava tube, so we just stayed in the tube until it stopped raining.

     We decided to hike the coastal trail that goes north from the beach along the coastline.  In the top picture, you can see the beach in the background.  The bottom picture shows an arch in the black lava rock that is extending out into the ocean.

Views along the coastal trail.

   Our reservation at the state park was good from 12:30pm to 3:00pm, so at 3pm we headed out of the park and started towards home.  We had 32 long miles along the narrow twisty Road to Hana to hopefully get through safely.

 

     We had made it through many of the narrow, twisty parts of the road until we got to mile 11, then a red pick-up truck came up the narrow part that we were already going through. We both stopped because we couldn't go forward without hitting each other.  We had pulled over as far as we could without hitting the guard rail.  We couldn't back up because we had a string of cars behind us.  He had no cars behind him, so we expected him to back up until he got to a place where we could all pass safely.  But all of a sudden, he started to slowly pull forward and he hit our back fender which slid our car into the guard rail.  Horrified, we could hear the car scraping against the guard rail.  I guess he thought he could make it through without hitting us but miscalculated.
      We were in a rental car, and I thought we are going to be in big trouble.  But then I remembered that when we got our rental car on Tuesday the agent had asked Elder Rappleye if he wanted the extra insurance or the waiver.

  Thinking that the waiver meant not having any extra insurance, Elder Rappleye opted for the waiver.  Well, the waiver actually was coverage for damages to the rental car but didn't cover damages to another person's vehicle.  At the time I was upset that Elder Rappleye hadn't told them to take it off and we ended up paying extra for the waiver ($28 per day), but now I knew why he didn't have them take off the waiver but instead kept it on the rental agreement. Elder Rappleye always opts out of all the extra insurance coverage when we rent a car, so I couldn't figure out why he didn't say anything about it this time, but instead he signed the agreement with the extra cost on it.  It was a tender mercy that for some unexplainable reason he got the waiver on the rental agreement.  After getting the truck driver's insurance information and telling him that our car was a rental car, and we had no insurance information on it, we left it in the hands of the insurance companies.  As bad as the accident sounded, we were surprised that the damage to our car was minimal, mostly scrapes.  Unfortunately, the accident did sort of ruin our day. 

 

Sunset Day 4

     We still managed to make it back to our condo in time to enjoy the last night's sunset.

Saturday morning, we were able to watch the BYU football game against Baylor on TV in our condo while we packed up and got ready to check out.  The game finished about 15 minutes before we had to check out - perfect timing.

We had a few hours before we had to be at the airport.  We decided to drive south of our condo and explore the coastline.  We went as far as Makena Beach.  Then we drove back up the coastline to McGregor Point and lighthouse.  It was the smallest lighthouse I have ever seen.  The top picture on the right is the view we had of Haleakala Crater.  You can see the peak just above the clouds.

We then headed to the airport.  When we arrived at the airport, we realized that there was a flight leaving an hour earlier then our flight at the gate next to ours.  Out of curiosity, I asked the lady at the desk if there was room on the flight and if so if we could change flights.  She said there was plenty of room and she quickly changed our tickets so now we wouldn't have to wait the 2 hours for our flight to leave and we would get in an hour earlier.  Luckily Alex Tam, our ride home, was able to come early as well.  We ended up getting back home to Hau'ula earlier than planned.  😊

For our 5th Sunday second hour, our Ward walked over to the Visitor's Center on the temple grounds, and the junior sister missionaries gave us a lesson as we sat in front of the Christus statue.  Then we went into an auditorium and watched a couple of short videos about the history of the church in Laie.

Here's our whole group in front of the Christus statue.

Sunday evening, we had the three single senior sisters that were in the MTC the same time as us and traveled to Hawaii with us for dinner.  All three sister are going home in October.  They are only serving for 12 months, so we wanted to get them all together and hear about their mission experiences.  Sister Jackie Ronco, from Canon City/Penrose area of Colorado, sitting next to me, served as a seamstress at the PCC sewing costumes and uniforms for the performing student workers.  Sister Lanea Condie, from El Paso, Texas, sitting in the middle of the three sisters, served in the Mission Settlement at the PCC teaching ukelele lessons to the guests that visited the PCC.  Sister Walters, from West Jordan, Utah, farthest right in the picture, served in the Ulu retail store helping the student workers in the store.  All three had very different kinds of experiences, but they all enjoyed their time here.  They would all agree that the past year passed by all too quickly.  It brings to mind the words of the hymn "Improve the Shining Moments" - 

Time flies on wings of lightening, we cannot call it back.  It comes, then passes forward along its onward track.  And if we are not mindful, the chance will fade away, for life is quick in passing. 'Tis as a single day.