Rick and I went for a hike Saturday. This is the road to the trail. At this point, I was blissfully unaware of two things: the concept of an "improved" trail in Hawaii is apparently quite different from Colorado, and "trail may be slick and muddy when it rains" is a massive understatement.
This is the beginning of the trail, soon to be remembered as "the good part."
The plants are really dense. I was soon very good friends with the vines, which I used to pull myself along the uphill muddy part of the trail. At which point, I was very happy that Hawaii does not have snakes.
It was beginning to get a little muddy on the trail here, but I still stopped to take a picture of the pretty flower and the cool mushrooms growing on the tree root across the trail.
We crossed the stream three times -- Rick walked across the top of the rocks, I waded.
By the second time, I was grateful for the opportunity to wash off the mud on the way across.
Imagine this on an uphill slope. That was the most difficult part of the "trail" to navigate due to mud. We got past that to find "stairs" -- I think they were actually just wood and metal slabs to hold some of the mud from sliding down to join the rest. There were lots of them and they were often too high for me to take in one step. We went to the highest point of the trail where there was a great view. The next part of the trail went down large steps to the waterfall. We turned around here because I was really tired, it was late and rain was threatening. As much fun as the "haul yourself up through the mud by clinging to vines" portion had been, I was not anxious to revisit it in the dark and/or rain.
It was a fun experience and we saw such wonderful things! Often, a camera just wouldn't do justice because it was dark and we were very close to these weird old trees. Also I had moved the camera from my pocket to the backpack after the second stream crossing. On the third time across, I took a sit right in the middle of the water but a large rock kindly positioned itself beneath me so I didn't get soaked.
Rick and I went for a hike Saturday. This is the road to the trail. At this point, I was blissfully unaware of two things: the concept of an "improved" trail in Hawaii is apparently quite different from Colorado, and "trail may be slick and muddy when it rains" is a massive understatement.
This is the beginning of the trail, soon to be remembered as "the good part."
The plants are really dense. I was soon very good friends with the vines, which I used to pull myself along the uphill muddy part of the trail. At which point, I was very happy that Hawaii does not have snakes.
It was beginning to get a little muddy on the trail here, but I still stopped to take a picture of the pretty flower and the cool mushrooms growing on the tree root across the trail.
We crossed the stream three times -- Rick walked across the top of the rocks, I waded.
By the second time, I was grateful for the opportunity to wash off the mud on the way across.
Imagine this on an uphill slope. That was the most difficult part of the "trail" to navigate due to mud. We got past that to find "stairs" -- I think they were actually just wood and metal slabs to hold some of the mud from sliding down to join the rest. There were lots of them and they were often too high for me to take in one step. We went to the highest point of the trail where there was a great view. The next part of the trail went down large steps to the waterfall. We turned around here because I was really tired, it was late and rain was threatening. As much fun as the "haul yourself up through the mud by clinging to vines" portion had been, I was not anxious to revisit it in the dark and/or rain.
It was a fun experience and we saw such wonderful things! Often, a camera just wouldn't do justice because it was dark and we were very close to these weird old trees. Also I had moved the camera from my pocket to the backpack after the second stream crossing. On the third time across, I took a sit right in the middle of the water but a large rock kindly positioned itself beneath me so I didn't get soaked.
