You can’t just fly to Hawaii and visit the National Parks there. Neither park is on Oahu, so you’ll have to travel to Maui for Haleakala and the Big Island for Hawaii Volcanoes. It’s not cheap, but visiting multiple Hawaiian Islands is a treat. And I like Maui and the Big Island more than Oahu anyway.
We visited Haleakala in September 2020 (and January 2022)
Getting There
From the west coast, it’s easy to get a direct flight to Maui and not have to connect through Honolulu. Once on Maui, you can stay closer to the park in Kula, but most just make a vacation out of the trip and stay in Lahaina or Kaanapali. Note that since the wildfires of 2023, Lahaina is still recovering and you’ll need to adjust. Regardless, relax, enjoy, and work on developing your Aloha spirit.
Sunrise or
Sunset?
Technically, Haleakala is a dormant volcano, meaning it isn’t extinct, it just hasn’t erupted in a long time (about 500 years in this case). Everyone seems to want to catch the sunrise from the top of Haleakala. Yes, it’s pretty amazing, but you’ll need to get a reservation, wake up before 4am, drive the 26 miles up the 10,000 foot mountain, and huddle up with 100+ new friends to hopefully catch a good picture. I don’t want to steer people away from this, but we’ve had just as much luck and a lot less work by going up at sunset. You can choose. We’ve done sunrise at least twice over the years and sunset a few times too. On one of those past sunrise trips, we took a tour where we rode (coasted) bikes from the top of Haleakala down nearly to the base. Fun! On another, we travelled with Rainy’s mom and the kids and went up later which I remember as kinda chilly, but still beautiful. We did sunrise on our most recent trip too. We arrived well before the sun and took a nap in the car. We almost slept past sunrise, but managed to get out, hike up to the best vista, and nail some great shots. It was windy and chilly, but great. And Rainy made a donation – while changing out lenses on her camera, the plastic lens hood dropped to the ground, bounced through the railing, and careened down the hill into the crater. There were several other hats and glasses down there to keep the lens hood company, but we couldn’t go rescue any of them. Oh well. Glad it wasn’t something expensive. On second thought, everyone should do the sunrise at least once. Say hi to the lens hood for us.
The Road to
Hana (RTH)
I include this here despite the fact that it’s not really part of the National Park. Yes, parts of the road do pass through the park boundary, so I’ll go with that. RTH is NOT for the faint of heart. There are hundreds of curves and numerous one way bridges (more on that later). We made the colossal mistake and tried to do Haleakala sunrise and the RTH in one day. It all started off reasonably well. Our trip up the mountain was easy and our time at the top was efficient. We started on the RTH on schedule and used our GyPSy audio tour to guide us along. I strongly recommend an audio tour to help with prioritizing and sticking to a schedule. Take a full day to do the RTH, you’ll enjoy it without rushing. Anyway, there are numerous waterfalls to see, hikes to take, and places to visit. We especially liked the Bamboo Forest on the Pipiwai Trail and the walk through the rainbow trees. We stopped at the seven sacred pools which were beautiful, but crowded, and moved on to find Lindbergh’s grave. It’s an adventure to find, but we’re glad we made the effort to find the old Palapala Ho’omau Church. We saw everything we wanted to see and were ready to head back. Unfortunately, we must’ve angered the gods as the weather turned significantly worse. Like flash flood bad. This made the going especially slow and part way back, darkness descended on us. As a tourist, you’re encouraged to take the one way bridges slowly, so you can yield to oncoming traffic if they’re there first. What the guidebooks and audiobooks don’t tell you is the locals returning from work don’t follow that tenet. We backed off a couple of those bridges to make way for the uncompromising locals. And I dinged our (borrowed) car twice on rocks as we did that. Aargh! One on the bumper popped right back out, but we left a nice scrape on the running board of my friend’s “beater” car (I still owe Cliff for that one). The rain never let up for the couple hour trek back. Still the RTH is an amazing journey. Just allow a full day and check the weather forecast.
Haleakala is an interesting experience. When you think of Hawaii, you envision tropical paradise, but the Haleakala crater is more like a moonscape. You can hike down and around parts the crater if you like. Sunrise and sunset provide for some amazing views. Don’t forget to visit areas around the volcano to enhance your visit. Aloha!
Love the photos! Especially waterfalls and sunrise!