2/26/99: Made dinner and showed slides to a group of family and friends over at Todd’s and Kathy’s home tonight. We only showed some of the photos from our trip around the world, but even so, it took 2 1/2 hours. The hardest part is to limit which stories we tell.
2/26/24: *During our 1999 stay with Dad & Mom at the end of our round-the-world trip, we did not take many photos. So, I am posting photos and stories from some of our other trips to Maui over the years.
Polipoli (6,400 ft elevation) is on the side of Haleakala that faces west into an expansive valley between it and the West Maui Mountains. Yet it is as far south on that slope as you can go before you hit a spine-like ridge that runs from the summit all the way down to the Makena and Wailea area down by the ocean. If you cross that ridge you go from the temperate and richly soiled valley where trees grow tall and crops of sugar cane, pineapple, coffee and lavender grow to the more desert-like terrain of the south slope of Haleakala. This 10,000-foot-tall mountain is one of the US National Parks. As such, there is an area in Polipoli set up for tent camping, as well as a single cabin, deep in the woods, that can be reserved by visitors. Reservations are hard to get because people plan as much as a year in advance. During our 2010 trip to Maui, friends of Kathy had to cancel their own trip to the cabin, so they kindly gave us the reservation. It became one of our most memorable experiences on Maui.
Todd generously loaned us his 4-wheel drive Tacoma, and Ruth’s father was able to join us. In his 89 years, Dad had never been up to Polipoli, so this was a special trip. It was a spectacularly clear day, and the cabin sits in a clearing that afforded us a view all the way down to the ocean, from Makena up the coast to Maalaea. Having a rugged 4-wheeler, we took the opportunity to climb the challenging dirt road up the ridge, and cross over into Kahikinui, at about 7,200 feet above sea level, to watch the sun-set. It still brings tears to my eyes to remember Dad’s face getting to see a new spot on his beloved Maui. As we watched the go down over Lana’I and Moloka’I in the west, we could turn to the south and east to see the peaks of Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea on the Big Island of Hawai’i to the south and east. It was staggering to see the shadow of the Haleakala, the mountain on which we sat, stretching off over the waters of the ocean to the east. Truly an unforgettable experience.
NOTE: The photo above, from our 2010 trip to Maui, shows Ruth, her Father, Ian, Josiah and I on the porch of the cabin in Polipoli forest.
