Sunrise to Sunset in Maui

Welcome to another day from my trip in Maui. This one happened to be a very long and full day. We work up around 3:30 A.M. to head up to the Haleakala summit to watch the sunrise. My friends who live there have seen much more spectacular displays of the sun rising over the clouds, but I was content to see the sun break through a few times. I was amazed at how different the landscape is up by the Haleakala Crater… it eerily felt a bit like Mars up there! On the way down the mountain we saw a rainbow… there’s a reason Hawaii is known as the Rainbow State!

Since we were already on that side of the island, we decided to explore a couple of the early stops on the Road to Hana (I’ll be doing a separate post on our Road to Hana journey which happened the day after this one). We stopped to see the rainbow bark on some eucalyptus trees and then we explored a bamboo forest. Both sites were really beautiful.

That evening, Shara and I decided to go to a beach not too far from their place in hopes that there would be a pretty sunset. God didn’t disappoint us at Keawakapu Beach near Wailea. Check out His beautiful creation as seen on this great day in Maui back in March!

Shara, Mike and I waiting for the sun to rise on the Haleakala Summit. It was cold at 10,000 feet (hence the reason Sam was staying warm in the overlook shelter).

The sunlight starting to peek through over the Haleakala crater.

Good morning!

Standing on top of the world!

Here I am near near the summit with the rest of Maui below.

The Haleakala Observatory

A Haleakala Silversword plant

It’s a really unique plant- check out more info on Wikipedia.

On the way down from the summit.

Rainbow State!

The Rainbow Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus deglupta)

This was on the other side of the hill by the rainbow eucalyptus trees… the coast was everywhere. Got to love islands! (Thanks for this shot of me, Mike!)