Whenever I visit a National Park, one of my favorite things to do is to look at the license plates of the cars in the visitor center parking lots. Now, we have visited Haleakala National Park twice on this trip, and ALL the plates are from the same state. What?

We started the day with our cousins again, sharing the morning meal and going for a walk. We shared stories again, and even saw turtles near the shore. But Brian and Clare had a plane to catch as well as a mission – to go to Haleakala National Park again.

Nice pictures of the primary characters in this blog, with another showing how high we got! While the temperatures down at the beaches were in the 80s, up here at the summit it was in the 40s with wind and occasional drizzle. Clare was glad she brought her hiking poles, because they were handy on the trails at the top. We were both glad for our jackets.

These silver sword plants are unique to Haleakala. They have been living here for hundreds of thousands of years, evolving to fit into the environment. The pictures don’t quite show the brilliant the metallic color of the leaves. These plants only bloom once in their lifetimes, and none of them were blooming when we were there. These plants were one of the main reasons for our visit to the summit of the volcano!

We finally stayed at the fancy resort during daytime, and, yes, we visited the beach. More importantly we found Clare’s first cousin (son of Clare’s mom’s younger brother) and his wife. A delightful couple – proud to be related – and we spent most of the day with them. But first, the resort.

And, I know you have been waiting to learn, the sand on the ”white” sand beach is too fine to figure out from where it came. Sorry. I am disappointed, too.

On Saturday, we awoke early to get to the Kihei boat ramp in order to catch our snorkel charter boat. Only ten people showed up for a beautiful morning of snorkeling at four sites. Because it is the season for Humpback whales in the area, we saw whale pods including babies that leapt out of the water with energy.

Such a great way to start a day! Sorry about no photos of the whales, but we saw quite a few of them. The captain told us it was an escort pod, escorts being the males who swam around the females and their babies, competing for something. As males do.

Each of the four places we snorkeled exhibited different types of coral. This was surprising, because we didn’t travel far between snorkel stops, but fun, because it seemed like a planned “experience” ride. So varied that it almost seemed designed.

Two videos pieced together showing the Humpback whales from the boat and then some fish underwater at the south side of Molokini (second stop). The second part is mainly to hear the whale song.

On Friday we drove the very narrow and curvy road around the north and east sides of Haleakala. The road has speed limits as low as 15 mph, and the numerous stream valleys crossing the road result in a crazy number of one-lane bridges. After 2.5 hours we arrived at Waianapanapa State Park; later we drove another 45 minutes to visit the Oheo River in Haleakala National Park.

Note, we have still not gone to a white sand beach We had too many other plans for our first few days. The black sand is of course bits of basalt (rock lava). We actually wondered why this color of sand beach is rare here!

It took us a while to recognize the one official blowhole, because so many places made big splashes.

These grew all along the coast. The fruit looks a bit like pineapple, and is used in medicines and foods. We liked walking through a forest that included these trees.

The scenery is so different from what we usually see in Colorado. It feels good just walking and watching. Next we went to the coastal part of Haleakala National Park.