Today started with a rainbow outside!
I had a breakfast of banana bread with cream cheese, apple banana, and POG. I loved POG and am really going to miss it!
Nick wanted a day to just relax at the condo so Ben and I decided to drive Upcountry. We left the condo 9:45 am to drive to the dormant volcano Haleakala.
Haleakalā (/ˌhɑːliːˌɑːkəˈlɑː/; Hawaiian: [ˈhɐlɛˈjɐkəˈlaː]), or the East Maui Volcano, is a massive shield volcano that forms more than 75% of the Hawaiian Island of Maui. The tallest peak of Haleakalā ("house of the sun"), at 10,023 feet (3,055 m), is Puʻu ʻUlaʻula (Red Hill). From the summit one looks down into a massive depression some 11.25 km (7 mi) across, 3.2 km (2 mi) wide, and nearly 800 m (2,600 ft) deep. The surrounding walls are steep and the interior mostly barren-looking with a scattering of volcanic cones.
It was a beautiful day up at the top and we had fantastic views of the crater. We started out hiking the Pa Ka'oai Trail which was a .20 mile hike to an overlook.
Then we hiked the famous Sliding Sands trail to a little farther than the first .25 mile overlook.
That was just enough hiking for us and we still had things we wanted to see in Upcountry before they closed. We did stop at a couple of the overlooks on the way down. I would have loved to have gotten an earlier start so we could have hiked more. But we were still really glad we did it.
From Haleakala, we drove to Kula Botanical Gardens.
We got more water and we're given a map of the grounds to take with us. We spent around an hour here seeing the gardens and we enjoyed our time here.
We then drove to the Ocean Vodka Organic Farm and Distillery (http://oceanvodka.com/) in time for their 3:30 tour. We were given a tour of the farm and the distillery and learned how the vodka and rum is processed, distilled and packaged. We were also given samples of the farm's vodka and rum. This was fun and the grounds were beautiful but the samples were way too strong for me and Ben had to drink mine. We both agreed it seemed kind of tourist trappy but it was fun to do once.
We headed back to the condo where we saw sunset and the boys grilled the rest of our steaks and we had Roselani's chocolate macadamia nut ice cream for dessert.
We watched a movie that Nick had rented and went to bed.
