Haleakala (Holly-ah-kah-lah) Crater is a vast (19 square miles) crater left from a massive volcano eruption about 400,000 years ago. Even with the top blown off, it’s just over 10,000 feet high. Yeah, I know, Colorado has higher mountains. But there’s something about standing on the top of a mountain when everything else below you is flat…the ocean, the land, the clouds. It’s said that on a clear day you can see the curve of the Earth.

Tammie and I rented a car after arriving in Maui on Monday and drove to the top of Haleakala in the mid-afternoon. Not much traffic. Parts of the drive reminded us of driving up Pike’s Peak…except Haleakala has guard rails! And as with other mountain drives, you go through different zones. Here it seemed so much more diverse, from lowland/coastal

to dry forest (less than 20 inches of rain) to rain forest (120-400 inches of rain per year) to subalpine (home to the protected state bird the nene [nay-nay] to alpine/aeolian (hot by day, cold by night), home to the ‘Ahinahina (silversword).

Also at the top is the Haleakala Observatory, perfect because it’s above one-third of the Earth’s atmosphere.

After making the long descent down, we drove around to the east side of Maui to Lahaina for dinner at the very upscale Lahaina Grill; it was way over our budget, but very worth it. I had the wild salmon fillet, which was grilled, with sautéed spinach, Kula asparagus, broiled Hau’ula tomatoes, vanilla bean jasmine rice.

On our way, we stopped and watched a glorious sunset over Lana’i, another of the islands.

Haleakala National Park has more endangered species than any other park in the NPS, even including species that are listed as endangered by the US Fish and Wildlife Service but not native to the park. –http://www.nps.gov/hale/planyourvisit/kipahulu.htm