On an island in the sun.: PoliPoli State Park

Did you know that there is a red wood forest in Maui? No? Me either! Justin busted out the guide book the other day, and found PoliPoli State park. From this park, you can hike a 5 mile loop and see a Red Wood Forest, AMAZING views of over half the island, AND 2 of the volcanoes on the neighboring big island! Crazy, right?

The trip there is pretty interesting…lol. The drive is nearly all uphill as soon as you turn off of the Hana Highway, and the last 10 mile is on a 20 MPH windy road, with the last 4 miles of the road being UNPAVED! Haha, I actually did okay and didn’t get carsick (on the other hand, the Scenic Hana Highway kills me!)

There were also various warning signs on this road. We were told to watch out for pigs, cattle, falling trees, AND flash floods. Thankfully, we did not come across any of these while driving…haha.

Now, by the time we were on the bumping, unpaved gross road, our elevation was at 6500 feet! We pulled off at one lookout point before the park, and we could see over half of the island from where we were standing! Kihei, Kahului, and Wailuku were in full view! I attempted to play with the panoramic settings on my camera, but I'm not a great photographer, and the whole image together is too big to upload on blogger. But here's some singles for you! :)

Kihei is all along the shore

Kahului is along the top right inlet

Upcountry include Haiku, Kula, & Makawao are right above the trees

64 DEGREES?! That's the coolest its ever been during the day time since we've been here. But that's also because we were so high in the air. It felt like we were home again (but obviously not this time of year! haha). The hiking itself also made me feel like we were back in Seattle, considering there were so many trees and ferns and lushness. I loved it!

We started out the hike on the Redwood trail...or what we thought was the Redwood trail. We realized about a mile later when we ended up back at the start of the trail that we accidentally veered off the trail and cut off half of the hike. We also missed the junction that allowed us to switch trails and make the hike a tree 5 mile loop. So, we ended up walking through a series of half burned, scary looking trees...haha. The guidebook said a fire started in 2007 in the forest, but thankfully didn't make it to the actual redwoods. We found the redwoods right after this, and they were amazing!

The Redwoods are also fairly new. They were believed to have been planted in the late 30's/early 40's

From what I've read online, some of these trees are nearly 100 feet high!

Tree hugger! :)


This tree had a tumor in its trunk...lol.

After we figured out that we cut across the trail, we turned around and walked back to the junction. From there we head onto the Plum Trail, which eventually met up with the Halekala Ridge Trail. The guide book said we could expect some awesome views from this trail, since it ran along the edge of the cliffs, butttt...a crazy fog rolled in and we couldn't see anything! The clouds were pretty eerie, but also made the hike cooler considering we were seriously working up a sweat. To go down to the Redwoods, you descend almost 1000 feet, and you make the descent back up on this trail. Some of the paths were pretty steep, and we had to hop over/under some trees that had fallen across the path. The closer you get to the top of the ridge, the windier it gets. Sometimes it would sound like a creaky door opening when a tall, thin tree would sway in the breeze.

By the time we made it to the top, the foggy clouds had blown away and we were left with an AMAZING view of the 2 of the Big Island's volcanos!