The Road to Hana and Haleakala National Park

The past couple of weeks (or should I say month!), have been extremely busy for me with everything involved with finishing up school at the University of Washington in Seattle. But now, I am done with my sophomore year of college and ready for everything that I have planned this summer, which includes wanting to blog more! :) The first thing up this summer, a trip to Maui.

To start out the trip, my family and I took a couple days to travel over to Hana, a side of the island we don't normally go to. We started out the trip with the always exciting Road to Hana.

Along the way, there are various fruit and juice stands to stop at along the way. We stopped at this one to buy a fresh Maui pineapple and check out the overlook just a few steps behind the stop.

Throughout the drive, there are various overlooks that have terrific views of the coastline. We were fortunate enough to find one turnout where there was a place to stop and head down by the water. 

One of the last stops for Day 1 was Three Bears Falls. While you can see the falls from the bridge, it looked too good to pass up. I HAD to get down to the bottom of the falls. After a little bit of climbing and scaling the rocks to get down, I arrived at the base of the falls. 

We started Day 2 on our way to Haleakalā National Park to hike the Pipiwai Trail to Waimoku Falls. Along the road, there were so many waterfalls. Living in the Pacific Northwest, we're fortunate to have a lot of falls, but there's something magical about the falls in Hawaii.

We got to Haleakalā and started the hike. The hike was beautiful the entire way and consisted of a lot of steps, tree branches along the path and bridges to cross over. 

Roughly half the way along the hike, you come across the bamboo forest. This was remarkable. The bamboo is taller than you can imagine and when the wind blows the trees make a really cool "clicking" sound when they hit each other. 

We got to Waimoku falls, but sadly, we couldn't get to the base of the falls. I am guessing that it had something to do with some flooding or trails being blocked as it looked like one of the trails was now a stream. I went a little farther than I was supposed to, but hey, it made for a better photo. :)

At the end of the hike, I looped around to the Pools of Oheo. There were so many people in the pools that I didn't like the photo, but the coastline is among the best I've ever seen! I climbed out to some of the rocks at the edge of the coastline and took a couple shots there, then headed back to grab a different angle. The waves breaking here were massive and just added to the spectacle of these cliffs. If you are ever in Maui, I highly recommend this hike, especially if you're there at a time when you can hike up to Waimoku falls and experience being close to the falls.

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Sean Brown is a nationally featured high school senior photographer based out of Vancouver, WA and Portland, OR. If you're interested in booking a session or would like more information, please use the contact link on his website. Sean is now booking sessions for the Class of 2016.


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