Hike to the "L" above Lahaina.

All Around Maui: Things we did on June 2, 2002.: Hike to the "L" above Lahaina.

Lahaina, Maui. Paradise. How would you like to spend your day in paradise slogging up a steep dusty hill, on trail after trail that looks promising but soon fades into the brush? Most of the time you're walking up through a sugar cane field, 10 years ago abandoned and let to go to weed. The weeds are roughly chest high, with flowers that attract swarms of bees, which you have to walk through. Your socks are saturated with little prickly balls of seed that the weeds produce. With every footstep the prickly balls press into the skin of your ankles. The day is hot, and the humidity is high. Sweat runs down your face. The cool ocean looks inviting, but it's 1000 feet below you. You're carrying a two year old, who is equally affected by the difficult conditions, and on top of that, he doesn't know why you're taking him here or what you're hiking towards, and wouldn't appreciate it if he did.

If this sounds like fun to you, then perhaps you can try to hike to the L above Lahaina. We didn't make it to the L this day. Perhaps your luck will be better. You'll have to supply your own two year old.

I forgot to take a picture of the L at the start of the hike, so for now, you don't even get to see what we were trying to reach. I hope to correct this situation soon by going to Lahaina and taking a picture of it.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that my shoes are permanently stained red from the soil on this hike.

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This is a restroom building at a running track at Lahainaluna High School, the oldest high school in the United States west of the Rockies (founded 1831). The hike begins here.

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We found cherry tomatoes growing wild throughout the hike. They were very tasty. Here Monique is picking some. These tomatoes are one of the few things that would keep Tree from going completely mad.

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This is above and off to the right of where we're headed.

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The red balls are the tomatoes. The prickly balls are seed pods, but not the ones that get stuck in your socks. Those are smaller.

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The tomatoes.

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Lahaina town below, with the island of Lana`i across the channel.

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The GPS "cell phone" (again)

I carry a GPS on hikes to automatically record the location of my photos. Tree likes to pretend that the GPS is a cell phone. This time he "called Grandma" (the GPS is not in fact also a telephone) and shared his plight. "Gamma! We going . . . up dere," he lamented, pointing up there -- up the hill. "Yeah. [pause, as if to let Grandma talk] Uh huh. [pause] No yike it. No YIKE it!"

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This is what "up dere" looks like from this position.

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Eventually we got through the awful field and into some woods. But the trail we followed into the woods also fizzled out. We stopped here for lunch, and then turned around to go home, not having reached our goal. The rest of the pictures in this presentation are from the walk back down.