Up at the Crack of Dawn (actually before dawn)

Sunday morning we did an excursion that Nate was super excited about and what ended up being one of his favorite things that we did. We got up at 2am, that's right, 2 am, to be down in the lobby by 2:25 am. We decided to take a trip up to Mount Haleakala to watch the sunrise and then bike down the mountain. At 2:30 am the tour company picked us up in a van and we headed to their office area (back in the town where the airport is). On this excursion we met a nice couple from Denver who stayed at the same resort as us. They were a lot of fun and we enjoyed talked with them. Anyways, at the office area we ate muffins for breakfast and they hitched up a trailer with our bikes. They took us just below the summit - which is the best place to watch the sunrise.

It was very cold up there - about 32 degrees F

Luckily, we knew to bring sweats, a blanket from the resort,
and some sweat wind  suits from the biking company.

Below is an endangered plant that only grows on this volcano. Pretty cool! It has very shallow roots, so you're not allowed to walk around it. In this picture I am still on the path - so no worries. But we did see one tourist stepping around the plan, off the trail, and one of our tour guys went over to tell her to get off. The plant will bloom once (the big tall thing), and then it dies.

Before high-tech satellites, this place was the 2nd best place in the world for astronomical observation. At this point, we were at the peak of Haleakala (after watching the sunrise we piled back into the van and they took us to the summit).

After walking around on the summit for a while, we drove back down to about 6,000 feet to start our bike ride. If you're riding solo, you can start up on top, but it's very dangerous and people have died before. We wore some awesome, heavy-duty helmets.

We stopped to take some pictures along the way, and the tour guys instructed us how to pose and took our pictures :). Very nice of them.

Waiting for others to take their pictures

We stopped for lunch part of the way down - beautiful weather by this point

Susan, our friend from Denver, holding a chameleon

We were back to our resort by 1:00 pm, so we took a nap and chilled at the pool the rest of the day. For dinner we walked across the street to a place called Java & Jazz; it's a coffee shop by day and a restaurant at night.