West Maui Hiking

Last weekend, the day after the Tsunami struck Maui, we decided to do a little hiking around West Maui - playing things safe and staying away from the beaches for at least another day! A good friend of my parents, Wayne (who I remember fondly from childhood vacations on Maui), was on island and decided to join us. Even at 70 yrs old Wayne is an avid hiker and we thoroughly enjoyed his company. Wayne lives in New Jersey, somewhere near Joel's grandparents, so he and Joel bonded over that and we made plans to get together with him next time we're back in that area.

So anyway, Saturday morning Joel, Dean and I headed out with my Mom and Wayne and 2 of Wayne's friends to do some hiking. We ended up doing a lot more than we had originally planned - probably hiking for a total of about 4+ miles. Dean did awesome though - walking almost the entire time except for the very beginning of the first hike where it was extremely steep and right on a cliff edge so Joel carried him (for safety reasons) and a little at the very end when we (the grown-ups) were mostly just tired of the slow pace. I'm continually amazed at what a great little hiker Dean is at 4 yrs old. We're contemplating taking him on his first overnight trip into the crater next month, which would involve a little over 5 miles of hiking down switchbacks to get to the cabin inside the crater, camping overnight where it gets very cold (but inside a cabin), and then hiking back out UP those same 5 miles of switchbacks the next day. We'll see.

But anyway, our hiking adventures last weekend were super fun! We did 13 Crossings (one of our favorites with Dean) as well as another shorter hike that's a bit more strenuous below the highway near the same area (you park in the same spot). It was a beautiful day and I took TONS of pictures, so here ya go...

The first part of the trail (this is the one below the highway heading down a gulch towards the ocean) was the really steep part where Dean had to be carried. But once we got past that scary part, Dean was good and had so much fun! He found a bunch of moss to "pet", the trail followed a stream so he got to throw rocks into water and check out some pools and little waterfalls, he played "Tarzan" by swinging from a tree on a vine, he got to hide in a banyan tree, etc.
At the end of this trail (well, as far we went anyway) there is this big Banyan tree growing right on the edge of a rock face. Joel and Wayne (remember, 70 yrs old!) used the roots of the Banyan tree to climb down the rock face and check out a good sized waterfall and pool. You could keep going a ways, but because we had Dean with us, this is where we turned around and headed back to the road.
When we got back to the car, we decided since we were already in the area we might as well go ahead and do 13 Crossings too - it was a beautiful day and Dean was having a blast, so we went for it! There's so much cool stuff on the 13 Crossings hike - boulder hopping across the stream (13 times), the jungle, wild strawberries growing along the trail that Dean loved picking and eating, a bamboo forest, and lots of really cool trees to check out.
(Eating a wild strawberry)
And finally, at the end of the trail is a really cool waterfall. Dean wanted to swim in the waterfall SO bad, but he didn't have his swim trunks on. Next thing I knew, he was stripping down and headed into the pool naked! I figured what the hell - he's only got a few more years that he can get away with it, so why not? That water was COLD, but he would not be deterred - he was swimming in the waterfall with Wayne and the ladies! Fortunately, Joel was willing to get in with him (and was wearing swim trunks) because I certainly wasn't going in!!
Another kind of cool thing was when we finished the hike and got back to the road we ran into 3 people at the trailhead who were talking to us about some different hikes on Maui. They looked at Joel and Dean and I and were like "you look familiar. Do you guys have a blog?". It turns out they had done a Google search about hiking on Maui and our blog was one of the first on the list (meaning it gets a lot of hits) and they recognized us from our blog posts. So yeah, we're cool like that. {waving to random people who found us through Google}. So I'm sure Dean will one day love that I posted his bare ass on the internet for the whole world to see! ha!

Memorial Day hiking 13 Crossings

It's been a REALLY long time since we hiked the 13 Crossings hike around the north side of West Maui, out past Waihe'e. It's one of our favorite hikes and it's kind of a local secret - so we usually have the place to ourselves.

We really do love this hike. This was Dean's 3rd time to hike it. His first time was when he was about 4 months old and my Dad went with us. It's hard for me to imagine that just 3 short years ago my Dad could do this hike. Amazing. Here are a few photos from that trip:


And then our last time hiking this trail was actually Dean's first solo hike out of the backpack kid carrier. I blogged about that HERE with lots of cute pictures!

This trip Dean was definitely more of a Big Boy. It's pretty funny because he kept calling it the "Ninja Warrior" hike. Dean LOVES Ninja Warrior. Do you guys know what Ninja Warrior is? It's this crazy Japanese obstacle course thing - it's on TV here and Dean will watch it FASCINATED, and then he wants to play Ninja Warrior. He'll move chairs and pillows around the living room and set up a Ninja Warrior course, jumping from chair to chair, rolling across the pillows, etc. Or his favorite is to play Ninja Warrior on his swingset - climbing UP the slide, then onto the crossbar, climbing from there down onto the swing, to the other swing, up onto the other crossbar, jumping off, doing a somersault, then running to the finish. He uses a red square lego as the "button" at the end of his course and he'll run as fast as he can to the lego and "push" the button and throw his arms in the air and yell "I did it!", sometimes he'll fall on the ground and pant like he's super tired. It's so funny. The funniest part is that he wants us to "say the Japanese words" while he's playing Ninja Warrior. So we yell out random words in Japanese - we don't know very many Japanese words - sometimes I end up saying things in a Japanese accent like "Wax on, Wax off" and "Oh, Daniel son" or "Tetsuya Hasegawa" (that's my good friend T's name - he would be cracking up and making fun of me if he was reading this. I should e-mail T to teach me some more appropriate Japanese words and phrases to yell) but Dean doesn't know the difference. And I promise I'm not being racist. I just don't know any Japanese. Anyway, here's a youtube video of Ninja Warrior in case you don't know what I'm talking about (remember to go to the blog HERE to watch videos):


Ok, so anyway. Dean called the 13 Crossings hike the "Ninja Warrior" hike - you have to cross the stream several times (supposedly 13 times) and you have to really sort of boulder hop across most of the time. I guess that reminded him of Ninja Warrior. It was pretty cute!

He started out refusing to put his Keens on - I'm pretty sure he's outgrown them judging by the fact that I had to forcefully SHOVE his feet into them - and wanted to wear his slippers, but they were REALLY impractical for this hike. He slipped and fell, scraping his knee on a rock on the first crossing and then we talked him into putting on his Keens. He also decided this was a good time to put on his swim trunks (he does NOT like to get his underwear wet) and pee in the stream.


He really had so much fun on this hike as you can see from the photos - checking out the fuzzy moss on a big rock, climbing on top of giant boulders in the middle of a stream, checking out stinky holes inside of tree trunks, and of course he insisted I take a picture of his "owie".


After we got home and showered all the dirt and sweat off, we had a little cupcake picnic in the backyard. The night before I had picked up some yummy looking cupcakes at Whole Foods in honor of Memorial Day.



Dean LOVED his cupcake and ate the entire thing. I couldn't even eat my whole cupcake! So far on Memorial Day Dean had consumed a juice box, a couple of mini cookies, some Pirate's Booty from Jamba Juice, a large bite of my raspberry Pound Cake from Starbucks, some Apple Sauce, a GIGANTIC cupcake, then for lunch almost immediately after the cupcake he had leftover spaghetti and about 10 large black olives (Dean loves olives), then a big cup of milk. That was a TON of food for little Dean, most of which was total JUNK. He went down for his nap and after only about an hour he came out and walked in and said "Mommy, you need to go in there and clean that stuff up". I was on the computer and was like "what stuff? You need to go finish your nap.". He said "No, you need to go clean that up right now Mommy". I looked at him and there was something all down the front of his tummy. I didn't know at first what it was and was all "Oh Dean, what is that? What did you do?", then I smelled him and instantly knew he had puked. I asked him if he threw up and he said "yes" and very dramatically nodded his head. I took him straight to the bathtub and yelled for Joel, who went in his room to clean up the mess. As I was cleaning up Dean I could hear Joel in his room very loudly making lots of gagging noises and lots of "Oh man, that's bad". Then here came Joel into the bathroom, opened up the medicine cabinet and pulled out some Vick's Vaporub and rubbed a big glob under his nose and just walked right back out without saying anything. I was laughing so hard. Dean was totally fine at this point and throwing a fit because he wanted "That orange medicine juice in the fridge" (aka Pedialyte) that he had begged for about 3 wks ago when I cleaned out the fridge, but I told him it was medicine and only for when he was sick. He asked what kind of sick and I told him throw up or diarrhea sick. How the hell did he remember that? And that's all he cared about. There was a small part of me for a minute that squinted my eyes and thought "wait a minute. you didn't just make yourself puke so you could have that Pedialyte, did you?". But no, it was definitely just all the crap he had eaten that morning. Luckily he wasn't sick. He didn't seem to feel great the rest of the afternoon, but he's been fine since then. But the rest of our Memorial Day was pretty much shot and spent washing sheets and his mattress pad and quilt, we even had to wash 3 of his Georges (his stuffed giraffe that he loves), a teddy bear and his pillow and Joel had A LOT of carpet scrubbing to do. Yuck.