Weathered out again, but off to Big Island

Saturday, Dec. 3 was a beautiful day, so we headed off towards the Iao valley to see an interesting piece of mountain called the Iao needle.  That's the Iao valley straight ahead:

We didn't get far though - as we approached the road on the outskirts of Kahului that goes into the park, there was an electronic sign telling us the road and the park were closed.  It didn't say why, but we are guessing that there was likely flooding after the past few biblical days of rain.

So ... once again we were making new plans on the fly.  As I checked the guidebook, Ed turned the car south.  Got these pictures of the mountains as we drove:

We decided to do a hike, part of the Lahaina Pali trail, which was a pedestrian and mule road back in the 1800's.  The next few photos are from that.

The landscape was interesting but not very varied.  After around a half hour we turned around and decided to go walk on a nearby beach.  Here's one more photo I took on the way down, showing the Haleakala volcano off in the distance, with its stubborn weather system still hanging around the summit:

The beach was beautiful, here's just one photo of it:

Before long, it was time to drive back to Kahului and catch our plane to Big Island.  On the way there we passed this old sugar plant.  I had to lighten the photo to see any detail, so the sky got really washed out, it was the same spectacular blue as the other photos:

Our plane to Big Island was a little Cessna Caravan, a 9-seater.  We were sitting in "first class":

Took a few photos during the flight.  These two are of the resort area of Maui, we never went to that part of the island, looks kind of suburban with all the development.

Here's our first view of Big Island.  Hmmm, is that weather we see on the summit of the Mauna Kea volcano we want to visit tomorrow?

These volcanoes, they leave lava fields lying around everywhere!

After we landed it quickly got dark, so no more photos until we continue our adventure tomorrow ...