On the way, we stopped off at Wailua Falls, which is on the east shore, and you basically just drive up and hop out at the lookout point.
After the falls, we ate a little lunch at a nice little cafe in Hanapepe. Then we drove on up to the canyon, which is supposedly known as the grand canyon of the pacific, but there is some debate about the validity of Mark Twain actually saying that about the canyon. The drive up is fairly long, and our eventual goal was a dirt four wheel drive road to a trail through the Alakai swamp, which is the highest swamp in the world.
It took quite a while to find the unmarked dirt road to get to the trail head, and there were a few hikers looking at us like we were nuts for driving on what was obviously a horribly unmaintained road. We got a couple of hills that were really steep grades and they were super muddy. I was slipping around like crazy in the jeep and both of us were pretty close to breaking down out of fear for our lives. I finally popped the jeep into 4-low, which is a super low set of gears with a top speed of maybe 20 mph. It really helped going down the hills as you don't even need to use the brakes to keep slow down them. We passed two or three other SUV's who had realized that it was basically suicidal to continue driving and had parked to hike the rest of the way. Not me, not in my rental jeep. I kept driving, and it was a bad decision in retrospect. Words cannot impress upon you the fear and dread we felt while driving down this ridiculous "road". I gripped the wheel, got a hold of myself, and powered on through to the trail head, and we breathed a half sigh of relief, for the way back was sure to be worse.
We parked the jeep and started on the trail, which was super muddy and because its through a swamp, its basically water the whole way. Luckily, most of it had boardwalks installed to keep us out of the bog. The flora here was completely alien looking. Tons of ferns, and scrubby little trees all around, with just us and the boardwalks. Of course it was raining off and on the whole time on us, making us fear the drive back out even more.
There were some busted up telephone poles along the trail, and we read that when the japanese bombed pearl harbor, they were hastily put up to serve as a backup communication system to connect the south and north shores in case the japanese took Lihue on the east shore and severed the main lines.
Once we got to the top of the swamp, the rain started pouring really hard on us, and we decided to turn back before the end, which is supposed to be an impressive lookout over a valley on the north shore. We were basically surrounded by clouds anyways, so the lookout would have been looking into a cloud all around you. Once it started coming down, and we were completely enveloped by mist and fog, it felt like the dementors had moved in to take us. We felt like all happiness had left the world and it was just us at the top of this swamp in the middle of nowhere, with a life threatening drive out ahead of us. Intense. Luckily, on our way back down we saw some fellow hikers and the sun came out again to brighten our spirits somewhat, but the drive out loomed ahead of us.
Four wheeling out of there was really really scary again, but it went well. We never had any moments where we lost control at all, I just took it slow and kept it in 4-low when I needed to and we were fine. Really really scared, but fine.
On the way back home, we checked out spouting horn, which is a lava tube that shoots up a plume of water when the surf comes in. It was mildly interesting, but real crowded with annoying people.
Here is a slide show of all the pics, you can click it to view them larger.
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