I can still move my fingers

Today we went on another hike. I picked up a book on hiking in Oahu at Borders the other day. We've been planning our trek this week. We finally decided on a trail last night. I ordered some hiking boots, but they are on backorder and won't be in for a couple weeks. There are NO outdoor sports/specialty stores here. We went to some sporting good stores, but the women's hiking shoe dept is practically non existent. Brian got a new backpack and we were ready to go.

Our hike was the Waianae Kai Trail. It starts in Waianae (where we work) and goes up into the Waianae range mountains. The trail was to be 6 miles with part of it as a loop. There is an extended version of the trail that goes 8 miles total. So we packed our sandwiches and such last night and woke up early this morning to blaze the trail. This morning we headed out with much needed coffee.

We should have seen the difficulty in finding the start of the trail as an omen. We spent at least 30 min wandering around the road trying to find the start of the trail once we got near it. We finally found it- really the middle of nowhere. We were pretty sure our car was going to get broken into because we saw people driving around looking for interesting trash by the side of the road. So we left our car door unlocked. They sometimes recommend this so that no one breaks a window. They just look and realize there's nothing there. We left two vital items in the car...a cooler and 6 beers on ice in case we wanted to go to the beach post hike. However, in the morning rush, we forgot our suits.

The start of the hike was up a forest reserve road in a dry area with brush, shrubs and cacti- The waianae valley. It is the hottest place on the island and it was (even at 8:30 am). This was a steep walk up for about 1 mile. Of course, that's when it started raining. Just enough to keep you hot instead of cooling you off. It was such a steep road!

Then we made it to the trail part. I should mention that the trail was labeled as Intermediate with a danger level of Low. We started our hike to the mountain. We went thorough strawberry guava trees and passed a dead gutted pig carcass. This is a ferrel pig hunting area on weekends and holidays. Luckily, we hiking on Fridays. We treked into a gully where there was a pile of rocks wrapped in ti leaves. This is what you are supposed to do when you are passing through sacred land. At that moment a rock or fruit or something fell and almost hit me in the head. We wrapped up one of those rocks and put it on the pile. No more falling rocks after that. Then the trail started going up and UP and UP! There were areas where we had to grab onto trees and roots to get up. Then some places had ropes to use to get up. We followed the markers wondering what we had gotten ourselves into. We just stopped often for breaks.

We were trying to get to the point where the power lines peak on the mountain so we kept looking for them. I was sure a Velociraptor was going to jump out and get us. We finally got to the top. It was so cool. First of all, it smelled like burning sugar- we don't know what that was. Then the mist set in and you couldn't even see the mountains! It was just like the three sisters for me in Australia (for those of you who know that story)! Basically, there were 1000 foot drop offs on either side of us in certain areas on the trail. We ascended up 2100 feet during the hike. We then started the descent! That was more difficult for me than going up. I really wished I had my hiking boots instead of my old tennis shoes! On the way down, we followed an ancient Hawaiian trail. It was really fun. We finally made it back down, down, down, to the steep road and finally to the car. We had made it back to the car 1:45pm. It took us over 5 hours. The car was in order and we had a much needed cold beer.

We then came home and collapsed. I am sitting on the couch right now typing this and I have serious doubts as to whether I can get off of it. Our legs are so sore! But it was so fun! It was beautiful and we feel like we really accomplished something. We will definitely try the 8 mile loop sometime, just not until we are in better hiking shape. And we would bring more water and supplies for the long one. I have lots of video of the event, I will be working on compiling it.

On another note, this week I was passing McDonalds in Nanakuli and someone had parked their horse out front. And Dr. Yamamoto, our orthodontist at Gentle Dental got on Lost as an extra so I'll be looking for him when it starts.

Signing off- no energy left....