Day 2 in Maui... Part One The Bike Tour!

Our second day in Maui... we thought we should get the early morning bike ride over with... this bike ride down a Volcano was one that a lot of people recommended and it was so worth the 2am wake up time. So we got up meet in the lobby, got in a van rode to a near by meeting place to gather our equipment and bikes and go over some safety details, then we got in another van and headed toward the Haleakala lookout point where we would star the journey "on top of the world". We all fell asleep in the van on the way to the top of the volcano but that was ok bc it was dark outside anyways and the tour guide told us that we could see as we went down the mountain around 7 to 8am. When we woke up on top of Volcano we soon realized why we needed Ski Jackets, gloves and hats... bc it was freezing windy cold... wow. All the people gathered at the look out point to watch the most amazing sun rise that you will ever see... we were literally above the clouds and to watch God at work was breath taking.

A big difference from when we could first get a hint that the sun was coming to when she was just above the horizon.

It is getting a little warmer but still cold..

There she is...

She is very bright...

Once we could see what was in front of us... it was amazing how beautiful it was... if you scroll up the picture below is all the black in the first couple of pics... amazing... when I saw this with my own eyes I thought about us as humans... about just how beautiful we are with just a little bit of HIS light... just like this Volcano went from complete black to a beautiful rainbow of colors with just a little bit of HIS light.

No wonder why I had to pop my ears on the way up and down... wow.

Just an idea of the road that we had to come up... but majority of the road was uphill.

This plant... don't remember the name... but can not be found anywhere else... only here... we of course had to go take a picture of it... and the neat thing about them is after they bloom they die.

Now that the sun is up... we got back in the van rode a little ways down the volcano and now comes the part we have been waiting for... the bike ride down the mountain... if I remember it was over 20 miles long and we did not know what to expect... Here we are with our helmets... we knew we might be in trouble when they gave us motorcycle helmets for riding a bike.

There is our bike... we all had one and we had to stay in a single file line the whole time... the lead was in the front and then put two small girls in the front to set the pace... Blake was next, then me, then Lisa and then Mark and then about 8 more people... pretty cool experience... but if you look at the bike... there are no gears... all you get is 2 wheels, a seat, 2 tires, 2 pedals and 2 brakes... and the brakes were the only thing that the leader checked before we sent off... he told us the only thing you will be using today are your brakes and he was right... we were down hill the whole way.

You can't really see the street here and how curvey it was.. but you can at least still see that we are on the same level with the clouds...

Here we go... a little bit of side rail on the left for you.

After we made it down... which was awesome and not hard at all... we stopped for lunch at this cute little town... we ate lunch around 10am or something like that... remember we had been up since 2am.

It was a great morning... and I am so thankful for all the people that said that we had to do it.. they were right... if you ever go to Maui... sign up for this excursion/activity so worth it... only wish I could have taken pics on the way down the mountain but since you are going fast, and have to keep up with the group and you are wearing gloves it is hard to do... but so worth it.