On Top of Old Smokey (aka Haleakalaaaa)

It's my second full day on the mountain! I've been cold, eating soup and ginger tea, reading to my voice recorder, sneezing my head off, and blowing my nose even after it got raw.. it's been fun. Yesterday was particularly exciting as I was all antsy to get to Lahaina and go snorkling, only to find that I couldn't actually leave the mountain due to my congestion. It was extremely strange - I had absolutely NO problems going UP the mountain the night before, but as soon as we started going down my head started feeling a bit funny, got a little headache and the when we got to about 4000 feet my head suddenly felt like something was trying to break it's way out. It was horribly painful and actually made me cry. Dave had to bring the car to a screeching halt and we had to hang for about 10 minutes before it went away. We attempted to go down a little farther but the headache was hovering around and we decided that messing with altitude stuff giving me sharp pain in my head was NOT a good idea, back up we went. It took maybe 2 more hours to get back up since we had to keep stopping to make sure I wasn't going to have any weirdness. We checked out Hosmer Grove and marveled at the ridiculous fragility of my body at times.

When we got back to the top, I finally managed to get Dave to re-woo me with his egg roll skills. We were suprised in the middle of that endeavor by two people pounnding on the door yelling about 911.. Turrned out someone had collapsed and likely had a heart attack on the Sliding Sands hike down to the crater a little ways down the road. That was another strange twist to the day. There wasn't anything we could do for them other than help them call the police, so afterward we were left to discuss how much of a difference altitude can make - 2 reminders yesterday.

After dinner, we shot up to the summit overlook and shot some pics of the sunset.. as you can see Dave is nicely photogenic, all cute and cuddly, and I, sadly am the total opposite of photogenic! It was beautiful!