Below you will find pictures from today’s run as well as a short animated video.
Since we began coming here 15 years ago, we have hiked the Kalalau trail at the “end of the road” on the Na Pali coast several times and each time we say something to the effect of, “we should run this sometime.” For those who have not been here, the trail literally starts at the end of the road where if one kept going they would end up in the ocean. Hence the “End of the road” moniker. The trail runs along the Na Pali coast which is seen in the beginning of the movie Jurassic Park. We decided to get an early start since the “parking lot” gets packed by locals and tourists alike fairly early especially on weekends. Parking lot is in quotes because the area where one is supposed to park would cause a tank to think twice about the risk of getting swallowed by one of the pot holes. Many people hike the trail at least to the river crossing and those not hiking can hang at the beautiful and very peaceful Ke’e beach. Getting to the trail requires a drive of 30 minutes or so even though its only about 10 miles from Princeville. The reason for the lengthy time is that the road is very narrow with several one lane bridges and many curves where the speed limit is only 10 or 15 m.p.h. I remarked to M this morning that the trip could be made in about the same amount of time on a good road bike.
That of course assumes that one could make it there without being run over by tourists driving too fast even though they have no idea what is around the next bend and can’t see around the bend either. As it turns out, most tourists are the same wherever they go. They are basically in the way and leave any concept they had of how to drive back wherever they came from. It is true that we are tourists here also, but we try our best not to act like tourists. We do things like plan ahead so we know where we are going and don’t end up going 3 miles per hour while weaving in the road looking at our phone that has no service and looking for the proper turn. There should be a handout given to all tourists no matter where they are vacationing. This handout would review things like safe driving and considering others before acting like a buffoon. Sorry for the digression.
We made it to the trail and had an absolutely fantastic time running it. Since we began early there weren’t too many people ahead of us on the trail and we made good time. The trail is what I refer to as “technical”, which means it is rocky, lots of roots, slick, and muddy with some serious climbing and descending thrown in for good measure. There are lots of places that require the climbing of boulders and slowing down to creep through wet spots with a giant cliff on one side. Runs like this are particularly good for me because they require absolute concentration on making progress and this allows my brain to work only on the problem at hand. This means the run ends up being a really long brain therapy session. After a couple of hours we made it back to the car fully tired and very satisfied with our run. We got a lot of encouragement from other people on the trail and quite a few notes of admiration on our task. Our gps watches indicated we burned about 1500 calories each so breakfast was heavy on our minds and stomachs and we (safely) hurried home to begin the recovery process.
We will continue our recovery this evening with a dinner out at Postcards restaurant, courtesy of Sherry (hat tip to the Dr.’s Strong). Postcards is a great restaurant in Hanalei that serves all organic food, most of which is grown in the garden right outside the door to the restaurant. Fresh fish is also offered, but that is the only “meat” they have as they do not serve chicken or beef.
We hope you enjoy the pictures and video and thanks to all of you for commenting on our blog.
