Lessons in Lava Fields

“It’s only 3 miles” they said, “it’ll be easy” they said.

-Maggie & Mel; pre-hike

I wish I could say that’s an exaggeration, but it’s not. Upon Maggie telling me about this gorgeous ~3 mile hike she found – Ala Kahakai Nationa Historical Trail – with 121 feet of elevation game, I audibly chuckled. “So we’re going on a walk” I replied. She laughed, agreed, and we decided one water bottle would be more than enough to get us through.

Now, if this were a film, this would be about the time a narrator came in..

“One bottle would in fact not be enough, and they would in fact, not be fine” 

-Narrator

I digress.. we get to the hike and pull off the freeway to a very narrow, very bumpy, dirt road (the islands first “haha, dummies”). After we drove the .5 miles trying to avoid all the sketchy potholes and not bottom out my small Nissan sedan, we made it to the trail head. 

It really wasn’t that bad and the beginning of this hike was beautiful. It was right along the beach and we hiked through lushes trees and sandy beaches – stopping along the way to take all the photos. A few below:

• 

• 

• 

• 

We even saw some petroglyphs!

Overall, about a mile and a half in you had a very jazzed very excited Maggie and Mel. Picture for reference:

The hike was originally an out and back trail – but we were in Kaloko-Honokohau National Historic Park and realized there are many connecting trails so we decided to add another mile and make it a loop. As we walked we passed a small lava field, stood in awe of the textures and how vast it was, we started to have the realization that to do this loop, we’d be hiking on all lava rock in the dead of afternoon, under the hot Hawaiian sun, on the way back. “It’ll be fineee” we said. 

..it was not fine.

The last 2 miles was pretty brutal. We can laugh about it now, but in the moment we were both hot, staring at the ground, trying not to step on the wrong loose rock and roll our ankles, and dreaming about ice cold beer. You can see the optimism really start to fade as you move through the below pics.. walking on very unstable rocks for 2 miles in hot sun is not fun guys.

Hiking is supposed to be fun, Lava Rock, not fun! (I’ve recently just gotten into Summer House and unless you’ve seen it you won’t get this haha)

You win Hawaii, you win. We will never underestimate your hikes again, and we will always bring too much water and a hat. Now in all honestly, overall the hike was very pretty, we did enjoy it, we just didn’t prepare well. But you know what they say, yah live yah learn, and oh boy did we learn some lessons here! Always bring water, and hiking through lava fields isn’t as cool (literally) as it sounds. At least not in the dead of afternoon.

But we finished the night with Ola’s and fish tacos and all was well in the world once again.