How to dry socks in the rain

It rained all night and all morning, but I had decided to go to Haleakala at that day, so I went anyway, hoping the weather would be different up there. Afterwards I wanted to see Makawao, a little city between Haleakala and Kahului.

I had the hostel pancakes again and decided that it was the last time I’d eat them.

It is around 1h 40 to get to the summit of Haleakala. You can easily drive up there to take pictures. I wanted to go there first and than back down a little to the upper visitor center to start my 12 miles hike down into the valley. I had it all packed: hiking boots, hiking poles, rain jacket, fleece jacket, woolen had and gloves. I even had cut an apple and put it in my lunch box.

When you enter the park, it is another 15 minutes to the summit. I asked the woman at the lower visitor center half way up, what she was thinking of the conditions. She said it should be fine, but I should keep in mind that it is double the time to walk up again and that it can be exhausting, as the sand it wet and might give away a little. It was still pouring, but she said it most likely won’t change until sunday. I will leave on sunday, so no time to rescedule. There are two lookout points on the way to the top. When I reached the first one the rain had stopped and I was able to see into the crater through some bright clouds. As I pulled out my camera I heard a „Plop“ and when I looked down I saw my hiking socks lying in a big puddle in front of me. I grabbed them as fast as I could, but they were soaking wet already. Of course by the time it happened, I was still wearing my sneakers that I use for driving – you don’t want to drive a car in hiking boots. In these sneakers I wore sneaker socks, that would be a pain to hike in. I cursed… a lot. When I came back to the car I arrange the socks nicely on the dashboard and hoped that the sun would help me get the socks at least semidry.. dry enough to forget it while walking. As they started to steam right away, I figured I might have good chances. When I came back from the second lookout I noticed that my rainjacket was leaky, and I had still not been to the summit. When I finally got there, I got out of the car and was soaking wet after 30 seconds, but I was still willing to make that hike. Back at the second visitor center, that was supposed to be the starting point of my hike, I lost hope. The rain got so bad, that the toilets were flooded and on the way to the building, my last layer of clothes got wet as well. There was zero sight down to the valley and my feet were wet. I decided to give it a go next time I will be on Maui and to go back to the hostel. But before I got back into the car, I used the hand dryers in the bathroom to dry my socks. They kept my feet warm in my sopping wet sneakers on the way down the winding road to the exit of the park.

As I was hungry and annoyed that my plan for the day did not work out, I decided not to go to Kahului, but to Makawao as planned. I read that there is a very famous asian bakery and as my brother told me to check out the bakeries of the islands, I was even more interested in some cake. After an hour of driving I arrived in Makawao. The bakery looked like hundreds of hungry people had been there before me. A little girl in front of me grabbed the last bag of cookies. As they are most famous for their glazed donuts on a stick (?) anyway and as there were some of them left, I took one of those. yumm!
I spent the rest of the day waiting in a café, for the rain to stop.

Just before my socks got wet

Light winds

Looking into crater

DRY FASTER!

That is how it is supposed to look like, when you look out of the window

that is how it looked like

drizzle

waiting for the rain to stop

donut stick – Komoda bakery

Makawao

Makawao