Slice of Life Day 4: Climb Diamond Head

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For the Slice of Life challenge to write a blog everyday in March, I decided to write about our recent trip to Hawaii. Today we are taking a tour of the state monument: Diamond Head.  We had the tour scheduled for a few day when the tour company called us the day before and asked us to move the time to a later time of day. Trying to be nice, we changed it. Later we learned that our ride to the airport would be picking us up before we could get back from the tour. We had to cancel the tour. But that didn't stop us...we did the climb on our own!

We took a city bus (called The Bus) and made the hour trip to the park. I really had no idea what this climb would be like, but I was ready to try it. The .75 mile hike leads to the edge of the crater's rim.

 

The mostly unpaved trail winds over uneven rock and ascends 74 steps. Then it goes through a tunnel and up another steep 99 steps. Next is a small lighted tunnel to a spiral staircase (43 steps). The climb was long. As we passed people coming down, I thought, "Ok, I can do this!" It was a challenge.

The long tunnel had small lights at the bottom of the tunnel. It still was very dark. What an amazing sight.

From the summit both Waikiki and the Pacific Ocean can be seen in detail. It is a short, steep hike for a total of 762 feet. The walk down was much easier and faster, too. We found the bathrooms and a place that sold t-shirts. I had to have one that said, "I climbed the Diamond".  This was one of the things we did on the trip that I will never forget. The climb, the view and the challenge!