New Material – Pinnacles NM and the 'Iao Valley

Time for some overdue updates! April has been an especially busy and awesome month, which is good because as my birth month it’s always been a particular favorite of mine. This year brought a wonderful week in Maui, a day hiking at Pinnacles National Monument, and the 2011 Henry Coe Backcountry Weekend.

I’m trying to hammer my way through photos and making galleries and such, so they may be a little disjointed. Like this:

First up is the Pinnacles Hike Gallery. My regular group of casual hiking friends (nicknamed the “Hillside Stragglers” by Dwayne) has been hiking for several years now, since about 2004 I want to say. I’d had the idea that for our 50th hike we should hike at Pinnacles National Monument.

This was agreed upon and in typical fashion we actually got out there more like hike #75 by our estimation, since I stopped keeping track of the hike numbers at some point. But we all had a blast. I was the only one that had been to Pinnacles before, and it had been several years. The guys all really liked it though, it’s just a spectacular place… My favorite bit was the cave section, which was way too short.

The second gallery is back about 10 days earlier in April, and a few thousand miles west, when Carrie & I did a two-hike day starting with our short hike at the ‘Iao Valley on Maui. This was short but sweet and it really had the feel of hiking though proper tropical jungle, a feeling we relished.

Enjoy the galleries. There are more to come!