Haleakala National Park sunrise is one of those things that should be on everyone’s bucket list. At least that’s my opinion. Not sure that my family would agree given that I made them wake up at 3:00 am for the 2 hour drive from our hotel, so we could be in position over an hour before sunrise just so I could get the “perfect” shot.

It was a cold and very wet morning when we made the trek to the Haleakala Summit. The hotel provided us blankets and we made use of every one of them! Sarah was so kind to take turns with me standing by the tripod so I kept my perfect angle and could warm up. When the sun finally showed up, we only had a few seconds of perfect color while the fog cleared. It was beautiful, but if you blinked you might have missed it.

These images show a serious of shots taken very close to each other so you can see how fast the clouds moved and blocked in the sun.

The above image was taken at 6:56:53 AM. We were afraid that the clouds were going to fog in the sunrise completely, but it clearly briefly just at the right time.

6:57:17 You can see that just a few seconds later the clouds started moving back across to block the color.

6:57:43

7:02:50 Just a few minutes later we were back inside the cloud

7:11:00

7:17:32 We had almost given up and were ready to head down the mountain (family was getting hungry), when the clouds seemed to clear and sun showed up again.

7:18:21

7:20:17 This is a 3 image HDR converted to Black & White

7:22:15

The Silversage is unique to Haleakala and I believe this is the only place in the world that this particular plant can grow.

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We took a once in a lifetime Christmas Vacation to Hawaii! Everything about this trip was awesome! We woke up the first morning there about 4:00 am local time and everyone was wide-awake – not adjusted to the time yet. We decided to adjust the schedule and make that first day our Pearl Harbor day so we could get there early. Worked perfectly and there was NO line. During our first trip to Pearl Harbor four years ago, Sarah and I had to wait in line for a few hours. They have redone the visitors center making the whole process much more manageable.

If you’ve never been to Pearl Harbor before, add this to your list. It’s a must see location. The experience was very moving. The girls are old enough now to understand the ramifications of what Pearl Harbor meant and World War II as a whole. This led to many more discussions as you can imagine.

These are just some of the shots that I captured that day. Enjoy!