On our second full day in Hawai’i, we arrived to ‘Akaka Falls State Park near midday. We paid to park in front of the entrance rather than along the road as some did, paid for entrance, and received a warning from a woman there that the trail required one to go up and down more than 600 steps. Her warning wasn’t an empty one: for nearly a month after our visit I experienced a sharp pain in my left knee when I went up or down stairs. I later learned construction on the path forced us to take the long way around a loop trail, in essence covering three times the normal distance. This trail descends to a stream, crosses it, climbs again on the other side, basically cresting a ridge obliquely to be above Kolekole Stream which plunges 442 feet at ‘Akaka Falls. One hears but does not see a variety of birds. Foliage is lush, a result of the near-constant rain (measured best in feet). It sprinkled on and off while we visited.
all the voices in my head 