Two Trails to the Third: Pauoa Flats Trail

Mountain Monday!  Back to hiking!  We took the weekend off from hiking since it was my oldest sons birthday, he turned fourteen, and his special request for his birthday was "Please mom, no hiking."  Lol.  I honored his request and we spent a lovely weekend going to the movies, eating out, playing games at Dave and Busters, and spending many hours at the beach.  But his birthday weekend is over...and we are back to squeezing in some hikes together before high school and kindergarten (for my youngest) begin next week!  

The Tantalus Trail System (not the official name) has been good to me.  We have hiked numerous trails that begin up Round Top Drive a.k.a Tantalus.  Today I was eager to hike Pauoa Flats Trail, a trail I had seen on three previous hikes---Pu'u Ohia, Manoa Cliff, and Kalawahine Trails.  I was determined to finally see what Pauoa Flats had to offer.  Since I feel pretty familiar with Pu'u Ohia (hiked it three times now), I decided we would hike this trail to reach the ultimate destination---Pauoa Flats.  So we started todays adventure on Pu'u Ohia Trail which meets up with Manoa Cliff for a bit, which then meets up with the beginning of Pauoa Flats.  Other routes to Pauoa Flats would be to begin at Manoa Cliff and stick to this trail all the way until you meet up with Pauoa Flats.  Another option would be to start on the Kalawahine Trail and follow that until it meets up with Pauoa Flats.  There are many options!  Today, Pu'u Ohia was its usual pleasant self, we discovered a new hand made wooden bench, but otherwise were steadfast in our resolve to reach the Pauoa Flats Trail.

We reached the Pu'u Ohia/Manoa Cliff junction fairly quickly and continued down the small section of Manoa Cliff until we reached the Manoa Cliff/Kalawahine/Pauoa Flats junction---finally! We took the obligatory photos and started down the shaded path of Pauoa Flats Trail.  This trail was really cool---there were many other trailheads that we encountered along the way

1. Nu'uanu
2. Aihualama
3. Kalawahine

I must go back to visit the first two.  

The next cool factor was the boardwalk of sorts built over the many tree roots along the path.  My guess is that these raised platforms help with erosion and incidentally help hikers not to trip, and they are fun for the kids to run on.

After some mud maneuvering, a trek through some bamboo, some very large trees, and moss covered boulders, we arrived at the "End of Trail" sign.  I love those.  We were greeted with a spectacular view.  We were peering down on the valley that leads to another of our favorite hikes, Lulumahu Falls.  From our high vantage point we could see the Pacific Ocean to our left (town side) and the Pacific Ocean to our right (windward O'ahu).  We could see the Pali Highway.  We could see mountains and plush green landscape that took our breath away.  It was the perfect Mountain Monday.
 

This hike was such a pleasant journey.  There was nothing too hard about it---the kids didn't complain (for once), we lucked out on great weather, and there was a minimal amount of bugs and mud.  And, knock on wood, we managed to escape the trail without having our car broken into---when we parked we noticed three fresh glass puddles from a recent theft party.  Some days are just perfect adventures.

Of course, no hiking excursion would be complete without lunch and a treat.  Monday munchies were cured by our first time at AGU Ramen Bistro in Ward Center (the one not being torn down) and an extra special treat of donuts! Dunkin Donuts has returned to Hawaii and apparently the entire state was realllllly missing it---we waited an hour to receive our assorted dozen---all that is allotted due to the extremely high demand.  Wow.  Good thing we were tired from our four and a half mile triple trail hike.  We rested in the car A/C in the drive thru!

You may or may not want to duplicate this entire experience with your ohana, but you should definitely give the Pauoa Flats portion of our adventure a try.   Hope to see you on the trails...or in the drive thru!