Haleakala National Park

Haleakala - the house of the sun - rises 10,023 feet above Maui, and its summit ritual is one of the great American dawns: crowds in borrowed blankets watch the sun break over a cloud sea filling a crater-like valley seven miles across, its floor scattered with cinder cones in rust, ochre and violet. The depression is really the work of erosion rather than a single eruption, and hiking into it on the Sliding Sands trail feels like descending onto another planet - silence, crunching cinder and the silver flash of the silversword, a spiky plant found nowhere else on earth that blooms once in decades and dies. The park's second personality lives far below on the Hana coast: the Kipahulu district, where the pools of Oheo Gulch step down to the sea and the Pipiwai Trail climbs through bamboo forest to a 400-foot waterfall.

What you actually see

• Sunrise above the clouds - dawn breaking over the cinder valley from the summit rail.
• The Sliding Sands trail - descending into the moonscape of cones and cinder.
• The silverswords - the found-nowhere-else plant glinting on the slopes.
• Kipahulu's pools and bamboo - the Oheo Gulch cascades and Pipiwai Trail.

When to go

The summit works year-round, but sunrise vehicle reservations open 60 days out and vanish fast - sunset needs no booking and rivals it. Summit weather is its own climate: expect near-freezing wind before dawn even when the beaches below bake.

Honest expectations

The sunrise reservation system is unforgiving - no booking, no entry before 7am, and the drive up takes a dark, winding hour and a half from most resorts. Dress like it is winter, because at altitude it is; and note Kipahulu is a separate long drive on the Hana road, not a summit add-on.

Nearby

The Hana road's waterfalls, upcountry Kula and Maui's north shore beaches.