Aiea Loop Trail

With as many fun things as there are to do in Hawaii, not everything is puppy-friendly.  I had been wanting to get Molly out and involved in some of our excursions, so I did some research on dog-friendly hikes.  One I had heard of from patients and found online was the Aiea Loop Trail.  The first weekend we tried to go, I looked up final directions to get there only to find out the trail was closed (and had been for a while) due to a landslide on the trail.  A bit frustrated, we rescheduled this hike.  Luckily enough, they re-opened the trail in the next few days.

The trail is part of a state park in central Oahu above a heavily populated area of Aiea (yes, there actually are words that have no constants, take that elementary school English).  There was a lot of back and forth switch backs while ascending the hills, but Molly stayed posted up between Joey and me the whole way.

The trail was relatively flat for a Hawaii trail, but oh so, soooo muddy.  The loop worked in a high-to-low (or vice-versa) way so that we had a steep hill to climb at the end to get back to the car.  I had no idea it would be so muddy though, and poor Molly got sprayed down at a water spicket after we were done. The trail was about 4 miles long and Molly trail-blazed the whole way.  Most of the trail was wooded with a tree canopy, but there were many scenic lookout spots as well. Funny enough, when we got to the spot of the trail where the landslide was, it was still there.  I had made the assumption that they had closed the trail to get parks maintenance in there to clear it back up, but I guess they just wanted to make sure the surrounding area had stabilized.  Scaling that was probably the toughest part of the trail. 

We came across quite a few people during the hike, and one of them were carrying a chameleon on a stick.  Bizarre, yes, but very cool.  Apparently the 3-horned chameleon is regularly found along the trail if you know where to look for them.  Of course, we immediately started looking for them and found a big fat zero chameleons.  Oh well, we still enjoyed the hike.  I've since been told there is an off-shoot at the lower end of the loops (behind a sign that says no trail beyond) that leads to a waterfall.  We did not check that out, so we'll have to see it next time.

Overall, not a very challenging hike, just a little long, very muddy, with a steep hill to climb at the end.