Sunday, March 8, 2009

Beyond The Gate

Today I went for an awesome run with Sara. It was raining (again) but that makes for pleasant running conditions around here...

We decided to tackle some hills today so we headed off toward the botanical gardens that are just a couple of miles from my house. I think I've written about this run here before... it's totally my favorite route. Stunning and incredible scenery and just impossible to get bored while running because of all the hills and twists and turns. The plan was to run out and back to the end of the road, then add in another loop coming home to total out the run to 13 miles.

As we were nearing our planned turn around point, it occurred to me that the road does continue on... I've never run past the fence, but I did bike it one time with a friend of mine... pretty scary bike ride on this old road that is no longer maintained and just goes straight up the side of the mountain...

Anyway, I was wearing my garmin, so we figured we'd go ahead and run up the Old Pali Road until it was time to turn around. Seriously, it was incredible up there!

I didn't actually have my camera with me so I shamelessly stole these pictures from other people's websites. Crazy what you find when you do a google search for 'Old Pali Road'... all these scary stories about it being haunted up there... and the weird energy... I don't know. We didn't feel any weird energy. I think we were too in awe of how stunning it was to feel any weird energy.

But legend has it that about 250 years ago, King Kamehameha was making his effort to take over the island of Oahu and an epic battle ensued where he drove the warriors from Oahu up the Pali where a bunch of 'em jumped off the cliff rather than allowing themselves to be captured...

Now I'm gonna be all freaked out when I go and run up there again.

Funny thing was that my garmin actually stopped receiving signal for a while up there. That didn't make sense to me since I figured we were actually closer to those satellites in space than usual- you'd think the signal would have been stronger? Maybe it was the ghosts.

4 comments:

X-Country2 said...

Oooh ghosts freak me out!

Looks like a beautiful run though. Just another day in paradise. :o)

N.D. said...

That sounds really cool. Each run is like an adventure with the scenery you have going!!

rr said...

I too have never run up there past the gate, only ridden my bike. After yesterday's 10k, I could use the hills.. maybe this weekend I'll try it!

Aron said...

oh that looks like an amazing run :)