As my family and I wake up at 3:30 am we start our hour and a half drive to Haleakalā National Park on Maui, Hawaii. We dress in long sleeves, sweatpants, and we bring hats, gloves, and coats. On top of the volcano, it is 30 degrees and it snows if it gets cold enough. My family and I climb into the car and drive around the island using the one road to get from one side to the other. When stomach queasy from the sharp turns along the coastline and the tunnels under the mountains.

When we get to the base of the volcano we have to drive another hour to get to the very top to the observation decks. As we drive around the sharp, windy turns we approach the top of the 10,023-foot volcano above sea level. My dad flies through the turns and my mom has a death grip on the handle attached to the door; my sister and I laugh in the back. We reach the top.

My family and I walk over to the observation deck and we are surrounded by a bunch of tourists speaking different languages, waiting for the sun to rise above the clouds and light up the islands that fall below. The sun starts to rise above the clouds and my family puls out cameras of all sorts and handing them around. I instantly pull out my camera to witness the sun started to reach its arms out of the clouds. The cold brisk air whips around me, blowing my hair around.

A native Hawaiian starts to sing as I can clearly see the sun’s rays escaping the darkness that was originally there. The sounds of oo’s and ahh’s fill the deck with the sound of clicking cameras, capturing the sunrise. A rainbow of colors fell over the clouds and it was suddenly bright. Tears started to form under my sunglasses the view was absolutely incredible. Seeing the sunrise in the clouds and seeing the change from dark to light in a matter of minutes made me appreciate the beauty of sunrises even more than before.

When the sun rises above the clouds there is an applause and cheering. We walk around the different observation deck and see the Big Island of Hawaii and we look over the Island on Maui.

It’s my third time traveling to Maui and I never saw it from this view, it looked smaller than it was from being high up. The smile on my face never left as we continued to hike around from observation tower to another.

On the way down from the volcano, I looked at my photos and I realized I won’t need them to remember what the experience was like; I will always remember the first time I saw the sunrise on an inactive volcano on the Island of Maui, Hawaii.