Kamananui Valley Road – February 5, 2011 

Deep, deep, deep in the back of Moanalua Valley is a trail called Kamananui Valley Road hike. This hike is the appetizer that leads to the main course hike called Kulana’ahane Trail, then good hikers venture on from there. The day was Feb. 5th and I wanted to take the kids hiking this Saturday. Unfortunately, option 1: the Camp Timberline Hike required permission, I didn’t know! So plan B was to hike a trail in Kunia. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find that hike and luckily I didn't because on further inspection that hike would have been impossible for the kids and access to the trailhead would have been difficult. Being frustrated I decided to look on my iphone for another hike, plan C. The kids were well behaved because they were watching their Power Rangers DVD in the back seats.  While on the side of the road checking my iphone, I found a hike in Moanalua Valley called Kamananui. It was easy to get there, taking the Moanalua Valley/Red Hill exit. Then get onto Ala Aolani Street all the way until the end of the road, which will be Moanalua Valley State Park. The park is nice, there are two basketball courts on the left and a playground and exercise area by the bathroom. The trail is easy, it would be a great jogging trail and I should jog this trail one day. There are a lot of bridges that pop up every ¼ mile or so. The trail is straight forward. The kids hiking threshold peaks at about 1 hour. My goal was to hike for 30 minutes forward and 30 minutes back. I tried to prolong the hike by providing positive reinforcement, but that didn’t work.  We counted 7 bridges on our 30 minute adventure.  The trail is about 8 miles total, so I assume we did about 3 total miles for the hour we were out there. The trail is surprisingly lush with vegetation and wildlife. I guess all valley hikes are like that. Rain seems to congregate in the valley and the lush rain comes out.  After the hike we did some conditioning in the exercise area and headed towards Salt Lake Shopping Center. It was a short 5 minute drive. I bought the kids Pizza Hut and I decided to go to Soon’s Kalbi. Soon’s service is pretty fast and the food was average. Mary loved Meat Jun.