Mililani-Waipio Hike

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Mililani-Waipio - April 10, 2014


Instead of doing our weekly run today, Erik and I decided to do a short hike near my mom’s house. The hike takes you to Kipapa Gulch and on what seems like military property. I told Erik, there are about 14 tunnels which may peak his interest.


On my last scout mission, I walked on the road and passed about 14 tunnels ending up in thick California grass. I bushwhacked for about 20 minutes, but decided to turn around. The road appeared to lead under H2. I appropriately named the hike: H2 trail. While walking back I noticed another trail. After eyeballing it, it appeared to lead to Costcos. My goal today was to explore that trail, hopefully that would take us to Costcos Waipio.


The trail is behind the baseball field. In Milville, (that’s what the kids call Mililani) the baseball field is referred to as Noholoa, named after some apartment development nearby. Behind the park is known as Cherry Hill. The origin of that name is unknown. For years after baseball games we would go down there to the stream and just mess around. I’ve heard every story in the book as boys will be boys and they tell the most outlandish stories about the gulch. When I was small getting down towards the stream seemed like hours. Today it took Erik and I 5 minutes. We took a bike trail which I stumbled upon in September 2013.


infamous k-bridge

Erik seemed impressed with the flow of the stream. But he wanted to see those tunnels. One of the early tunnels was open. We put our headlamps on and checked inside. Erik and his curiosity went first, as I followed him preoccupied about running into homeless people. The tunnel was an old storage unit, emptied out and no longer in use. Unfortunately, it did not connect to the other tunnels.


tunnel

Most of the tunnels were locked up, but another one down the road was open. Someone had been living in this one as it had all kinds of crap in there. The sun was setting. Instead of exploring more tunnels we decided to take the trail which was our objective for the day. Long story short, the trail I thought led to Costcos was just part of the road we were just on. That was not good. With sun setting, we decided to head back. At a junction, I asked Erik if he would want to make an attempt to go through the Waipio farm and end up somewhere near Costcos.


farm

After a short discussion it was a go. We had about 45 minutes of sunlight left. I thought we could easily hit the farm in 20 minutes, but wasn’t sure how long the road walk would be to Costcos. We walked through the farm fields on a dirt path which led to the farm office. We froze for a minute wondering if we should chance it or not. After a short discussion, I told Erik just look down and go. if we got caught by someone, our story would be we were lost or something. Just then we heard a large vehicle in the distance. We walked as fast as we could towards Ka Uka Blvd. Near the end, I turned back and seen a green tractor coming towards us. I said, “ok time to run”, so we ran, all the while laughing. We crossed the busy street and ate at Fat Boys waiting for my wife to pick us up.

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