We took the opportunity to head out to Kaena Point the other day. Also, we haven’t gone geocaching since we lived in Ohio, so this seemed like a great time to try it again. The interesting thing about that part of the island is that there is no paved road that takes you all the way around the northwest corner. A paved road will get you most of the way, but it just turns into a not-so-well-maintained dirt road about 2.5 miles from the point itself.

At the end of the paved road, there is a dirt parking lot where most people park and walk out to Kaena Point. But if you have 4WD, you can take your chances and keep going on the dirt “road”…so, we did. It was pretty nerve racking for a number of reasons:

1) We’ve never been off-road in our Jeep before (or any other vehicle).
2) The right front brake has a history of overheating. I replaced the pads and rotor and thought it would be good; however, the brakes overheated on the way out.
3) Apparently, there’s this stuff called “power steering fluid” that you have to keep in this little container under the hood. Whatever…I’m not going to do that. On a completely unrelated note, every time I turned the steering wheel, this loud whining noise eminated from the engine. Very strange…

The trail was a little intimidating. It was a really rough ride and seemed impassable in several spots. I was getting a little worried along the way for the above-mentioned reasons, but the Jeep made it through all the way to the geocache site! We decided to leave the Jeep and continue by foot the rest of the way (about 1.2 miles) to Kaena Point. As it is, you have to walk the last .6 miles anyway, so it wasn’t too bad.

Although getting rushed, we made it to the point. We also found our geocache “treasure.”

As far as the Jeep goes, I have since added this magical “power steering fluid.” Again, on a completely unrelated note, there is no whining from the engine whenever I turn the steering wheel. I also replaced the front right brake caliper today. It remains to be seen if that fixes the brake overheating problem, but I suspect it will. Here are a few photos to recap for those who stopped reading this dissertation about two paragraphs ago.

J