The crater is 10,000+ ft high. It's a brisk drive and quite a shock to walk out of the car and confirm that, indeed, it's at least 30 degrees cooler than it was at the bottom of the volcano. And quite windy too!

The crater looks quite surreal. It is very difficult to get a good idea of its actual size.

I think that I forgot to mention this earlier but no matter where you are you are in Maui, you can always see another island. When we were in the northen part, Molokai looked like it was at a stone throw. Now, Big Island (Hawai'i) was smiling at us.