Bedard-Hearn Travel Blog

Big Sur Backpacking Trip

2011-10-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Just the photos:

But if you read all the way through, you'll be treated to a new feature on this blog: videos!

We went backpacking in the Big Sur Ventana Wilderness area, from Bottcher's Gap to Pat Springs over the weekend. We got a bit of a late start on Friday, but it was also kind of cool because we got to hike through a beautiful sunset and into the dusk.

From Bottcher's Gap

It was a pretty grueling hike for Justine and I - pretty much straight up hill for the first 3 or 4 hours. Yikes!

When we finally made camp the first night, it was just on the side of the trail around 7 pm. We stopped near a spur that lead to a small trickle of water, which was enough for the evening and the next morning.

From Bottcher's Gap

Following some amazing mac-n-cheeze+broccoli, we went to sleep intent on getting up early the next morning to finish our walk to Pat Springs. Unfortunately, only one of us managed to get up at sunrise.

From Bottcher's Gap

Oh well... everyone did eventually get up and we at some tofu-scramble-breakfast-burritos. After cleaning up the camp, we headed off (even if some of the crew wanted to pretend we'd already been walking for hours!):

We marched on for a short while through madrone and manzanita forest

and were soon pumping fresh water again at Pat Springs.

From Bottcher's Gap

We took a campsite a few hundred feet uphill from the spring, overlooking Botcher's Gap, the Pacific, Pico Blanco, and Ventana Double Cone... I must say that it was probably one of the best campsites I've ever seen.

From Bottcher's Gap

We had an orienteering lesson:

From Bottcher's Gap

celebrated a birthday with cupcakes:

From Bottcher's Gap

were treated again to a gorgeous sunset:

From Bottcher's Gap

and were so high in the Ventana Wilderness that we could literally jump over the moon!

From Bottcher's Gap

All in all, an excellent weekend.

Can't say enough about how fun this weekend trip was... beautiful weather, great company, and stunning views. Get out there if you've never been.

From Bottcher's Gap

Oh yeah, and did I mention that I'm trying to post video a bit more often on this here blog? Here's one:

Mt. Adams and Trout Lake (Washington)

2011-10-07T16:36:00.000-07:00

I just realized we never posted these pictures, so here they finally are (along with a fancy pants new design). Enjoy!

Castle Pass Hike

2011-08-08T22:43:00.000-07:00

Castle Pass - Click for Photo Alubm

Knocked out another section of the Pacific Crest Trail back on July 17th, the section that adjoins this part, near Donner Pass. The area is called Castle Pass, named for the big black rock formations that look like a giant fort. It was an excellent easy hike, despite being so close to the highway and so snowed in. I guess we shouldn't have been surprised, given the amount of snow this year and the relatively cool summer, but it was surprising that some of the areas were several feet deep with snow!

From Castle Pass

We started the hike very late (around 1pm), bagged an ~8000 ft. peak, and had time to come down and eat an awesome dinner at Lattitudes in Auburn.

From Castle Pass

I said it before and I'll say it again: I love being so close to the Sierras!

King's Canyon National Park

2011-06-07T22:44:00.000-07:00

King's Canyon National Park

Clicky above to see the photos.

King's Canyon National Park, located an hour east of Fresno, CA, is very similar to Yosemite in that both are glacier-carved valleys in the Sierra Nevada. Both are also very beautiful. But where Yosemite fails (crowding and difficulty getting a campsite or backcountry permit), KCNP totally succeeds. We went on Memorial Day weekend and found an excellent car-camping spot. Justine and I went on a 10-mile hike to Mist Falls, and saw almost nobody the whole way. The whole lot of us took a 5+ mile hike through Zumalt Meadow to Roaring Falls and really only saw people at the waterfalls (which you can drive to). It's a really good find for us, since it's also very easy to get to, despite being further south.

King's Canyon also didn't disappoint in the awesome beauty of the Sierras: Racing rivers and waterfalls, huge granite peaks, and of course giant sequoias. I will definitely be back to KCNP... hopefully before the summer is over.

Afterthought: In reading about giant sequoias on Wikipedia, I made it to the "List of Trees," which is really a list of famous/named/record-breaking trees. I was reading down the list of famous trees in Asia and realize that I've seen several of them.

There's the Great Banyon in Kolkata

The Sri Maha Bodhi tree in Bodh Gaya, India

The Killing Trees near Phenom Penh, Cambodia

The "Tomb Raider" tree at Angkor Wat's Ta Prohm temple in Cambodia

Which brings be back to King's Canyon: When we were driving to KCNP, we stopped at a drug store for snacks. Justine was wearing a t-shirt from Angkor Wat, and the cashier there asked if we'd been there; she really wanted to see the "Lara Croft tree!"

Full circle :D

Dragon spine

2011-05-05T22:00:00.000-07:00

I was browsing some old photos and saw this, the limestone peaks in southern Thailand.

Briones Regional Park Hike

2011-04-30T12:56:00.000-07:00

The rest of the pictures here

We used GPS tracker called "Move!Bike Computer" to log the data from our hike; you can view it using GoogleEarth. The batter on our phone only lasted long enough for the hike in (from parking lot to summit), so you can get an idea about where we went and the elevation changes. File here.

Briones is part of the East Bay Regional Parks system. This hike up Lafyette Ridge to a 1350ft. summit, which we took about 3 weeks ago now, was really excellent. Gorgeous day and a nice little climbing challenge over picturesque rolling CA hills with scattered oaks. We did 8 miles round trip and gained a total elevation of about 1000ft, but since the trail was so hilly (see GoogleEarth data above), it ended up being almost twice that. Some of the hills were literally 40% grades... yikes. I really regretted wearing jeans that day.

Yosemite in Winter

2011-02-21T14:16:00.000-08:00

I know this is a bit old, now, but I wanted to post these pictures of New Year's Eve and New Year's Day in Yosemite National Park. The snow was crazy and it was so cold on our long snow shoe hike, but it was totally worth it. Enjoy!

New Year's - Yosemite

Ecuador: Western Andean Slopes (Mindo)

2010-11-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ecuador - Mindo Cloud Forests

Click above for all the photos.

The last place we visited in Ecuador was the town of Mindo, about a 2-hour drive north of Quito. We spent three nights at the Mindo Gardens lodge, which itself was a 45-minute walk from the center of the very small town of Mindo. Mindo is a one-street town with loads of eco-lodges, but little in the way of food. What the area does have going for it is extensive bird activity and zip-lines through the canopy of these high-altitude "cloud forests." Mindo is especially famous for one resident, the Andean Cock-of-the-Rock. Each morning (in secret places only the $100-per-person guides know about) dozens of the male COTRs gather to court lady birds. Rarely do the ladies show up, but it's supposed to be quite the spectacle. However, due to a lack of sufficient funding, we didn't get to see real live Cock-of-the-Rock. We did see lots of other great animals, though, which you can see by clicking through the album.

From Ecuador - Mindo Cloud Forests

We also engaged in Mindo's other two activities: visiting the butterflies

From Ecuador - Mindo Cloud Forests

... and hurtling through the canopy on what I'm sure are very safe metal cables

From Ecuador - Mindo Cloud Forests

Ecuador: Parque Nacional Cajas

2010-11-02T20:12:00.000-07:00

Photos here.

In our second week in Ecuador, we flew south from Quito to the lovely town of Cuenca (we'll have a separate post about that city some day). From Cuenca, we booked a tour to Parque Nacional Cajas, a highlands park notable for it's glacier-formed valleys, hundreds of lakes, and ancient "polylepis" forests.

We saw many cool birds, a bunny, hiked several the lagoons, and walked up to the second-highest point in the park, known as "Tres Cruces," where there is a memorial to the many Spaniards who died while trying to cross the Andes (elevation 13,670 ft.). Interestingly, Tres Cruces is also on the continental divide; which means every drop of water on one side of Tres Cruces flows toward the Pacific, while every drop that falls on the east side goes into the Amazonian basin (and then the south Atlantic).

Cajas' terrain is known as a "paramo" ... basically, high-elevation plains and bogs. It's actually quite similar to some of the terrain we saw above the tree line on the South Island of New Zealand:

From 28Mar07

Compare with Ecuador:

Pretty cool...

Ecuador: Cotopaxi

2010-10-31T13:21:00.000-07:00

All the photos here.

We took a guided day trip from Quito to the nearby national park around the Cotopaxi volcano. The tour company drove us and a few others out to the park, where we would stop below the volcano, at the park's very small museum, and finally, part way up the volcano. From about 3900 m, we would begin a 2 hour walk up to the edge of the glacier at about 5000 m (16,400 ft)... this is probably the highest altitude we've ever hiked to! There is a hut/refuge about half way up the trail to the glacier, where you can get outfitted to do the actual ice climbing to the summit after the sun goes down. We stopped here for lunch on the way down, but the food was bad and there wasn't enough for vegetarians. After lunch, we walked back to the bus and took an 11 km (almost 7 mile) mountain bike ride down the volcano to a lagoon near the park entrance. We also saw an Andean wolf (which is really a fox) and milked a cow! All in all, a very fun tour.

Interesting after story: On another day, we ran in to a woman who recently quit from the tour company we used to go to Cotopaxi. She complained that they underpaid their guides, skimped on food, and treated her terribly. So.... for those of you looking for a particular tour company to use if for Cotopaxi, we can't really recommend one, even though we had a good trip with ours.

For Victory

2010-10-30T13:51:00.000-07:00

Taken at the edge of the glacier on top of the volcano, Cotopaxi, about an hour SE of Quito, Ecuador.

Justine was much better at this than me

2010-10-30T13:40:00.000-07:00

More like this to come...

2010-10-29T17:44:00.000-07:00

We are back in America now, and sometime this weekend, probably between World Series games 3 and 4, we'll have a more complete update with stories and pictures. Until then, let this whet your appetite. :)

An old photo from Quito

2010-10-28T08:20:00.001-07:00

This is from our first night in Ecuador, when we met up with our friend who now lives in Berlin. We had dinner at El Arabe, a medeteranean place in the new part of Quito. Actually, this was one of the best meals we had here in Ecuador.

cafe austria en cuenca, ecuador

2010-10-24T07:41:00.001-07:00

Hanging with coffee and wireless at a very touristy place on a sunday morning...

graffitti (?) en cuenca, ecuador

2010-10-24T07:25:00.000-07:00

More Ecuador

2010-10-24T05:44:00.000-07:00

Still unable to post photos, but will do so quickly after returning to the States. Yesterday, we went to a high altitude national park in the Andes, Parque Nacional Cajas. It looked a lot like some of the alpine regions of New Zealand, but different in many ways, too. Today, we are going to a cloud forest in the north of the country.

Adios!

Quito, Ecuador

2010-10-20T18:53:00.000-07:00

Blogging from Justine's Droid... so I appologize for the brevity. Also watching game 5.

Yesterday we went to the CENTER OF THE EARTH, also known as the location some guy first identified the equatorial position. Today, we climbed most of the way up the glaciated volcano, Cotopaxi (we peaked at 5000 meters... about 17000 feet), then rode mountain bikes down. Freakin awesome. We also milked a cow today. Squirt.

Food is lacking, but sights, scenery are great.

Yosemite National Park

2010-09-27T17:07:00.000-07:00

We went to Yosemite National Park over the weekend... nothing big, just some car camping at Hodgdon Meadow near the Big Oak Flat entrance. We hiked part of the way up Yosemite Falls, but got a late start so we didn't finish. We also hiked down into Merced Grove, a small cluster of Sequoias that doesn't receive nearly the attention it probably deserves (though with bigger, more tourist-friendly areas like Mariposa Grove, I guess it's understandable). Anyway, here's some photos of our trip, including two amazing sunsets (I guess every sunset in Yosemite is amazing), and plenty of cute critters. Enjoy!

Yosemite

Two Sierra summits in one day... We love California!

2010-07-06T11:37:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, Justine and I went on a relatively short day hike from Donner Pass to the tops of Mt. Donner (where we ate lunch) and Mt. Judah. The Judah trail is supposed to be a loop, but the South side of the trail was snowed in, so we walked out the same way we walked in. One of the coolest things was actually this back tracking, since the afternoon heat significantly increased the flow of the snow melt, causing trails to turn into gushing slides and tiny trickles into full on water features! Click HERE for the pics.

Enjoy, and hope you all had a great 4th!

-mike

2010-03-14T07:21:00.000-07:00

Daylight savings ends.

How did my cats learn of this?

They let me sleep in.

[untitled]

2010-03-10T13:12:00.000-08:00

Brief thunder storm here.

Passed in only five minutes.

Texas is so weird.

Bird Watching

2009-12-05T11:15:00.000-08:00

A Snow

2009-12-05T11:12:00.000-08:00

Here is a picture of a snow from Friday afternoon. Perhaps you heard it snowed a bunch in Texas, from the east in Houston as far west as San Antonio. In Austin, this is about as much snow as we got. But proof, anyway!

Washington, DC - Trip Advice

2009-09-20T13:31:00.000-07:00

My parents are going to DC in a few days, and I wrote them this huge email offering them advice about what to do and see. Then I realized that the email made for a perfect travel blog entry! So, here it is, hopefully useful for anybody else planning on a similar trip.

1) Food on the national mall is generally lousy (because it's museum food) except for the National Museum of the American Indian (a Smithsonian institution, located 3rd and Jefferson, or the SE corner of the Natl. Mall). The NMAI has an awesome cafeteria, featuring Mexican, South American, and Native American-inspired cuisine. Definitely the best museum food I've had. Long lines move quickly here.... :)

2) For a good view of the city and everything in it, head to the Old Post Office on 11th and Pennsylvania. There's an elevator to the top and a good view of everything. Nothing is taller than this view except for the Washington Monument, which is difficult to get tix for. Moreover, you won't be able to see it if you're inside it! So, I highly recommend getting to the Old Post Office for an excellent 360-degree view!

3) The National Gallery of Art's Sculpture garden (to the south of the Natl. Archives) is an excellent place to take a break and sit in the shade. They have food, a huge pool/fountain, and had a big jazz band playing when we were there at about 6pm on a Saturday. Plus, the sculptures are really good, too!

4) Please do not miss out on the National Portrait Gallery (on F and 8th, across the street from the International Spy Museum). The portrait gallery was easily the best museum I saw, and it has an interesting courtyard and cafe. It's actually two museums (the museum of American Art shares the space) but if you see only a little bit, please head up to the Presidential Portraits wing in the Portrait Gallery. I went twice and was blown away both times... You will not be disappointed.

5) If you only get to see one monument at night, I would recommend the FDR memorial. Take a cab, if you need to (they're pretty cheap in DC) but you won't regret it. It's a chronological walk through his 4 terms in office, so make sure to start at the correct end. Some light reading helped me with interpretation (check http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_Delano_Roosevelt_Memorial) but even without that, the monument will be powerful at night. As a bonus, the stunning Jefferson Memorial (right on the water across from the Washington Monument) is just steps away from FDR! Few people make it to either at night (most go to the Lincoln Memorial at night, also excellent, and Justine's recommendation), so you might even have them nearly to yourselves! Don't forget: every monument on the Natl. Mall is open 24-365, while museums are only open during the day...

6) Beware that sometimes around the mall, finding food is difficult. On the weekends, most of the restaurants downtown will be closed. A relatively safe bet is to head via taxi or pedicab (we paid 15 bucks plus a 5-dollar tip to get from the US Capitol to the Portrait Gallery, about 8 blocks away) into Chinatown (6th&7th Streets, between about E and I Sts.). Chinatown has TONS more food than just Asian, and tends to have open restaurants all the time (whereas museum food always closes when the museums close at 6 or 7pm).

Pride of Barbados

2009-09-17T09:11:00.000-07:00

... or as we like to call this plant, Barbados Jim.

Sugar Crystal

2009-09-17T09:09:00.000-07:00

Washington, DC (Part II)

2009-08-15T22:04:00.000-07:00

See previous post below, but I decided to go back and photograph the monuments at night. Here's a few...

Sleepy lion outside the Corcoran Museum

The monument / temple to the five-dollar-bill guy

White thing and reflection pond

Inside the amazing temple to an amazing man...

Washington, DC

2009-08-15T21:53:00.000-07:00

Here's a couple of photos from my first day in Washington, DC. Some pretty amazing sights... enjoy!

Some guy named Andrew Jackson...

Eisenhower Executive Office Building

View of the White House from the south lawn/eclipse

The tallest stone structure in the world AND the tallest obelisk.

Methane Burp

2009-08-03T07:56:00.000-07:00

From Nature:

While testing equipment off the Californian coast last month, a newly refitted research vessel stumbled across plumes of methane gas rising 1,400 metres from the sea floor.

[...]

Cruise scientist Stephen Hammond of the NOAA office in Newport, Oregon, suspects this is because ice with methane gas trapped in its crystal structure melts at the combination of pressure and temperature at that depth. Similar methane plumes have been discovered from the Oregon coast to the Black Sea, but not this large or numerous.

They don't specifically say if this methane is going into the air or if this is a global warming event (because the data is so new) but one thing people worry about with rising sea temps is the release of "methane-hydrates," which are huge pockets of methane stored in ice at the sea floor. One scenario envisions a catastrophic release (or "burp") of all that methane nearly-simultaneously that would destroy life as we know it. Think:

Except with methane instead of chlorine. And bigger.

Doughnuts

2009-05-17T07:40:00.000-07:00

MMMMMMMMMMMMMMM!

(Cambodian-owned doughnut shop around the corner from my parents' house in San Jose....)

Lake Buchanan

2009-05-07T07:36:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we took a trip out to the Canyon of the Eagles Lodge on Lake Buchanan, about 2 hours NW of Austin. The lodge was okay... a bit expen$ive and only served terrible food (with equally terrible service), but the setting was excellent. Wildflowers in Texas are in bloom and birds a-plenty! Plus, we got to chase an armadillo around for most of an evening and got some swimming in, as well. It was a very relaxing weekend.

We took a short hike on Saturday, which is a majority of the photos in the album below. Besides the flowers, we got down to the waters edge and observed a flock of pelicans and turkey vultures co-mingling. As you'll see, the area is full of wildlife, and we have shots of numerous different animal tracks coming to the water. The last photo in the set is of the Buchanan Dam, because there are no natural lakes in Texas (well, there's one but it's on the boarder with Louisana).

Anyway, enjoy the photos... the wildflowers really are stunning.

Photos:

LakeBuchanan

Clickable/Interactive Map:

View Lake Buchanan in a larger map

Texas Blind Snake

2009-05-06T07:44:00.000-07:00

Last night we found this juvenile Texas Blind Snake on our porch:

We have another shot of him next to a penny, but this one is a better photo of his whole body. These guys only grow to a maximum of about 10 inches, but I'd guess this one was more like 1.5-2. Although I wanted to keep him (and probably name him Seattle, since I like naming animals after cities), Justine took him down to the creek near our place and set him free. It's probably for the better... our cats would have destroyed this little guy, who eats insect larvae and earth worms.

According to the Austin Reptile Service, these guys are commonly found in / around homes in Austin right before it starts to get really hot... well guess what? It's getting damn hot already! To learn more about blind snakes, visit you local wiki (entry on blind snakes)!

-mike

Pdernales Falls State Park

2009-04-26T10:38:00.000-07:00

Saturday we took a little hike through Pedernales Falls State Park, about 45 minutes west of Austin. Here's the pics:

Pedernales Falls SP (Apr. 2009)

Unfortunately, our SLR died (probably shutter failure, which makes sense, since we've snapped literally 20,000 photos on that baby since April 2006). Below is a picture set from when we went backpacking in the park for New Years' 2008. Some of you may remember the story, which involved temperatures dropping below 20 degrees on our first night out and since we don't have cold weather gear, we were forced to leave the next morning. Below that you'll see a map, which shows in blue the ~5-mile hike we took on Saturday and in red the short hike up to Wolf "Mountain" in December 2007 (mountain is in quotes here because it's not really that tall... more like Wolf Dirtmound). The park is mostly oak and juniper/cedar (for some reason, they confusingly call juniper trees "cedars" in Texas) forest with a big winding river running over slabs of granite. It was a good hike and we saw lot of wildlife, including a painted bunting, a cool lizard, a ribbon snake, and a white-eyed vireo. Too bad we couldn't photograph any of them!

Pedernales Falls SP (Dec. 2007)

Click on the colored icons/markings to get information about those places and some images.

View Pedernales Falls State Park in a larger map

Lake Georgetown Hike

2009-02-09T07:24:00.000-08:00

LakeGeorgetown

Last weekend we went hiking on Lake Georgetown, north of Austin. It's not a natural lake -- there was only one in all of Texas... then oil were found. So like all other "lakes" in Texas, this one is a dammed up portion of a river, in this case, the San Gabriel. It was a really great day and we wanted to get out and do a short hike. This was about 5 miles of flat terrain and culminated in a cool water feature, which you can see in the album posted above. One great thing about Lake Georgetown is that you can overnight there on the 26-mile trip around the lake and it's free! We might have to do this some time, but it would have to be soon... Summer be a-comin'.

More Crazy Weather

2009-01-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

Hat tip to cousin Sarah, who sent me this figure today from the Austin American-Statesman newspaper:

Yep... it was 67 degrees this morning when I woke up, a nasty drop of about 25 degrees by lunch, and there's a good chance of "winter mix" precipitation for this evening (meaning hail or sleet)!

(See this post for a related figure)

Holiday Greetings

2008-12-15T20:46:00.000-08:00

From Batman and Krusty (and MS Paint)

Texas Weather Is Confusing

2008-12-10T08:42:00.001-08:00

I present to you this data on the running temperatures here in Austin over the last 5 days or so... It was nearly 80 degrees yesterday and then it snowed last night. Go figure.

Mexico City Skyline

2008-12-07T12:15:00.000-08:00

250-degree (or so) panoramic using 18 shots and stitched together using autostitch.

Click the image above for a larger view, click here for a huge (1.5 MB) view.

Mexico City Photos

2008-12-06T20:39:00.000-08:00

Finally, some photos. I hope to get a post up about our experiences on Sunday, but I'm not sure if that'll happen. In short: We love cities, and unlike big Asian cities, Mexico City is laid-back and slow-paced. It's easy to navigate -- it has an excellent subway system and wide pedestrian walks -- and everyone we met (few of whom spoke much English) were really cool. We got free shots of Mezcal at Los Danzantes in Coyoacan, hung out at a hip hole-in-the-wall bar where we me some cool folks, and saw a bunch of other really cool sights and places. We had a great time and I wish we could have stayed longer. Enjoy the photos!

Mexico City, Part 1 of Many...

2008-12-02T14:19:00.000-08:00

The altar dedicated to the Aztec god Ehécatl located in the middle of the Pino Suarez Metro Station in Mexico City.

More to come...

Mario Party

2008-11-02T13:49:00.000-08:00

Princess Peach has been cheating on Mario with one of these two Luigis. Can you guess which one?

Halloween 2008

2008-11-02T13:32:00.000-08:00

Some costumes from our Halloween Party

Shake Zula, the mic rula
Master Shake (from Aqua Teen Hunger Force) in a costume that was 100% home made!

Luigi, Mario, Shake, and Fairy

Mario, Sexy Col. Sanders, Pirate Hooker

Two Luigis named Mike... how weird is that?

Fletcher Peak Panoramic

2008-10-13T11:36:00.000-07:00

Four-photo panoramic shot of Vogelsang Lake and Fletcher Peak in Yosemite. (clicky for biggy)

Made with hugin

Yosemite National Park (Part II)

2008-10-05T07:51:00.000-07:00

See Part I below

See Just the Pics.

Album Map

Day 2, 5pm - Lake Merced, West End

Found a hidden campsite on the lake with a well-maintained fire ring. Set up camp, bathed, and ate Indian food. First part of the hike today was crossing the amazing and windy Vogelsang Pass at 11,600 ft. Gorgeous views and crazy granite formations with trees growing right on top of them. Descended pretty quickly into redwood/pine forest and had some good views of Lewis Creek and the surrounding granite Mtns. This was the best part of the hike today... J would have loved it: Soft ground, pretty trees, lots of birds and tiny chipmunks and a few deer really close. But still no bears.

Lake Merced and Half-Dome From Yosemite

Then a grueling 1.5 hr. downhill climb (heavy sun exposure the whole time!) over chipped rock and solid granite surfaces (did I mention that Yosemite is really hard ground? It's not like walking in N. Calif, where the redwood forests keep a lush, soft forest floor. Nope... It's more like walking on concrete in some places and walking on terriblly hard/sharp rocks the rest of the time. Reminds me of certain places in Nepal.) We got a good view of Lake Merced and Hlf-Dome in the distance (see above) but we dropped 4K ft in just 6 miles! It was really tough, especially b/c noone told us we wouldn't see water until the bottom. Oh well. We made it to the lake and I'm pretty sore and tired. Dan's knees are bothering him, my hips are bruised from the backpack, and my feet are killing me from the pounding on the stone. I realize that last night I had pretty bad bad.... nausea, loss of appetite, headache.... glad all that's gone, now.

Today's views were great but the walk was brutal. I can't imagine going the opposite way, but sure 'nuff, we crossed paths with a few. The campsite we're at now has lots of cute birds and a few mosquitos are bugging us, but hopefully smoke from the fire will get rid of them. Also, we saw a small black snake and a big black lizard with a blue chin. Crazy.

Day 3 - Lima Bean Lake, ~1 mile north of Long Meadow

I was really slow and tired on the trail today. The beautiful Echo Valley (just past Lake Merced) quickly gave way to a short climb up a sheer granite face (via many switchbacks) and then we were in this amazing meadow that had recently burned. Huge granite peaks towered over us all around. We made good time through the meadow, surrounded by short pines and huge old burned ones, which shared the space with tall grasses and shurbs. Amazing scenery. Hopefully the photos do justice. When we came out of the meadow, we hit a small climb that brought us to a water-smoothed granite surface with a trickle of Echo Creek running through it and a bunch of flat rocks that made for the perfect lunch spot. The sun was out, a gentle breeze was blowing, there was shade, fresh cool water, and a huge sharp peak to one side and a deep glacial valley on the other side (where we had come from)... these are the moments and places that will really stick out in my memory! Then we had another (slow) climb to finish off the day's 2000 ft. elevation gain (over 6 miles) to put us back around 10 K feet in beautiful Long Meadow.

From Yosemite - Showing the Perfect Lunch Spot

Then a funny thing happened. See, we had been planning on staying around Long Meadow b/c the topo map shows lots of water and creeks around that area. In fact, one of the backpacker's campsites is there, as is a summer-only High Sierra Camp. So we told one of the wilderness rangers: "hey... we're gonna stay up in Long Meadow near Sunrise Lakes." They told us we'd be fine and that's a good place to stay because there's water up there. Great. The only problem was that although the whole meadow (all 2 miles long by half-a-mile wide of it) was bone dry!

From Yosemite - Showing the dried-up Echo Creek in Long Meadow

No water had touched the bottoms of those watering holes in weeks! Dry, cracked clay and yellowing grasses were plentiful, but water was nowhere to be seen. Even a huge section of Echo Creek was bone dry! Things were getting serious, too, since it was already 4 pm and Cathedral Lakes -- the nearest source of permanent water in the direction we were supposed to be going tomorrow -- were about 4 miles away. There's a small chance we would have rolled in to Cathedral Lakes just before sunset, but it would have been tough since my knee was really causing me problems on hills today. Well, we saw a small lake about a mile away to the North (the direction of travel for tomorrow, anyway) and about a quarter-mile off the trail. It was un-named and didn't have a real trail going towards it, but it looked pretty flat around there and it was at least on the way to Cathedral Lakes... So we chanced it, and even though the creeks that drain this little mud hole (which Dan kept calling "Lima Bean Lake") were bone dry, too, there was still some water. Yay!

From Yosemite - Showing the best campsite ever!

We had a great snack while watching the sunset (black bean hummus and tortillas) and made a fire and ate dinner. A great evening in the best campsite (see link and see above) we've had all trip!

From Yosemite - The mud hole that offered us water at sunrise on Saturday

I'm so glad I could get out here. Calif. can be dry and dusty but it's so pretty.... Being in Texas, now, I really miss the mountains and it's so great to get fresh air and water.

Okay... sorry this second posting took so long to get up. It appears there will have to be a Yosemite (Part III) posted later this week, whenever I get time. We've had visitors last week and again this week, so keep your browsers pointed here for updates (or better yet, simply get the feed so that you know whenever there's updates!)

Yosemite National Park

2008-10-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

Just the Photos for the Lazy People (you know who I'm talking about... I'm talking about everyone who just clicks the link and doesn't read the whole post!)

Yosemite

Wow... last post July 12th... that's embarrassing! Well, Justine and I haven't done too much travel since then, but I did go to Chicago for a conference (loved it, wanna move there) and I went to Norff Dakota (see also the 100-ft Whoppy the Whopper statue at right!) for a family reunion (loved it b/c of the family, would never move there!), and we went back to LA to go to a wedding between two good friends of ours (we [heart] LA, stayed with our travelin' soul mates, had an awesome time at the wedding, and would love to move back).

Actually, that's quite a bit of traveling. I should have been doing a better job with this here blog! But also, for those in the know, things have been quite crazy around here lately for personal/family matters. Hopefully that stuff's falling by the wayside and we can get back to being international travelers. Okay, on with the show.

Last week, J went to visit her friend in Seattle for 10 days (she can blog about that if she wants) and I went backpacking with a buddy of mine (Dan) in the high Sierras in Yosemite National Park. I had not been there since I was about 7 or 8, so I really didn't know what to expect, and to be honest, this was going to be my first "real" backpacking trip of more than one night (meaning wilderness camping with no facilities except what's on our backs). My friend Danielle (no relation to Dan, but he did leave the door open for her one time just in case she wanted to stop by), who frequents the back country of Yosemite, offered me some suggestions of where to go, and so I prepared this map (clickable with details and also below... note that they don't have "mountain" icons for some reason, so Half Dome and El Capitan are labeled as Volcanoes...) of our possible 4-day journey (each potential day's hike in a different color, with various optional side trips and different paths to take). So we packed up -- meaning, I packed up a bunch of gear for two people and Dan just showed up with a backpack and some food in an on-loan-from-my-father-in-law beater car -- and headed out. Did you know that Yosemite is really far away from San Jose Airport? It is. And then once you're inside, it takes 90 minutes just to get to Tuolome Meadows, where we wanted to start out hike. Crazy.

View Larger Map

Okay, so the actual hike we took was very close to the map given above. It included on night of car camping at T.M. (8600 ft), hiking up via Rafferty Creek to Vogelsang Lake (11000 ft) and camping there (inside blue path on the map), climbing over Vogelsang Pass (11600 ft) and descending to Lake Merced (7600 ft) to camp there (outside purple path on the map) the third night, walking up to Long Meadow / Echo Creek / Sunrise Lakes area (9500 ft) for the fourth night (inside red path on the map), then walking out past Cathedral lakes (yellow path). Notes are from my journal...

Day 1 - Tuolome Meadows to Vogelsang Lake

After a grueling hike (for me, anyway) up Rafferty creek, we found a spot on the So. side of the lake close to Vogelsang pass at 11,600 ft. (note that the contour lines on google maps are about 1000 ft lower than the lines on my official Yosemite topo map... I trust Nat. Geo. more than I trust Google on that detail, so I'll stick with the elevations as given in my Topo). Our campsite was ~11,200 ft., so a small climb tomorrow will put us on the pass for a 4K-ft descent into Echo Valley. There were essentially 3 legs to today's hike: the first was a long, steep climb from T.M. to an alpine-like meadow that J would have loved! Yellow grasses, small bushes (with all kinds of reds and golds) clung to rocks, and miniature pines. The weather was perfect for hiking: sunny, breezy, ~65 degrees, not a cloud in the sky. The second leg was much shorter and was another uphill from that meadow thru. a pine forest and up thru. the Cathedral Mtns. There's a fork on the road to Boothe Lake or Vogelsang and we took the latter, which led to the 3rd stage: climbing over granite surfaces and exposed rock faces to the lake (about 1 mile beyond the luxurious, but closed, Vogelsang High Sierra Camp). I was fully exhausted at the end!

From Yosemite

Dan and I ate right when we got here and enjoyed drinking fresh mountain water (filtered and chlorinated, of course, to prevent Giardia infection!). Then we climbed some rocks to the other side of the lake to watch the sunset behind Half Dome and the amazing pink light hitting Fletcher Peak and Vogelsang Lake. Pretty cool, but we both had bad headaches (altitude sickness) and it's getting quite cold in the evening now that the sun has gone down. I'm feeling really ill, right now, and am going to crash any second. Nausea, terrible headache, the shakes... I'm done. Dan can clean up. Watch out for bears, Dan... I need to sleep and get warm.

Day 2 (morning) Still at Vogelsang Lake
Feel much better now and slept much better than the first night (car camping in T.M.) and I don't think it got as cold up here as it did then (it dropped below freezing in T.M.). Being here reminds me how dry Calif. is... even here where there's lakes and streams all over, the grasses and trees are all brown and dried out. It's still very pretty and the alpine areas are so amazing (we saw a single tiny yellow flower frowing out of the crack in ta rock, sheltered from the winds... "life goes on" said Dan). i wish I had warmer clothes for the mornings or we could build a fire right now! Actually, besides today, we should be able to build a fire in the AM, which will help a lot. I'm really glad dan was able to come along. I forgot how much I needed to get out and do this kind of stuff... Funny thing about last night: when we went up to watch the sunset before I totally bailed and stumbled my way back to the campsite, I thought the sun was about to go down so we hurried to climb this crest and watch, but it took over an hour for the sun to actually go down!

More Coming To Come Later This Weekend, So Keep Your Eyes Peeled...

If you go to Tokyo

2008-07-12T12:47:00.000-07:00

... There are Denny's and convenience stores (like 7-and-i-Holdings and AM/PMs) everywere!

The Texas Hill Country

2008-07-10T07:36:00.000-07:00

Sorry it's been so long between updates, here, but I got very busy and I hadn't been traveling much. Then a bunch of stuff happened in a row: Justine and I got a VIP tour of the Hill Country (the rolling hills to the west and south of Austin) lead by a co-worker of hers, and then I went to rural ND for a family reunion and Los Angeles for a wedding and the equivalent of a graduate school reunion. Norff Dakota was boring except for visiting with my family (and I did have one really outstanding meal there). Los Angeles was amazing, as usual, and our friends took care of us and we ate well and they even took us surfing on a Sunday evening. The water was warm, the air cool and clear, and huge dolphins were doing full flips out of the water no more than 25 feet away. I think one of them winked at me! After that, we ate at a delicious pasta palce in Santa Monica, but I can't remember the name... it was on 4th and Broadway I think.

I was really sad to leave LA and come back to my smelly-ass apartment (it's smelly because they're re-modeling the unit next door, so it smells like paint and concrete stain and wood floor stain... blech!). Then we went to suburban Houston for the 4th of July to visit my very pregnant cousin and some aunts and uncles. That was fun, but it made me miss Austin! I guess I'm just a city kind of guy...

So on that note, enjoy these photos of old ranch lands in central Texas that are be restored to their original grassland savannahs / praries, which are from the Hill Country tour we took with Justine's co-worker.

-Mike.

What's still there?

2008-05-19T15:47:00.001-07:00

I wonder how these structures (see link to photo album below) in Chengdu, China have fared... Chengdu was one of our favorite cities and the earthquake that hit Sichuan province two weeks ago made us both really miss it.

Chengdu, China

Random Photo from Takayama, Japan

2008-05-19T14:45:00.000-07:00

Some B/W Photos I Took in NZ

2008-05-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

I came across a few black and white photos I took in NZ while cleaning up my computer's hard drive. They're not very good because I don't really know how to take artsy photos, but I like them anyway. Enjoy...

-mike.

Buescher State Park

2008-05-19T06:26:00.000-07:00

Two weekends ago, we went to Buescher State Park (about an hour east of Austin) which is part of the Lost Pines Woods. The cool thing about it was that there was hardly anybody out on the 8-mile hike, the weather was great, and there were actual hills involved (which is so rare here in Texas, my legs needed reminding of how to walk on a slope!). Enjoy the photos!

View Larger Map

Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center

2008-03-31T15:00:00.000-07:00

Just the pics.

Two weekends ago, we went out to the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center to experience our first Texas spring. The center was a lot smaller than we had expected (and for its size, I'm surprised it was seven bucks), but the gardens were pretty cool, even though most of the field weren't in full bloom. I suppose we should go back again in a two or three more weeks to really see rolling fields of blue bonnets and Indian paintbrushes.

Or we could just roll down the freeway, as we did this weekend, and enjoy the many colorful Texas wildflowers.

I suppose the most important part of the wildflower center trip was that we saw a huge ass rattle snake! No, it wasn't a 2-meter long king cobra, but it was pretty cool. Enjoy the pics and especially the video!

-mike

ps - full disclosure: that photo above was not taken by either of us.

A bit late, but here's my SXSW 2008 Post

2008-03-26T19:31:00.000-07:00

Mostly just pictures... enjoy.

A few weeks ago, a huge industry showcase came to town... it was the annual South by Southwest festival. Thousands of bands and tens of thousands of fans & industry folk were in town, clogging up the streets and camping on our lawns for a chance to see REM or Yo La Tengo perform. But the real fun is that everywhere is a free party. Most clubs and stores have good bands and free food/drinks all day and night. Unfortunately, we both work during the day, even though SXSW takes place during spring break.

What we did manage to get to was the Austin Good festival at Hotel San Jose, where we saw Kimya Dawson (from the Moldy Peaches and now famous for doing parts of the Juno soundtrack) and the Noisettes. The Noisettes were an official "SXSW Showcase band." This means that they played a half-dozen shows or so over a 4 day period at the Austin convention center and elsewhere. To get in to those shows, you either need to spring for a $130+ all-access wristband, or get an industry badge. We were lucky that they also played this free show right around the corner from our house, and let me tell you, they were amazing. Completely blew me away and way better than I had anticipated.

The only other show we went to see was the all-day Saturday Mess with Texas party in Waterloo park, which featured a stand-up comedy stage (with the Upright Citizen's Brigade crew, Eugene Mirman, and Tig & Brian Posehn from the Sarah Silverman program), a new-wave/indie rock stage (headlined by the Breeders), and a punk/hard-core stage (with Municipal Waste, F*d-up, Dead to Me, and NOFX). Best of all, they don't care what you bring in to the park, so we were able to bring in our own food, beer (in their requisite koozies), water, and a towel for settin' on! It was awesome.

The most amazing acts were actually on the stand-up stage, where Eugene Mirman was forced to tell Brian Posehn's jokes because Brian had lost his voice doing three gigs the day before. Also, if he's ever in your town, don't miss Reggie Watts, the human beat box.

Barton Creek Greenbelt

2008-02-26T12:35:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, we went out to the Barton Creek Green Belt (link goes to annotated map) for some light hiking. Enjoy the pics!

As far as a review goes, I'd have to say that I'm pretty pleased with the size and proximity of the green belt (I think seven nearly-uninterrupted miles within minutes of downtown Austin), but disappointed in how filthy the place can be. Citizens leave all kinds of litter everywhere and too many people fail to carry doggy bags (provided by the city at the trail heads, even!) so you have to be careful where you step. Also, mountain bikers blaze down the narrow trail, so keep your eyes & ears peeled. I could see spending a few more days exploring other sections of the trail, but only really because it's so close, not because it provides anything novel or isolating. I give the BCGB a 4 out of 10 on my random scale of park reviews, mostly because it's too crowded. Let me put it bluntly: if my little brother and his wife (both big outdoors/hiking folk) came to visit us, I probably wouldn't take them here. On the plus side, we did get to see a pair of black vultures up close, as they were shoulder-to-shoulder in a tree right beside the trail.

Two Great Days

2008-02-25T16:59:00.000-08:00

This time last year, we were in Southern Laos, spending time in Vientiane and at a somewhat-disappointing eco-lodge / rural village called Ban Pako. Lately, we spend a lot of time wishing we were traveling and re-living those amazing 240 days we spent in Asia, as well as all the fun we had planning and the great effort it took to actually make the trip. Last Friday, I re-read an old post of our friends J&M, who returned from Asia several months before us. The post is called "A Year Ago Today" and Jennifer pines for adventure of traveling, and more so about the hopefulness she experienced in planning the trip. We IM-ed about it a bit, and lamented that while both of us can regularly recall with vivid detail things we'd done one year ago or more, these days in the "real world" go by without fanfare or memorable experiences. The immediate and huge rewards reaped by traveling and living day-to-day from a backpack, on the other hand, are easy to recognize and I think in general, people take unfortunately little time to reflect on the purpose of most days. As Jennifer says,

I know there is more to life. And believe it or not, even though it may sound totally cheesy… we’re always standing on the brink of an adventure of a lifetime. Sometimes it’s just a lot more obvious. But doesn’t the challenge (and a lot of the fun) lie in finding what is not obvious?

I totally agree. And on that note, I'll explain why I've been talking about all this: This weekend, Justine and I had two of the best days we've had since returning to the States. We were productive, impulsive, got to visit some new places, and we were proud of ourselves for what we accomplished in two short days. These are exactly the kinds of feelings we had while traveling, and as a result, I'm happy to bring you a post about two great days we had in America!

On Friday night, we went out to dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant (which I reviewed in a post here) with some friends. Then, early Saturday morning, Justine, Emily and I went to the Center for Environmental Research (an Austin Water facility) at the famous birding location known as Hornsby Bend (at least one famous Hornsby is buried in the family cemetery here). We helped clear brush from a historic farmhouse that the city is trying to rehabilitate, then took a guided walk to the Lower Colorado River. We were lucky enough to see loads of birds, including osprey, American white pelicans, cardinals, crested caracaras, turkey vultures, black vultures, red-tailed hawks, and more. Also, the weather that morning was gorgeous.

After we returned, we were starving, so we headed out to our favorite taco truck around the corner, Torchy's. As soon as we got out the door, our friend Joel walked by on his way to Torchy's, so we ate with him and decided that it was such a nice day, we should have a BBQ at our house that evening. [Just last week, we had picked up a tailgate-sized Weber and were itching to get it fired up!] So a few hours later, Brandon, Joel, Emily & Alaina showed up for veggie skewers of eggplant, mushroom, potato, onion, garlic, and green peppers, coated in Justine's home-made olive oil with freshly-crushed rosemary. MMMMMMM!

So that evening went on pretty late, but we had already made plans to meet up with Alaina for brunch on Sunday morning. So, early the next morning (10 is early when you've been up drinking all night!), Alaina, Joel & Brandon showed up and we headed over to the Woodland on So. Congress for an early brunch (I had already had cereal, fruit, coffee and milk and had been up for nearly 2 hours, but anybody who has lived with me could have probably guessed that!). We had eaten there before with some other friends for dinner once, and they recommended the place as a good breakfast joint. Indeed it was! Eggs Florentine, grits with cheddar cheese, quiche, and a green tea vodka are a nice way to wake up in Texas!

Having returned to our place by noon, we decided to spend the rest of the day turning an old and unused garden patch in our communal backyard (our duplex and two others share a single large space... we're on the furthest west end and the garden patch is in the middle). This entailed ripping up weeds for several hours, tilling the dirt, composting and mulching, and then planting. But first we needed supplies, so Plant Escape and Home Depot were the next two stops. We got a few different types of tomato, some eggplant plants, and some peppers. The garden had some herbs and veggies that have survived from before (cilantro, parsley, sage, leeks, potatoes, celery, and possibly carrots) and we have some garlic and spinach growing in a planter box on our porch already, so we didn't need too much. The rest of the afternoon, we raked and pulled, pulled and raked, dumped rocks and old dried up tomato plants, moved bricks and garbage out of the plot of land and got very dirty and sweaty. We didn't have time to finish it, plus we don't yet have mulch or enough new dirt/compost, but next weekend we'll finish turning the soil and make a small raised area in the middle of the patch to plant our food. It was very fun.

Then we had another BBQ that night, just the two of us, and had a perfect ending to an amazing, productive weekend. On top of all that, we also managed to clean our place, go grocery shopping, spend some time reading, do the laundry, and all the other stuff we try to get done each weekend. It reminds me just how much you can experience and accomplish in just a few hours, and how by putting a few things together, and being impulsive, you can really get a lot out of an otherwise "normal" day... Thanks for reading!

[Enjoy more pics of the BBQ and gardening here.]

Freeways

2008-01-10T18:58:00.000-08:00

The road and freeway system here in Austin is atrocious. I've complained about it in person to some of you, but basically it makes me wish I still had to drive in LA! I know what you're saying... it can't be that bad. True: the traffic here is not as heavy as in Los Angeles, but the layout of the freeways is truly maddening. Three things in particular bother me about driving here and make me yearn for an hour sitting on the 405 at 1am on a Tuesday.

(1) The signage, what little there is of it, is completely cryptic.
(2) All freeways are bounded by a "frontage" road, that goes parallel to the freeway. These, I suppose, are to give access to the businesses and to "aid" entering and exiting the freeways. The result is that you are forced to make multiple U-turns, are punnised by miles of driving if you miss your exit, and getting around the freeways here is even MORE impossible than in California.
(3) All roads seem to have multiple names. And not in the way that's easy to remember, like how in San Jose, Capital Expressway becomes Hillsdale and then becomes Camden... but in the most obnoxious way that Ben White Blvd. is also called the SW Expressway, Highway 71, AND 290.

I mean, I'm not retarded... I can get around in my car alright. But I feel like somehow the oil or car lobbies (or both) conspired to design the dumbest freeways and roads just so we spend as much time as possible in the car. But also, people driving in Texas don't know what they're doing... it's like everybody thinks they're the only vehicle on the road. In CA, people drive badly, but at least they're not surprised when they see another car! I'll never complain about driving in California again....

Madras Pavillion, Austin, TX

2008-01-10T18:40:00.000-08:00

My co-worker, who is from Mumbai, India, told me that the best Indian food he's ever had anywhere (that includes his mom's home-cooked meals) was here in Austin, at a place north of the city center called Madras Pavillion. My parents got us a gift certificate to eat there for Christmas, which we used last week. Justine got the south Indian thali (basically a sampler plate of many kinds of curries and soups) and I had the mulligatawny soup and a curry with ocre and green peppers. DELICIOUS! I would have to agree that this is indeed some of the best -- if not the best -- Indian food I've ever had. So if you're ever in Austin, be sure to check out Madras Pavillion! Service is without charm and the decor is lacking a bit (and they chould use with some Indian music playing in the background), but hey, the food comes out quickly, it's hot and best of all, it's super tasty! Also, they give a 5% discount if you use cash (be sure to ask for it!)

Thanks, Mom and Dad!

New Year's Eve in Austin

2008-01-03T18:38:00.000-08:00

Here's what we did last year.

Now, here's what we did this year:

We went to the Continental Club's Gallery Room for New Year's Eve, instead of downtown Singapore....

We played Ping Pong while we waited for the band to play, instead of eating Thai food with my sister and waiting for the fireworks to go off on the Singapore waterfront....

The band consisted of Denny Freeman (guitar), Frosty Smith (drums), and Mike Flanigin on an organ. They were good... probably better than last year's fireworks!

I'd still take traveling over hanging out in a local club, but our new year's eve was fun and we met some cool people. Hope you had a good new year, too!

-mike.

Mimes are Boring

2007-12-01T11:34:00.000-08:00

From a kid's journal at a Goodwill... priceless. Or maybe I should have said "kids say the darndest things." Either way, these are words to live by. Enjoy!

McKinney Falls State Park, Austin, TX

2007-09-15T08:05:00.000-07:00

There's a nice state park a few minutes outside central Austin, and only minutes away from the 'burbs to the south-east of Austin called McKinney Falls State Park. It sounds lame, being so close to the city and under the airport-path, but desperate times called for desperate measures. To elaborate: We had just moved to Austin and were looking for an apartment while staying at the cheap and friendly Howard Johnson Hotel. Since our place wouldn't be ready for a few days, we decided to check out of the hotel and save a few bucks by camping at the park.

Unfortunately, we didn't really get to spend any time at the park except at night to sleep. I went to work in the day (remember, it's close to central Austin) and J hooked up with free wireless in various coffee shops around town to look for jobs.

So anyway, here's a new feature on the blog and my first review of a campground, hopefully with many more to come. There are over eighty campsites at McKinney Falls SP, and all of them have water, picnic tables, trees (huge bonus... ours had a massive live oak that covered our table and the spot where we pitched our REI Quarter Dome UL), fire pits/grills, and several have electrical hookups for you RV folks. The cost is quite high, over $20 a night, but the sites are big and are laid out well, most have lantern hooks/poles next to the tables, the bathrooms are immaculate (including the showers, which have free hot water). Reservations can be made at Reserve America (online) and there are a handful of walk-in spots, too (first come, first served); there are also group sites, if that's your thing.

On the two nights we stayed there (Wed. and Thurs. before Labour Day Weekend), we were the only people staying in our loop of campsites. Not even the park host was on duty those nights, so we simply picked out a spot right next to the bathrooms, pitched our tent, and had a nice meal before it started to rain a bit.

The park sits next to Onion Creek, and there's loads of hiking and biking trials there, as well as good fishing in the creek, so we've heard. There's an interpretive center, which is okay (the rangers were a bit surly when we were there) and a big campground fire pit/amphitheater thing.

The only thing that dampened our experience there is that on the first of the two nights we camped, it was about 90-degrees F at night and raining, which meant inside our puny backpacking tent, it was about 120-degrees F, damp, and smelly! I can't really fault the park for that -- it's really a problem with the Quarter Dome's design that it gets such poor ventilation when the rain-fly is fully battened down. On the second night, it was still warm at night, but we took the fly off and were able to sleep and cooled down as the night wore on, eventually getting down into the mid-70's, which was great.

If you're coming to Austin, and it's not summer, I highly recommend going out there. I know that J & I will be checking out the park again this fall when it cools down so we can check out the hiking trails, try out new gear, and get out of the city quickly. Which is one of the reasons I will choose to give the park a 7 out of 10: It's close enough to Austin to be used as a base of operations for exploring the city as a visitor (and MUCH cheaper than a hotel!) as well as a good place for an overnight or weekend escape (provided it's not a million degrees outside) for Austinites and it makes an easy day-retreat. The facilities are top-notch, but the reason it doesn't score higher than a 7 is because the rangers were surly and I plan on reserving 8's, 9's, and 10's for those campsites that are really spectacular AND serve as gateways to phenomenal outdoors activities (stuff that's way out of the way, has amazing views, etc.).

Capybarra and Hot Sauce

2007-09-01T10:12:00.001-07:00

Yep.... it's been almost two weeks since we got to Austin, and we almost have a place. We've paid up our security deposit for a place just south of the river in the hip young neighborhood known as SoCo. Unfortunately, we're not able to move in until Wednesday next week because they're re-furbishing the place (still) so we're spending the weekend at my cousin's house near Houston, which is cool because I never got to see her much when I was young as she lived so far away.

Last weekend, after we had settled on a place to live, we went to the Red Bull Flugtag event, which is where crazy people from all over Texas (and North America, too, as contestants came from Minnesota and Alberta!) make human-powered flying machines that get pushed into the Lower Colorado River (which for some reason is called a lake in Austin) from a 30-foot-high ramp! Priceless. The only crappy thing was that it was about a million degrees outside and the sun was setting behind the ramp, which means to watch the event, you had to stare directly into the sun. Hopefully next year they plan it a bit better.

Bats in Austin are a bit of a theme, as a big colony lives underneath the Congress St. Bridge.

Overall, though, Austin has been fun, so far. We haven't taken in many of the cultural sites (like we havent been to the capital building, yet) and I worked all week at UT, but the people have been great, the food is amazing, and there's a bunch of cool independent restaurants, shops, coffee houses, etc. It's like being in Santa Cruz!

The Texas State Capital building, which I've been told is open 24-hrs. a day.

Anyway, after the Flugtag, we were pretty tired and even though we knew that on Sunday there was the annual Hot Sauce Festival, where individuals, restaurant chefs, and bottlers compete with one-another for the best red & green salsas, pepper sauce, and "special" category. "So," we thought, "there's no way we'll be interested in hanging around at the hot sauce thing because it'll just be too darn hot." But then again, what the heck else were we to do? Hang out in our Howard Johnson Hotel all day? [I must give a plug here and say how accomodating the HoJo Austin was. For less than fifty bucks a day, we got free internet, free breakfasts, a nice clean room, shower, and bed, etc.] So we went off with three non-perishable food items each (donated to the local food back) for some free salsas! And man am I ever glad we went! First of all, as soon as we showed up, I got to take this picture:

Justine and Caplina Rous, the baby Capybarra!

Yep. Didn't know you could own those, but it seems that there's a breeder of these gigantic South American rodents right here in Texas! SOOOOO CUTE! This one's just a baby, but the world's largest rodent can grow to be 150 lbs.!!

For the rest of the afternoon, we walked around trying different salsas and mustards and glazes and some hot sauces that were so hot they literally make you cry! Tamales and beer were plentiful, as was the free water, which helped put out more than a few fires on our tounges (as this video shows)! Overall, it was an excellent experience, and if we were in Austin this weekend, we'd be going to the annual "save the bat" festival, which has bands, food, and around 8 million bats, who come out from under the bridge just after sunset! Must be quite a sight...

'Till next time,
-MB.

Crowds and tents at the Austin Hot Sauce Festival!

A new shirt and a new koozie!

More Photos!!

2007-08-21T14:40:00.000-07:00

Here's our drive from Albuquerque, NM (which sucked for the one evening we spent there, though we did have a good breakfast and Papa John's for dinner) to Guadalupe Mountains National Park in TX. We drove through Roswell, NM, thinking it would be fun to get lunch there and take pictures of crappy alien stuff, but it ended up being totally lame and everything was closed, didn't have vegetarian food, and we ended up having Subway, instead.

Once we made it to the actual park, where it was very hot, we set up our tent the shadow of the Guadalupe Mountains, which are actually the Capitan Reef, and ancient (non-coral) fossilized reef over 250 million years old. The next day (which I think was Sunday) we hiked for a few hours down the McKittrick Canyon trail (link goes to a Map). For some reason, it cost us another ten bucks to do this, but it was worth it. See, the park is part of a high-desert plateau called the Colorado Plateau (?) which makes up much of the South West, including the Grand Canyon. In addition, the park is home to some permanent spring-fed rivers, which means that in the canyons and in the high back country, this "desert" is actually pretty lush, as you can see in the photos. In fact, the foliage as you get into the canyon switches from desert shrubs to Rockies-like terrain, full of pines and oaks and maples. It's weird to see a cactus growing under the shade of a Ponderossa Pine, right next to an old Maple Tree! I should also add that the weather on this trip has been pretty amazing. Mostly very clear skies, nice days, cool evenings, but occasionally super duper hot (we had to pack in the hike after just a few hours b/c we were drenched with sweat!) and it has rained so hard that you can't see out the windshield and the car is hydroplaning all over the place, complete with massive thunder/lightening storms. Also, there have been crazy strong winds, which to a Californian like me has been really strange, since summers in Cali are so gentle. Anyway, the trip out to Austin has been good, and now we begin our search for a new apartment. More photos and stories to come, however, as we continue this adventure called life!

Still More Photos!

2007-08-18T08:10:00.002-07:00

Here's some of the Grand Canyon, where we spent a few days. Be sure to check the three posts below for more photos from the Great Santa Cruz-to-Austin Road Trip, August 2007!

Mike.

Here

Photos!!

2007-08-18T08:10:00.001-07:00

Photos online of our road trip, covering the time between the Painted Desert/Petrified Forest National Park and entering New Mexico... see also photos posted in the two posts below this one.

Enjoy!

here

Photos!!

2007-08-18T08:07:00.000-07:00

Just as promised

2007-08-17T23:17:00.000-07:00

... well, I couldn't post just that one photo (in the next post down) and let it be, could I?! So here's a few more from the Grand Canyon. About the pictures of California Condors at the bottom of this post... we were walking around the South Rim of the GC, and we happened to see a huge (I mean, 6-ft. wingspan huge) bird fly overhead. Noting the black/white patterning on the underside of his wings, I knew it was a Calif. Condor, one of the most endangered bird species on the planet. We ran to the edge where we could see him flying around, and over the course of an hour, noticed 6 or 7 different birds (distinguished by their numbers). We later found out that only 306 such birds exist anywhere, so seeing a half-dozen of them all at once, in the wild and scavenging for food was a real treat. I can't explain how thrilling it was to seem them in their natural environment and not in a cage at the San Diego Zoo. Enjoy!

More to Come...

2007-08-17T23:11:00.000-07:00

More of this to come when we get to Austin, but here's a teaser of the truly amazing Grand Canyon. I only wish we could have stayed longer, but Austin is calling and we need to find a place to live!

Akashi Yaki

2007-08-02T10:28:00.000-07:00

Japanese fast food in Kyoto and a huge crab. Enjoy.

New Road Trip Map

2007-08-02T10:06:00.001-07:00

I've had to slightly change our trip from the map shown in the previous post below since there are not camping spots at White Sands National Monument. Instead, we'll be camping at the Grand Canyon, driving through the AZ Petrified Forest, staying at a hotel in Albuquerque, driving through White Sands, camping at Guadalupe Mountains National Park, and camping at Big Bend National Park in TX before arriving in Austin. Where we'll stay in Austin, I have no idea, yet. Maybe we'll find some youth hostel to crash at for a few days while we look for apartments.... Enjoy the map, and keep your browsers tuned in here for more details and pictures from the trip, which begins in about 10 days!

We're Goin' Down to Austin

2007-07-31T13:57:00.001-07:00

...gonna have ourselves a time.

Clicky the picture: for a full view

Well, in case you haven't heard, Justine and I are moving to Austin, TX in a few weeks. And we're planning a good old-fashioned American Road Trip! The trip will take us about 10 or 11 days, with stops in Santa Barbara, Los Angeles, Grand Canyon National Park, a petrified forest, Albuquerque, White Sands National Monument, and Big Bend National Park.

Stay tuned for updates!

A True Road Warrior

2007-07-30T20:45:00.000-07:00

American Airlines' in-flight magazine, American Way, is holding their yearly Road Warrior contest. The winner wins two million Hilton points and one million AA flier points. Pretty good, huh? Anyway, besides a bunch of questions about my "demographic" and some questions about articles written in the mag (answers are easily discovered via Google and Wikipedia), they want you to present three photos with captions that prove you're a road warrior and to write a haiku about being on the road. Here's my application, and when Justine submits hers, I'll post it here, too.

Picture 1: One is often faced with adversity, but only true Road Warriors can overcome even the most nefarious hazards and live to tell about it [China].

Picture 2: Sometimes planes, trains, and automobiles are delayed, but true Road Warriors find a way -- even navigating the dangerous streets alone [Laos].

Picture 3: Cold weather, rain delays, early morning commutes... a true Road Warrior pushes on and is rewarded for his or her struggles [Nepal].

The haiku I wrote is as follows:

In Asia, beware!
Potable water is scarce
Prepare for the runs

-Mike.

Mozzies at Night

2007-07-09T23:07:00.000-07:00

Bring your malarone (r) to India!

Funny Story

2007-07-09T18:59:00.000-07:00

Sorry... it's been a million years since I last posted. Things have been busy and I'd like to get back to posting more about our 8-months abroad, but even more so, I'd like to start posting about trips and things we've done since we returned. In the mean time, here's a little story from our days in Thailand, late January 2007.

Thailand has a 30-day visa that you get when you arrive. It's free. And you can renew that visa three times, meaning that you can stay in Thailand for up to 3 months straight and pay nothing. The catch, though, is that to renew the visa, you have to leave the country and then return. Several tourist outfits have this figured out and they make "visa runs" to various borders (Malaysia and Burma/Myanmar, for example) for a few bucks. It's all very much a part of the backpacker's M.O.

Needless to say, Justine and I needed to make such a visa run when we were in Southern Thailand near Krabi. We booked a visa run through our guest house (about 25 bucks for both of us, if I remember correctly), which would take us to Malaysia and back. We paid in advance, and carried our receipt. Off we went, at 6am, to take a 6-hr. ride in a minivan full of other backpackers to the Malaysian border.

We arrived just after noon (we had brought sandwiches for lunch, as well as chips, fruit and drinks and the trusty iPod for entertainment), behind a few other vans and buses filled with tourists. We all walked out of Thailand, getting our passports stamped, and into Malaysia, getting stamped here, as well. We then walked around the building to the other side in order to get stamps for leaving Malaysia. Ten minutes after arriving in the minivan, we were getting our passports stamped for arrival in Thailand, ready to go! Here's the best part... I already mentioned that the visa is free. Malaysia, who havn't realized that this operation could be a cash cow for them, doesn't charge anything, either. As we were getting back into the van, the driver goes "you have to pay them 20 dollars each for the stamp! Don't forget to pay for the stamp!" Justine and I looked at each other and laughed in disgust. "We already have the stamps." Some of the other tourists started to look confused and began reaching for their wallets. "NO!" We shouted. "It's a scam. This driver is running a scam... the guy in the window will give him half the cash if you pay. Don't listen to him." The driver insisted that you simply MUST pay. Nuts to that. We got back in the car and demanded that he drive us back to the guest house in Ao Neng. He finally relented, but what the hell did he expect to happen? Everybody already had their passports stamped, so even if you didn't know it was free, why would you hand over any money?

Getting scammed is just another regular day when you're traveling, though. Good thing we're not idiots or we'd have had to come home much earlier!

-Mike

Map of Beijing

2007-06-15T19:17:00.000-07:00

Here's a google map of Beijing, with our pictures attached. What you can do is click on the tabs on the map (or on the side bar) to view some place that we visited in Beijing. A little pop-up will appear on the map, containing information about the place in question and with a picture that we took of the location in question. For example, you can click on the pin located at the entrance of the Forbidden City and a picture that we took will appear. Enjoy!

Map

The One Each Album

2007-06-05T20:06:00.000-07:00

Here's a photo album that contains a single photo from each of the places we went to on our long and winding 8-month trip.

The show isn't a perfect summary (I'm sure we missed a few places and there's two from New Delhi, but we were there on three separate occasions even though we didn't include 4 pictures from Tokyo or 3 from Kathmandu, etc.), but it is as close to a brief summary of our trip as we're likely to get. If you don't like it, too bad. Otherwise, enjoy these 60 photos!

Mike.

Spiders

2007-05-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I meant to post this a long long time ago, but haven't gotten around to it until now. Check this:

Those shapes are the tangeled mess of dozens of huge daddy long legs, which by itself doesn't seem all that gross, except you might wonder, "why the heck are they all so close together?" If I could show you, however, you'd see that those dozen are attached to literally thousands of others, possibly a million, in a huge black, throbbing web of spiders that runs a several-yard-long stretch of a river path in the town of Pai in Northern Thailand. I have a video (AVI format, 20 MB) of it, too. Pretty gross, huh?

And for those of you who really like bugs (Gaby and Court, I'm looking in your directions), I present to you a
small and incomplete web gallery of animals, mostly bugs, that we photographed from around the world. Enjoy!

-Mike

More Pics

2007-05-21T20:58:00.000-07:00

As Justine mentioned in the previous post (see below), we're finally getting around to organizing the 10000 photos we took (literally) while we lived in the other "real world" overseas. You can see them
here. There's only a few and they're all from the S. Island of NZ, but enjoy anyway. More to come....

Scenes from the Kepler Track

2007-05-21T12:19:00.000-07:00

Brought to you by Picasa. Google is cool.

We have a lot of free time, being unemployed and all. Above is an example of the creative and fruitful use of our free time. We've been home a month now and we're still looking at our photos and fantasizing about "next time". A special thanks to our family for sitting through a two-part slide show this weekend.

Mike claims he needs to use the computer for something actually productive, so here ends my brief post.

Justine

2007-05-03T16:26:00.000-07:00

Laos: a country with massive poverty (31% live below the poverty line), only a small fraction of their roads are paved, people are starving, they have not railroads and very little infrastructure to support their own people. But there are NUMEROUS places... just.... like... this:

Tourists with iPods come into town wanting cheap and easy western entertainment. And since iTunes is illegal in these here parts (and they hardly honor American copyright), you can just go in there buy mp3s, tv shows, movies, etc. The interweb, it appears, is ubiquitous, even in small South East Asian countries (hence our ability to keep this blog all along). We a service like this once in our travels, when we were in Phenom Penh, Cambodia. And although the Boom Boom Room has literally thousands of rock and hip-hop albums available, as well as the Simpsons, Family Guy and MI:3, we purchased a pair of Cambodian rock albums for about 2 bucks. Well worth it, but I just can't believe how desperate people are to get the new 50 Cent when they're out travelling the world! Which brings me to another rant: how come every time we walk into a place, they take of the local music and put on Hotel California?! I cna't count the number of times we would ask restraunts or shops to turn off the western music and put on music in Lao, Thai, Cambodia, Indian, Chinese, etc. That's how we found out about those bands whose albums we bought in Phenom Penh! Arrgghhh.... I could rant for hours about how certain parts of our travels were ruined by westernization, but I'll let the picture above tell the story, instead.

It was taken in Vang Vieng, Laos, a small town near these gorgeous limestone mountains (see previous post). We went for some hiking, caving, and river tubing, but most people go there to watch TV (literally... the place is known in the guide books as the place to watch Friends and every restaurant is blasting at least two different episodes of some kind of American TV) and get high (opium, shrooms, and weed are openly on the menus there). It was a gorgeous setting befouled by the worst kind of tourism and travellers. We met only a few other people there we liked, and every one of them (including us) couldn't wait to leave. So that's Vang Vieng. Otherwise, I though Laos was an amazing country with loads to offer all kinds of tourists. You should definitely go there, but skip VV.

-mike.

Lao PDR ... With Pictures!

2007-05-02T15:03:00.000-07:00

Here are a two incomplete galleries to keep you busy this week. I've posted about these places before, and if you need a referesher course, check these posts (one, two). Some of the pics have been posted before, but most haven't.

Trekking in Louang Phabang (without notes)
Vang Vieng (central Laos) (with notes)

And finally a great video (click here 16 MB, AVI file) of the kids playing with J at the village where we had spent the night.

Enjoy.

-Mike.

More from Angkor Wat

2007-04-30T19:02:00.000-07:00

As promised, here's a pair of pictures from the Temples at Angkor in Siem Reap, Cambodia. For those who have never been, the temples mark the heart of one of the largest empires the world has ever known. The most famous temple, Angkor Wat, is just outside the city walls of Angkor Thom, which houses dozens of ruined temples and the royal palace, among other things. There are a few super famous places there, including Angkor Wat which has thousands of people crawling around it all day long and the temple which was used in the movie Tomb Raider, known to English-speakers at the "Tree Temple". Fact is, there are loads of temples and loads of trees growing in and around many of the temples in Siem Reap. So I present to you two pics that showcase just how intimate and remote some of the temples can be... even though Angkor Wat and the Lara Croft temple are crammed with people, most of the ruins lie far off the tour-bus circuit, yet remain very accessible.

-Mike

PS - the biggest gathering of Bedard-type siblings in history took place on Saturday, which was amazing! My brothers and sister and I hadn't been together in 364 days (since my older brother got married), and we were there with Justine, her sister, my brothers' wives and their sisters! The nine of us were so loud and stayed up so late... this is what we missed while we were travelling and is why we're glad to be back. HOO RAY!

Elephant Plays Harmonica and Dances

2007-04-25T21:59:00.000-07:00

Two videos for all you loyal readers out there. Scroll down and hit play to see a video of Justine freaking out about a King Cobra, and then click here to see an elephant playing the harmonica and dancing in Thailand.

King Cobra goes up a waterfall...

2007-04-25T21:24:00.000-07:00

This is the video I alluded to in a previous post.

I was sitting on these rocks at Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand, when Justine yells out to me. But I'm near a small cascade, so I can't hear what she's hysteric about. Moments later, I notice a HUGE king cobra, swimming down the river, just a few feet away from me. While Justine shot this video, I took a picture that confirms that indeed, this is a king cobra (see the post linked to above).

Here it is, in all its 2-m long glory!

Angkor Wat Photo

2007-04-20T17:01:00.000-07:00

Many more of these to come as we continue to settle in back in the States. We'll also do more formal blogging again soon, but in the mean time, we hope you're enjoying the pictures from the last three days. Today's photo is of the famous Angkor Wat, an ancient temple in the middle of Cambodia. Nobody knows what really went on there, but there's all kinds of Buddhist and Hindu symbols and figures everywhere (including weird hybrids, like a Shiva with Buddha's head and an 8-armed Buddha!). The temples were the center of a vast empire that suddenly stopped flourishing and was rediscovered (by the west, anyway) in the mid 1800's by French explorer, Henry Mouhut. Enjoy.

Cute!

2007-04-19T14:37:00.000-07:00

Same sea lion pup as yesterday, but while she was playing fetch with a stick (by herself!). Did you know sea lions nest in the bushes of sand dunes? Me neither.

Rare yellow-eyed penguins on the S. Island of NZ.

Kiwi Crossing, next 1250 km

2007-04-18T23:55:00.000-07:00

The obligatory photo from NZ.

Justine is somewhere in this picture. Can you find her?

On the way to Franz Josef Glacier on the S. Island of NZ. That's it coming down the mountain in the back. The water behind me is a glacial river. Very cool ('scuse the pun).

The face of Franz Josef. See the cave at the bottom middle? That's where the river comes out of. Stunning, but the glacier has receded tons in the last few years. Less than 50 years ago (maybe less... I forget the date) the place I took this picture from would have been covered by the glacier.

Sea lion pup from the Catlin's coast (the south-east coast of the S. Island).

Low-res. image of a sea lion pup with his pop.

Fixed the video

2007-04-18T12:45:00.000-07:00

in this post from a few days ago. It shows how the wind was so crazy on our Lake Trek on the N. Island of New Zealand. It's only 6 seconds, but it's my favorite video!

Enjoy.

Made it home

2007-04-12T08:09:00.000-07:00

Back in America after eight months!

Just a quickie here to let you all know that our really long flight from Christchurch-Auckland-Sydney-Los Angeles went well. In summary: United Airlines is worthless for service and food quality when compared to any of the Asian airlines we flew and they lost our bags (or didn't get them from Air NZ) somewhere. Who knows where they are, but our lives -- the bags we've been living out of for 8 months w/o ever losing them on dozens of flights, bus/train rides, etc. -- are simply gone. And did they compensate us like Singapore Airlines (who gave my sister cash on the spot plus a nice baggie of goods when they lost her bag 4 months ago)? Of course not! We only got a really crummy baggie of "goods" whose only useful item was a toothbrush. And this is only after we had to fill out a claim with one person for the missing bags and had to go seek out another office in which to complain and beg for the goods! And this leaves out the whole part about how their service sucked onboard and they lost our veggie meals (three of them!) somewhere between check-in (do you have us down for vegetarian meals? Oh yes... it's right here) and getting on the plane (are you sure you ordered vegetarian? yes. Then prove it. Where's your ticket? Uhhh.... it's not on my ticket but we've been vegetarians for 8 years).

Oh, United, you've lost our business forever!

-Mike.

PS - Go Sharks!

Never any time to blog...

2007-04-04T02:41:00.000-07:00

We're wrapping things up here in New Zealand, and getting ready to come back to America. There will be ample postings then, so keep your browsers pointed here for further updates and pictures.

For now, a brief summation of our last week.

We walked the 60+ km Kepler Track in Fiordland national park on the S. Island of NZ. It was an excellent walk through alpine scenery and we were visited by several of the only (and very rare) alpine parrot in the world, the Kea. Pics to follow.

The day before we started Kepler, we walked 12 km around the famous Milford Sound and up to Key Summit to see some rare alpine plants and alpine bogs. Really cool.

After Kepler, we spent time on the Catlin's Coast in SE S. Island, and today are in Dunedin. We've been spending time watching sea lions on the beach (and avoiding being chased by them!) and watched a NZ horror/comedy flick today called Black Sheep. It's gold, Jerry! An evil farmer is experimenting with genetically modified sheeps (which outnumber New Zealanders 10 to 1), which go crazy and start eating people and turning them into nasty ware-sheep. Pure comedy.

We'll be back in America on April 11th, my birthday, which will last for something like 40 hours this year as we leave Christchurch around 6 am and we land at LAX at 10 am the same day! Weird.

-Mike.

More to Whet your Appetite

2007-03-25T13:33:00.000-07:00

More pictures to keep you reading our blog... I've found time while we're cleaning up our breakfast (fried eggs, baked beans, toast, and fried onions/bell peppers/tomatos) that we made this morning on the west coast of S. Island NZ. These ones are from our Lake Waikaremoana trek from last week on the N. Island. Enjoy!!

Painting by M, of our approach to Panekiri Bluff in 120 kph winds! Don't believe me, check this video!

Joint painting, mostly by J, of the grassy fields up against the lake at Maruati Hut.

Lake Waikaremoana, 600 m below, from Panekiri bluff.

In the grassy fields around the lake.

Two Quickies

2007-03-25T01:59:00.000-07:00

Not much time here in Hokitika, S. Island, NZ, but I've managed to upload two photos, one from Sydney Aus. we took at Bondi beach with our Nepali friend and trekking guide, Bharat (the one who took us through the Himalaya in October... he's a student in Sydney now!),

... and the independence monument in Phenom Penh, Cambodia at sunset. This commemorates their independence from France. It has a cool park around it (though you have to cross a super busy traffic circle around the monument to get to it from the park) that is always full of fun people!

Ta-ta,

Mike.

Lake Waikaremoana Great Walk

2007-03-23T13:19:00.000-07:00

Once again, I'll be skimping on the details here and I'm not posting any pics because the internet in the first world is so expensive!

We arrived in Auckland on Mar. 12 or something, and stayed for several days, checking out the sights, the birds, an island nature reserve, and a mainland "island" reserve which has active predator controls in place (see, when the first humans arrived on NZ's shores about 600 years ago, the brought with them dogs, cats, and other mammals, none of which lived here before, so they all just preyed on the flightless birds and other precious critters 'round there parts).

Then, when we were totally prepared and had bought all our food for our 5-day 4-night trek around Lake Waikaremoana (sounds like "why-CARE-uh-moe-on-uh"), we drove for about 6 hours to Te Urewera National park. We stayed the first night in a motor camp near the track entrance, and took a boat across the lake to start off.

First, we had to climb the ~600 m to the top of Panekiri bluff, a huge stone wall that faces the new rain-water lake (it was formed only 2200 years ago when a landslide blocked up the valley). This was not only a tough climb, but the winds were absolutely crazy. We walked through an exposed saddle point, emerging from the coverage of the forest into 100+ kph winds that literally knocked us over! The hut we stayed at on the top of the bluff (set back a bit, but with still amazing views) was a 30-something bunk hut with running water. We used our Jet Boil (R) to prepare some mashed potatoes, soy protien, and green beans. Delish!!

The next 4 days, the weather was perfect: sunny but cool, light breeze, minimal clouds (only adding to the drama of gorgeous sunsets), and crystal clear skies. We went through multi-varied terrain, from fern forests (complete with 20 and 30-ft. tall fern TREES), river-side beech and birch-like trees and huge old-growth forest (the area around the forest is still-virgin forest, so it's quite old and awe-inspiring to be in there). And on most nights, we listened to the Kiwis call to each other as the sun went down. Very cool.

Look for pics in the coming weeks, most likely after we get back to America in mid-April :(

For more on the lake and other tracks, check out the NZ Department of Conservation. Search for Lake Waikaremoana.

-Mike.

Mini Update

2007-03-16T02:22:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the COMPLETE lack of updates on this here blog. We've been in Australia (last week) and NZ this week, and it's too hard to find the time and to justify the money to spend on the internet (compare: 25 cents an hour in Cambodia, 3 dollars an hour in Auckland!).

Anyway, just want to let everyone know that we're still alive and kicking. Sydney was great, and we met up with our trekking guide from Nepal (who's now going to school there), and my cousin (who treated us to beers and dinner). We mostly looked for sleeping bags for our upcoming NZ trekking.

We flew to Auckland 5 days ago, and leave tomorrow for Lake Waikaramoana for a 4-night 5-day trek. After that, we're headed for the south island to copy our friends and do the 3-night 4-day Kepler track in Fijordland. Today, we went to the open bird sanctuary of Tiritiri Matangi, a predator-free native environment full of super rare endemic NZ birds. Of note, we saw the super-duper rare Takahe, a huge green-and-blue flightless bird (the size of a turkey) with a huge red beak. We probably say about 20 different kinds of birds there, and only really missed out on seeing wild Kiwi, which are nocturnal anyway.

Hope you're all well, and we'll be back in America on 11.April.

-Mike.

Monopoly Money

2007-03-05T01:55:00.000-08:00

We're about to leave the Asian continent for the first time in nearly 7 months. It's a strange prospect, but we're really looking forward to seeing family in Sydney and getting back into the great outdoors in New Zealand. As we leave, however, I wanted to make a couple of lists, comparing the different Asian countries we've been to. The first one is the money:

1) Japanese Yen - about 115 yen per dollar when we were there in August and Sept. 2006. Not much to talk about here, exepct that the moeny was unremarkable so as to not stick in my memory at all. It's the only currency against which the dollar improved over our visit... take THAT Japan!

2) Chinese Yuan - about 8 per dollar in Sept. and Oct. Nice, small currency, but the unusual multiple made it more difficult to do conversions in our heads. Of course, every bill has Murderous Mao's mug on it. Pusing 7.8 per dollar when we left, compared to about 8.1 when we got there.

3) Nepali Rupee - about 70 per dollar (72 when we arrived, 68 by the time we left!). Big, long bills with animals on one side and the king on the other. They're changing that, now that the king has been deposed. Pegged to the value of the Indian Rupee (160 NRs = 100 Rs), and very colorful.

4) Indian Rupee - about 50 per dollar. Lots of pictures of Gandhi, a useful 20, 50, and 100, and totally useless coins. Readily traded and used in Nepal, except the 1000 note, which is not allowed in Nepal!

5) Singapore Dollar - About a 2/3 exchange for US/Sing. Simple bills, and like the rest of the country, usually very clean (they must wash them or take them out of circulation quickly). Useful dollar and 5 dollar coins. Very colorful.

6) Thai Bhat - About 35 to 1, or 40 to 1, or sometimes 30 to 1, depending on who's doing the trading and what gets them the most money; officially somewhere near 35 Bhat per dollar. Nice small bills, usefull 5- and 10-Bhat coins (which are bi-metallic). Useless 1 and fractional Bhat coins (much smaller than a dime... more like a pinky fingernail). Thirty-five is a strange number to do conversions with, but we were here so long it got easier. Looks like Monopoly money, b/c the twenty is green, the fifty is blue, and the 100's are pink (there's no 5-Bhat bill).

7) Lao Fun Bucks (aka Kip) - about 10,000 to 1. Totally ridiculous. Just try walking around with a million Fun Bucks (in 20,000 notes!) in a wallet. Want dinner? Try spending about 35,000 for a plate of pasta, bread, and a beer! The 1000 and 2000 notes are both blue and have nearly the same design. Just silly. Lao seem to prefer Thai Bhat or US Dollars instead of their own money, and best of all: Once you have kip, you can't trade them back in anywhere for real money! Finally, it's against Lao law to use foreign currencies for any transaction, but the government-owned airline and airport only accept US dollars to pay for tickets and the departure tax!

8) Cambodian Fun Bucks (aka Riel) - about 4000 to 1. Not as ridiculous, but nearly so. Dollars are far more widely used in Cambodia than in Laos or Thailand, and riel is only used instead of quarters. They're small bills, easily lost, and are often in need of a good ironing. The 100 riel notes are nearly useless.

We've saved some money from each place, but I'm sure the internerd is a better source of pictures for the various currencies if this post has interested you. Better yet, just get your butt over to Asia and enjoy the fun!

Miss you all and we'll be back in the States before too long,
-Mike.

A Holiday In Cambodia

2007-03-02T21:57:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the serious lack of updates recently. I know our three avid readers are anxiously awaiting our latest adventures, but we haven't had much time to blog. Here's a brief recap:

We spent several hot days in Vientianne, the capital of Laos, and enjoyed ourselves quite a bit. I don't really remember much of what we did, mostly ride bikes around the city in the morning and evening and find air-conditioned coffee shops in the afternoons, but it was a good time and we had a nice room with AC. We also spent one day at Ban Pako eco-lodge, a place about 2 hrs. journey (by bus and boat) from the city center on a bend in a river and across from a protected forest area. We were hoping it would be cooler there and for some wild-life spotting, but neither occured with much frequency (save for some massive brown spiders in our over-priced bungalow).

We flew from Vientianne to Siem Reap, Cambodia, home to Angkor Wat (the largest spiritual structure in the world) and the temples of the ancient Khmer civilizations. We spent 5 days there, 2 exploring the nearby temples on bike, 1 day exploring the far-away temples by car, and 1 day exploring the city of Siem Reap. It was an exhausting experience, and with no AC to go home to, the 90-degree nights in our tiny room made it hard to sleep (but it only cost us five bucks!). Exploring the temples and ruins was an amazing experience, and we hope to have photos posted sometime soon.

We took a very short flight from Siem Reap to Phenom Penh, Cambodia's capital city, on 1.March. We stayed in a really grotty place, and promptly moved to a much nicer hotel yesterday. Today (3.March) we toured the city's Royal Palace grounds and the Silver Pagoda (so-named for the 6000 silver tiles that make up the floor inside). The Royal Palace here is kind of like the one in Bangkok, but much less interesting and ornate. We only spent about an hour there, whereas we spent nearly all day at the Bangkok palace! But also, the one here is much much smaller. This afternoon (everything in Cambodia shuts down from about 11am to 2:30 for lunch...) we're going to the National Museum and to a Folk Dance show in the evening. Tomorrow (4.March) we'll see the Khmer Rough prisons and Pol Pot's Killing Fields, before beginning a two-plus-day journey to Sydney, Australia (including 20 hours in Bangkok).

Hope you're all well!

-Mike.

Things we've done in the Lao PDR

2007-02-20T00:11:00.000-08:00

Just the pics, for the lazy people.

You will all recall that a few days ago, I posted about a 2-day trek we did from Louang Phabang. I posted some pics then, and a few more today, but I wanted to post our journal entries from the trek for more insight than just the pictures. Some of this is written by me and some by Justine (see below).

After the trek, we returned to Louang Phabang for two more days (see the pictures of the wats, Buddhist temples/monestaries) before going to Vang Vieng, a crummy town alongside a river, known for it's TV bars and drunken parties. We didn't really know this ahead of time, and several people we met made the outdoors stuff sound cool (including tubeing down the river, passing numerous bars along the way). There's gorgeous scenery there, but the town is a total dump. Every bar and restaurant is blasting episodes of Friends or the Simpsons, and there's these pasty-faced 20-somethings all oogling the TV and ordering dope and opium straight off the menus. We looked for the one restaurant without a TV, and it happened to be a Chinese place all the way at the end of the road (though to be fair, after dinner we got a beer and watched the Family Guy for a bit, hating ourselves the whole time for being hypocrites, but there was nothing else to do!). Inside King Dumpling were a bunch of Chinese people celebrating the new year's eve, so we popped in and had some delicious food. The next night, we did the same thing, but at a different Chinese restaurant on the other end of town (which is just two parallel roads that go on for about 5 blocks). There we met a cool Spanish couple living in China (Enrique -- British descent -- and Aga -- Polish), who we spent the evening with. We all couldn't wait to leave Vang Vieng as soon as possible, so we took a bus south to the Lao capital of Vientianne, and they went north to Louang Phabang. Now on with the journals.

13.Feb.07 - After a 90 minute drive through teak plantaions, small villages, and some sparece natural areas, we arrived at our starting point at a very small village. We followed a river (the Nam Ou, I think) for about an hour, making at least 4 crossings without even falling in! After the last stream crossing, we took a break where 3 unhappy goats were tied to a trailer that was attached to some kind of motorized puller. A handful of young women carried huge bags of rice while the 2 men around did pretty much nothing. The hike from here went straight up a steep hill in the hottest part of the day (naturally), but at least it had some shade. Ater 20 minutes, we had to take another break (!), along with some local girls and young women (the rice carriers) who were walking back to their village. Then began a hot, sweaty 40-minute hike up the rest of hill in open sun through a razed landscape. Dusty, dry, hot! The sides of the path slanted downard to ashy dust, just the dead stalks of grass from the last slash and burn session remaining. Very sad. The dire landscape continued for most of the rest of the hike. We reached the first village (Khamu) at 1pm and ate lunch before leaving at around 2:30pm.

The saddest thing about the first village is that when we finished our lunch, the kids seized upon our garbage: 2 water bottles and an empty pepsi can. They used these for toys and sucked the last few drops out. The shack where we ate was also a shop, but clearly it's only a tourist/trekker shop, with a few cans of soda, water, and chips, etc. Nobody in that village eats snacks and soda... they probably can't afford it! We both felt a bit ashamed, because this is exactly the kind of thing that caused us to hesitate to do this kind of trek in the first place: The owner of that hut is now entirely dependent on tourists to buy junk food, which results in trash that is left behind because most people don't bother carry theirs out (we would have, but didn't have a chance to collect it before leaving since the kids took it as soon as we finished). After this experience, we made sure to carry out EVERY piece of trash we made.

The trek continued over a ridge and we reached a primary school (see pics), which is shared by the Khamu village we ate in and a nearby Hmong village. The teachers live in Louang Phabang on the weekends and live in the villages during the week! We walked more, through the Hmong village, and into a more wooded section of the hills... finally SHADE! After tackling 2 more small hills, we hit the top of a ridge around 4pm and came out of the woods suddenly looking at another freshly-burned landscape at our feet. Shortly after, we reached the village we would spend the night at (Khamu).

Our shelter was a rickety bamboo hut with 3 raised platforms, enough space for about 8 adults (with mosquito nets), situated outside the village chief's hut (complete with the one light bulb in town and a satellite dish TV system blasting Intel commercials into the still night...). [Quote of the day: "I saw the pillows from afar and they didn't look too savory." - J, after seeing our bedding for the night.] The place was adequate for us, since we had our sleep sheets and they provided blankets (it got quite cold at night). The toilet was an enclosed dirt pit witha 4.5 ft. ceiling, making it difficult to gety anything done (plus a HUGE brown spider right above the hole!).

Before dinner, we walked the dirt streets a bit, this village was quite large, and saw more kids playing a game with two bamboo sticks that we had seen in the earlier villages. Dinner was traditinoal Lao food (cooked by our excellent guide, Vang Thong), which consisted of sticky rice, green beans, fried veggies, and some kind of tomato sauce thing that was truly amazing! Definitely the best food we've had in a while. After dinner, we passed the time singing songs and playing hand-slapping games with some of the girls (aged from 2 to 13 years) and we even taught hem a new game, one we had learned from the girls at the orphange in Nepal.

14.Feb.07 - Day two of our trek started with many fried eggs and Nescafe coffee a baguette. We spent the early early morning hours, though, staying warm and cursing the multiple rounds of rooster crowing around the valley. After b/f, we killed time by rolling hoops and drawing in the dirt with the kids (see pics), Nuan, Xi, and their sister (?). At 930 am, we took off towars a rather large waterfall, passing cool riverside scenery and bamboo forest landscape on the way. Another hour on after that (passing farms and villages along a wide dusty road that's slated for paveing later this year), we have arrived at a small village for a break, where the shop keep is playing Hotel California (acoustic), appearantly for us, since everyone in Asia assumes white people love the Eagles (blech!!).

At noon, lunch is served, consisting of an excellent noodle soup and scrambled eggs. The rest of the hike was through farm lands and absolutely scorched land following a river. We walked mostly along a wide dustry road, waded across one shallow river crossing and leapt across a rather deep one, arriving suddenly at a paved highway that will take us back to Louang Phabang. We're waiting at our guide's "second family's" home, consisting of 3 generations of a family from Udomaxi, Laos (in the North), where Vang is from. He's told us all about Lao New Year and also about how the Lao people celebrate Valentine's day (basically the same as in America, but it's a bit more social with huge parties and clubbing going on). He invited us to drink with him and his friends this evening. The bus is late picking us.

(9pm) After enjoying a nice hot shower and a pizza dinner, we took up the offer of the guys from Green Discovery Tours and went over for drinks. A group of 10 or so (including our Van's sister, another worker named Pang, and a few couples, two with babies) were eating dinner in the office when we showed up. They all welcomed us heartily and sat us down with them, offering us food (mostly fish and chicken, so we declined), and then the beer started to flow. Huge bottles of Beerlao were poured into a single cup, which each person at the table must finish before it gets refilled and passed on to the next person. This went on for a few hours! Later, kap pan was brought out for us all to enjoy, which is Mekong river seaweed (riverweed?), dried and pounded into flat sheets and flavored with garlic and tomato.... delicious! We were regaled with stories of the prowess of Lao men and the beauty of Lao women (as well as a few lousy jokes) before heading off to bed before the midnight curfew ($5 fine for locals, who knows what it is for falangs). Ban lo fan dii (Sleep well)!

Thailand and Laos Adventures

2007-02-14T22:30:00.000-08:00

Just the pictures.

These pictures cover a large expanse of time, from early January to yesterday. For those who have forgotten, in early January, we left Singapore and the comforts of my Uncle's home for the hustle and bustle of Bangkok. We took a forever-long bus ride to Phuket Island to visit my sister and her palatial suite at the Sheraton Le Grand resort, where we enjoyed the full treatment for the cost of nothing per day. After that, we took a boat to Koh Phi Phi Don, and after travelling in southern Thailand for several more weeks, we flew up to Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. We took a day-long over-night trip to the small town of Pai, about 3 hrs. bus ride away from Chiang Mai, and last week we flew to the UNESCO world heritage town of Louang Phabang. These pictures cover those places and a few of the activities we've done. For more on those places, see the relevant posts by clicking the links below this entry, e.g.: Phuket or Phi Phi.

Hope you all had a great V-Day! We spent the evening drinking Beerlao with our trekking guide and his friends at the trekking office. We ate dried Mekong seaweed (flavored with sesame seeds, garlic, and tomatos... MMMM!), too!

-Mike.

Lovin' it in Laos!

2007-02-14T06:03:00.000-08:00

Quick update, today, which is V-Day here in the Lao Peoples' Democratic Republic (which is neither the Peoples', Democratic, nor a Republic, since the gov't. here is strictly communist). We came to Lao PDR on a twin-engine prop. plane from Chiang Mai, Thailand on Feb. 9th, landing in the UNESCO world heritage city of Louang Phabang. It's MUCH more mellow here than in Thailand, and the cost of living is half what it is in Laos' neighbor to the west. We're staying in a super nice guesthouse with hard-wood floors and a hot shower for only a few bucks a night, and we usually have dinner at one of the many vegetarian buffet dinners set up in carts on the street for $0.50 each! Today we came back from a two-day trek into the hills around LP, where we visited several rural villages of the Hmong and Khamu people, two Lao minorities. We slept at the Chief's house at Ban Pha Thueang (a Khamu village), though we didn't really get to talk to him. Our guide, Vhang Tong (from the northern Lao city of Udomaxi), cooked us an excellent Lao dinner at the chief's house, too! It was the best food we've had in some time! After dinner, we sang songs, played games, and entertained with our pictures the many kids (from age 2-13) who came to observe the foreigners at the Chief's house. It was a great experience, but one tempered by the massive deforested areas we walked through to get to their homes.

Khamu village where we stopped for lunch.

Khamu kids watching J draw.

Beerlao and Justine... a match made in heaven!

Khamu kids outside the Chief's house. They played games with us, sang songs for us, and drew pictures with us in the dirt. Adorable? Absolutely!

Khao Sok National Park and Pictures

2007-02-04T00:22:00.000-08:00

From Ao Neng (see previous post), where we did our visa run to Malaysia, we went to Khao Sok National Park, which is supposedly the only remaining lowland rainforest left anywhere (or maybe just in Thailand... I don't remember), and is a sanctuary for over 350 bird species (many rare or endangered), hundreds of different plants (including the huge flower, Raffelasia, the largest stemless flower in the world with 2-ft. bloom!), thousands of (uncharted) insects and lizards (new species are found regularly in the park) and has big wild mammals like elephants, tigers, and sun bears. The park also has several cool waterfalls, but remains relatively untouristed and badly kept up by the Thai government, who have carelessly let dozens of bungalow operations and crummy bars playing loud music spring up around the park H.Q. in the last 5 years.

We stayed at the long-established and well-run guest house, Art's Riverview Lodge, which is keen on preservation of the rainforest and the creatures inside (but unfortunately has terrible food, even though their staff is excellent). We spent four awesome days there relaxing, reading, and doing a few day-long hikes. One day, while we were resting at a nice waterfall with nobody around, I kicked off my shoes and decided to dip my feet right into the cool, clear waters of the pool just above the falls. A minute or two later, Justine (who was near the bottom of the falls) started screaming bloody murder, and as I turn to look, I cought a glimpse of an enormous creature swimming in the water just across the river, about 5 feet away. Upon closer inspection, I realized I was staring at a 6-foot long King Cobra (no joke... he was massive), swimming down the river, DOWN the water fall, and into the pool where J was watching (from the shore, I might add). I sprang into action, leaping down the rocks bare-footed to snatch my camera as J was filming the whole fiasco. She cried out "OH MY GOD!" and the snake turned, looked at us (no joke... it's on the video which is too large for me to upload from here), and made a giant u-turn in the water, probably realizing for the first time that other large creatures were stirring in the river besides him. So up he goes, straight back up the cascade he had so gracefully come down seconds before, slithering up a 2-ft. drop and then off to the side to some rocks, and back into the pool where my feet were resting when we first spotted him. He swam a bit further up before disappearing under a rock, never to show his gorgeous mug to us again. Shortly thereafter, we continued down the trail and some long-tailed macaques (a kind of monkey) started barking at us and threatening us. A large male came down from the trees to just above our heads and began pounding his fists and shaking a branch in front of him. It wasn't too scary b/c even that large guy was only about 30 lbs., but still... I'd never been threatened by a wild monkey before. Guess we were too close to the feeding grounds and the babies (who were super cute, by the way).

Anyway, the park was great, and we saw some amazing creatures, and I even spotted a HUGE hornbill as he was flying overhead (see pic below). At this time of year, the females are literally holed up in a tree or cliff wall, while the males look for food to bring and feed the girls as the incubate the eggs. He passes the food through a tiny hole in the nest for several months to his life-long partner. So cute, and really a beautiful bird. I would guess his wingspan was something like 3 feet!

Enjoy the pics!

-mike

Macaques in the mist.

Blue ferns in the forest.

Tall, buttressed trees.

Bang Leap falls.

Great Hornbill flying fast!

Giant centipede about 8-in. long... ick!

Flying lizard, biting our excellent Night Safari guide, Dam, who showed some Harvard botanists around the park a few months ago and claims to have a walking-leaf insect (which he pointed out to them) named after him.

Cute frog on a leaf, blending in.

View from our room at Art's.

Our trusty sleep sheets covered by a mosquit net.