Yosemite National Park

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

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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...

Made it home

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!

Beaches in Phuket, Thailand and Deep Thoughts

We arrived in Phuket from Bangkok (after a long and annoying bus ride that started at 5:30 pm on 8.Jan... won't bore you all with the story) at 3 pm on 9.Jan. The island is nice enough, and we're staying in a really fancy schmancy resort with my sister (for free, mind you, so I can't complain about that), but everything here is so expensive: J and I paid like 40 bucks for a crummy lunch at the resort the other day, and about 2.50 USD for a coconut! On the plus side, we haven't paid for almost anything else, ate tons of food (I've put on 5 kilos since I arrived in Singapore), have been hanging out with family, swam in a really nice pool and hung out at the beach.

Despite that, it's been a weird experience for us the last few weeks because we went from totally roughing it backpacker style to my uncle's house in Singapore, back to being backpackers for a week in Bangkok and living cheaply, and now we've been living in relative luxury for three days. Tomorrow we leave Phuket for Ko Phi Phi and are on our own again. It kind of messes with my mind and my attitude to flip from one to the other... other travelers must be able to relate to this feeling even though I can't explain it well here, as I imagine it's somewhat like the feeling of going home and ending the trip. There's this sense of relief to be around family or friends or to take a hot shower and sleep on clean sheets, but there's also an uneasiness to switch lifestyles to this ritzy place which isn't really our thing (and wasn't really our thing before the trip, anyway) now that we expect (or tolerate) much simpler conditions and a simpler way of life. Maybe that's the real appeal to traveling like this: Our day-to-day lives are often about survival and basic needs (shelter, food, laundry). Simple things and amazing, complex experiences define our lives and no longer do we worry about the kinds of problems or stresses that bog us down in our lives before this trip and it bothers me that we'll have to leave this simplified life some day. Maybe that's why I've been feeling so weird lately.

But we've also learned that we need to take experiences for what they are... so J and I have been doing some serious relaxing here, including taking a long nap on some hamocks yesterday after lounghing around the beach and taking a late breakfast. Today, we went to the beach with Lisa, got stung by some jelly fish, and promptly left to go swim and spend the rest of the day at the pool. I'll write more about Bangkok another day (when some pictures are online), but we did a bunch of sight seeing there and got a few Thai massages and of course, we ate excellent food all day long! Enjoy the pics.

Relaxing in a hammock in the Hammock District of Laguna Beach, Phuket, Thailand.

An expensive coconut drink on the beach in Phuket. Check the muscles, Mom... I've put on some weight, too!

One of the 178 mural paintings of the Ramayana at the Thai Grand Palace in Bangkok.

Deep Thoughts, By Justine

Although Mike is a "blog hog" as some have accused, the real truth is that I am a blog bum. Today however, Im sick, it's raining outside, and we're still recovering from our horseback riding trip so spending quality time on the computer in Chengdu isn't a bad use of time. (And in fact, by the time I'm posting this an additional 2.5 weeks have passed since I started it on 25.Sept.2006).

Songpan's most eligible bachelor
Meet Zhou, a 20 year old cowboy who can cook, speak four languages, and open a beer bottle with his teeth. He'll serenade you with romantic Tibetan songs while dragging your horse, with you on it, up steep muddy slopes. He enjoys long walks in rocky terrain and a nice bottle of hard grain Tibetan alcohol from a recycled coke bottle. He's good with children, willing to strap your infant on his back for the horseback ride through rockslide territory. He has left behind a lifestyle of tatoos and knife fights to follow the straight and narrow. Women as far away as Korea are ready to move in on him, so ladies, don't pass up this chance!

Yaks: one of my new favorite animals
Seeing a yak on TV is entirely different from meeting one in person. They are quite pretty, with long, silky fur. They are shy but curious -- they were clearly interested in what us humans were doing when we made camp, or hiked through their grazing land, but bolted when we approached within about 15 feet. The majority of yaks we came across were running free in the wild, typically brownish-black, probably part of someone's herd in the mountains, but we also saw some more glamorous ones that were gussied-up in Tibetan costume for the tourists as we blazed through towns on the bus. Yaks make cute short moo sounds and raise their tails like a red flag warning when they freak out and trot away.

"That's China's fault" *
Why China, why must you take perfectly good tourist sites and bulldoze them to build something us Westerners can find at home? The more important question is not so much the "tourist sites" that are being dismantled but the actual homes and livelihoods of the people that live here. This is one of the major quandries of globalization, I suppose -- that while developing countries are doing just that (developing), they run the risk of wiping out cultural and historical sites, traditions, or practices in order to make way for the new and improved. Beijing, as I think Mike touched on in earlier posts, is a prime example. It is an example of nothing existing where communities once thrived, where every restaurant listed in our guidebook that we looked for was either boarded up or appeared blown up, and in one case, with a homeless family living inside. Walking or driving down many of these streets, one sees nothing but eight or ten-foot tall, block-long vinyl billboards advertising what new stores or apartments are to be built on the site. If you happen to duck behind these massive "coming soon" posters, you find the dusty remanants of a neighborhood that may have existed as recently as 6 months ago, but is now a construction site or tent city. Truly depressing. The winning of the Olympic bid is likely the motivator for these "rennovations", but there are larger forces at work -- namely, capitalism. And to my planner friends, if dealing with public input is wearing you out, Beijing may have a job opening for you, because I dont think the public *has* input here. There is, however, an impressive urban planning museum in Beijing laying out all that is planned for the City's future, and save the most famous locales such as Tianamen Sq. or the Forbidden City, it pretty much will look nothing like it does now. Tell that to the people on Huntley (WeHo!)
* quote from Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Call me Auntie Mame
I am now an expert horsewoman, after three days of training in Songpan (read parts one and two). The experience was part Auntie Mame's fox hunt and part Vicky the evil would-be step-mom during the camping trip in Parent Trap. If you don't know the references then you have two movies you need to watch. Hopefully I was more tolerant (and tolerable) than both women during the horse trek, because despite coming back with a cold/fever, it was the highlight of our time in China for both Mike and I. Dare I say that our nest of a bed, created with tree branches, horse blankets, and Tibetan coats with saddles for "pillows", were more cozy and comfortable than some of the hostel/hotel beds we've slept in.

The World's Cutest Kid Contest: Japan v. Chinese Tibetans
As our photos demonstrate, there are some seriously cute kids over here. I thought the cuteness levels couldn't be any higher than those found in Japan, what with the shining black eyes and dolled-up clothes and doting parents. However Sichuan toddlers have given them a run for their money (for scientific proof, see here, here, and here). I will continue my search in Nepal.

Western food is underrated
That's right. I said it. After turning our noses up at western fast food joints the last two months, the Burger King veggie burger in HK brought our noses back to earth. We haven't eaten fast food since pre-vegetarian days (aside from the single experience with the "not buger" from In-N-Out), but once we learned that BK serves up a hefty, loaded-with-condiments, grilled veggie burger, Mike and I forced Lisa to sit and watch while we gobbled down two delicious combo-meals at the top of Victoria Peak in HK. These burgers were wonderful in ways I cannot describe, surpassing its American BK counterpart from what we've seen (but never touched) in Los Angeles. Hats off to you, Burger King of Hong Kong. You will remain a shining memory of my time there.

That is it for now from me, and though I wish I could say I will be better about blogging, it will probably not be true. But please feel free to email me and post comments because I still want to know what is going on back home!