Posts Tagged ‘hiking’

This photo was taken on one of the first “Trig” hikes we ever took. Trigs are little pyramids that New Zealanders put atop their hills so they can tell how far stuff is. I know, weird. But I guess it could work. Hazel is imitating the tree in the background in this photo.

Hazel discovered a gigantic cave at the top of one of our hill climbs. It was filled with stalactites! WoHoo! How far down can you go?!?

This is a sweet pic of the river that flows out from under a glacier. Makes sense, eh?

This is from one of the most beautiful alpine tracks we’ve walked on. A rickety bridge starts it off.

A WC Hut in the middle of the track.

A bright blue stream from glacial runoff in the middle of the track.


The lake at the bottom of the Hooker Glacier, a little less dramatic than Franz Josef. But it had its own serenity.

Here’s what we were outfitted in before we went up to a summit to view stars. Not pictured are our socks-and-sandals.

This was a really remarkable hike starting at the Divide on the way to Milford Sound. We got to the top of the mountain, and here is the proof!

Obligatory “On a Boat” picture

This shows just how alone one can feel out in the boondocks of Fiordland. This picture looks out on the Tasman Sea.

When we were about to start fishing, we were greeted by the friendly neighborhood ALBATROSS! So huge! The picture doesn’t do it justice but it must’ve had an 8 foot wingspan.

Finally. Hazel, after only 5 minutes of fishing in Proper Conditions catches her first fish, a Sea Perch. She was made to kiss it by our friendly captain Fiord — who said we wouldn’t get off the boat until Hazel caught her first fish. Luckily it was a good day!

This was huge. And amazing. And scary. Basically Andre was a hero.

Since we hadn’t had enough of her first fish, we got it out of the “to be dinner” bucket and photographed it again :)





These photos reflect the beauty of the Sounds at sunset. Also how grateful we were to finally crawl into bed after seeing dolphins, pulling up lobster pots, fishing, kayaking, and eating. Did I mention eating?


The infamous Morning After. This one wasn’t so bad!



These photos represent our initial experience of Tongariro — a steep hike up rocky volcanic ground, only to cross a huge, barren crater.

Then we found out what a real crater looks like.

The Red crater was also the highest altitude we attained on the Crossing, a whopping 1886 meters high!

This is the icing on the cake, after peaking Red Crater you get to lope down loose soil to see the beautiful Emerald Lakes.

We had gale-force winds up at the top, and were worried about falling into a crater almost the whole time!

Here’s the view at the end of the Crossing — serene and pastoral. Mission Accomplished.

Hope you liked my Best Of – this is a great selection from the photos I’ve taken so far!

 

We camped at a great campsite at Karamea (the middle of nowhere – very NW of South Island) and had lots of fun adventures, including being offered a bacon sandwich on the beach by a Brit and a Kiwi who were out fishing.  We hung around and a family pulled up in a Jeep.  After a chat they took off only to back the Jeep over and onto a log – STUCK!  They ended up having to dig it out while we stood observing.  It was very, very funny.  Minutes later the fishing rod went crazy and they pulled in a very large red snapper.  Awesome.

That campsite was at the start of one of the Great Walks – the Heaphy Track. We hiked just the very beginning of it, but it was incredibly beautiful.

So that’s the update from here.  We’re heading up into the mountains tomorrow and then over to Christchurch for Christmas.

On Wednesday my mom flew down from Seattle to spend some time with us before we leave.  Since she’s always wanted to see Yosemite, I hatched a plan for us to go out there for a night.  We had an awesome time hiking and seeing the sights, and now I have some actual travel to blog about.  It was very special for me to go back to Yosemite, because almost exactly a year ago Justin proposed to me there.

She got into the San Jose airport (after a minor delay) in the middle of the day and we headed straight to the park.  The drive was fairly uneventful, although there was some crazy smoke/smog/fog around Merced.  It was like driving with really dirty windows.  It disappeared once we got into the mountains though and we managed to make it to the park just after sunset.

We stayed in a heated tent cabin in the Curry Village Campground and even though it got down to about 27 degrees Fahrenheit we were fairly warm and comfy all night.

Reviews online were pretty mixed about this campground – apparently, it can be noisy, spiders have been sighted, and the blankets are wool so they are itchy.  We really liked it.  It’s right next to Half Dome, has hot water, heaters, and the beds were pretty comfortable.  It also has a handy bear locker right outside your tent so you can keep all your food from being stolen by a bear.  Apparently bears are a pretty huge problem as they break into cars and tents to get at the people food.  We didn’t see one though.

We were up with the sun at about 6 a.m. and started out on a hike right away.  The first stop was Mirror Lake and we got some sweet views along the way.  You can click on any of these pictures for a bigger version.

It was very, very cold, but very, very beautiful.  This was my first chance to check out how my trip clothes would perform in really cold weather and I’m glad to say, it went very well.  I brought an extra scarf and mittens, but aside from that I got by just with layering things from my backpack.  Good to know that I can be ok hiking at those kinds of temperatures with the clothes I’m planning on bringing!

Around 10 a.m. we were starving so we splurged and had the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  So yummy and I definitely ate too much.  But after several cups of coffee and at least 5 pieces of bacon I was ready to hike again!

We checked out the gift shop:

And the Visitors’ Center (this had some really good exhibits):

And then headed to the waterfalls.

According to the Visitors’ Center these are the highest falls in the U.S.  and are usually dried up at this time of year.  We were lucky to have awesome views of them and I spent a lot of time taking pictures.  In fact, most of the rest of the day was spent hiking around this area and snapping photos of the incredible views.  It’s really hard to decide which ones to post since I got a lot of good shots.  Hopefully in a day or two we will have worked out how to get photo galleries up and then I can post them all and not clutter up my blog posts as much.  But, because I like them, here are a few more of my Yosemite shots:

I’ll try to put the rest up in a gallery soon.  Today is a frantic getasmuchworkdoneonthehouseaspossible day, so I’d better get to it.