Arrived in Queenstown!

The morning of our last post, we did a short hike up to the top of a hill overlooking Lake Tekapo, which is also home to an observatory (remember that thing I said about clearest skies in the southern hemisphere?). The views from the observatory were amazing. The sun was out so the turquoise color of the lake really came out, and you could see the snow-capped mountains that surrounded the area. They also had some incredible pictures of the night sky that were taken using their telescopes. After enjoying the views for a while, we headed back down and made a stop at the Church of the Good Sheperd before leaving town. This is a beautiful little early 1900s church was built in memory of the pioneers of the area. It is situated right next to a lake and has an incredible view of the lake and mountains from the pews. Might be difficult to pay attention during a sermon with a view like that.

After leaving Tekapo, we had about 3 hours drive to the lake-side town of Wanaka. It's getting near the end of the ski season here, in fact they are just wrapping up the New Zealand winter games. They don't seem to have "ski villages" located at the base of the mountain like in the US, but towns like Wanaka and Queenstown are about a 20-45 minute drive from a couple mountains each. Either way, the town was packed with skiers and snowboarders relaxing and shopping after a day on the slopes. One of the more popular attractions in Wanaka is called "A Puzzling World", which has a big maze, all kinds of puzzles you can do, and a variety of illusions. It turned out to be really cool, especially this tilted room with illusions like a pool ball that seemed to roll uphill. Made you pretty dizzy though. It didn't help a headache that I had going, and by the end of the day I was feeling pretty sick, again. On account of that, we didn't really do much else besides sit in our room at the hostel and watch movies. By the next morning, though, I was feeling much better and ready to finally make it to Queenstown.

We were greeted in Queenstown with drizzling on and off rain, but that didn't really dampen our spirits. Despite its popularity, the size of the town really surprised us. The towns of Fernhill and Frankton strattle Queenstown on either side, and it really seems like on long city. Queenstown city center is right on the edge of Lake Wakatipu (notice a theme here with the lakes?) with The Remarkables mountain range running along the other side of the lake. I have to say that it really is prettier than I expected it to be. Most of the surrounding area that we had previously come through had mostly low-lying vegitation and few trees, but Queenstown has lots of trees and a large forest reserve on the hill above town. All the trees probably mean lots of rain, but I'll take it. We found a nice hotel room for cheaper than any private room in a hostel (didn't want to stay in a dorm room when I'm not feeling well), and we have a great view of the lake and mountains. During our 3 nights stay here its going to be almost entirely business. We need to find a house or apartment to rent and hopefully get some leads on jobs. There is an organic grocery store right in town, so maybe Steph's dream job of "cashier at an organic grocery store" will actually come true. Anyways, internet is expensive and we have some research to do. I'm going to finish with a new segment of the blog - Quirks of New Zealand. I've mentioned how Rice Krispies are called Rice Bubbles, but there are tons of other strange and quirky things that we've seen here, so I'll include one at the end of every blog.

Quirks of New Zealand #1

They are really into public service announcements here. There's "don't drink and drive", of course, but also "don't drink and fry"(in case you forget your cooking and burn your house down), "don't drive while sleepy", and a really creepy TV campaign about how intersections are dangerous. Good to know I guess.

Akaroa and Lake Tekapo

Our last full day in Christchurch we didn't have anything we had to do, and nothing planned, so we decided to take a day trip out to the town of Akaroa, 1.25 hours southeast. We didn't know much about Akaroa, except that it is French-themed and that you can see dolphins, seals, and penguins there. Any chance of seeing penguins is good enough for me, so off we went. On the way we got our first glimpses of one of the things New Zealand is famous for - sheep. Lots and lots of sheep. Since it is just about the start of spring here, there were lots of cute little lambs jumping around and playing or sticking to their mother's side. "Cute as can be" as Steph would say. We had to pull over a few times to try to get pictures and videos of the tiny little sheep on wobbly legs. any farmers that saw us must find it really odd that tourist are so fascinated by the sheep.

The town of Akaroa is situated on a harbor inside a big peninsula (the Bank's peninsula, to be exact). As you drive there, you climb up a hill and all of a sudden the entire harbor and town is sprawled out before you. It was really cool and notably different than anything we'd seen before. We took the "scenic route" into town and got plenty of great views of the sparkling blue waters and large rolling hills surrounding them. The french theme to the town was immediately evident as soon as we rolled in by the 'le Mini Golf" sign on the side of the road. Besides that, a lot of the street and business names were french, but not much else really came across as very french. Still, the town was really nice with little shops and cafes along the waterfront. The big draw here is the wildlife - you can swim with the smallest and rarest dolphin in the world, the hector dolphin. They also have harbour seals and a colony of little blue penguins. The cool and very windy weather put any swimming out of the question, and the penguin cruises all left too late in the day for us, so we just walked around and checked out some of the shops before heading back to Christchurch. We promised ourselves to make a trip back when it was warmer, so swimming with the dolphins and seeing penguins will have to wait for now.

Yesterday we checked out of our hostel in Christchurch and set off towards the mountains. You can see the snow capped peaks from certain spots in Christchurch, so we were really happy to get a closer look. The drive was through mostly farmlands (a lot more sheep) and the occasional view points of the mountains were beautiful. The only issue we had was the extreme wind. I don't think I've ever experienced wind quite like this. It was blowing our little station wagon all over the place - I can't imagine what the people in campervans and buses were dealing with. At one point (just past the town of Windwhistle) it lifted a cloud of rocks and dust over the road, and we now have about 4 or 5 little nicks in our windshield. Still, we made it into Lake Tekapo safely and were blown away by the turquoise color of the lake. It is one of those glacial-fed lakes where the glacier grinds up the surrounding rock into a powder, which becomes suspended in the lake and creates the turquoise color. Similar to the lakes up in Canada that you often see pics of. The other thing Lake Tekapo is known for is the night sky - it supposedly has the clearest night sky in the southern hemisphere. Unfortunately, we didn't get to see this since it started raining as soon as it got dark. One more excuse to come back I guess.

This morning we are going to take a little hike up to a nearby peak with good views of the lake. We have another 4 or 5 hours of driving ahead of us, as we have a hostel booked in the town of Wanaka for tonight. Wanaka is only an hour or two from Queenstown, so we are getting close! We are on the hostel's computer for now, so we don't have time to upload photos (no such thing as "free Internet" in New Zealand). Maybe we'll suck it up and buy a big chunk tonight at our hostel.

Farewell!

Christchurch, New Zealand

Flying domestically in New Zealand is a breeze - and I mean that both literally and figuratively. Now take this however you want, but we didn't have to show our ID's ONCE when flying from Auckland to Christchurch yesterday. If we hadn't had a couple extra bags to check, we might not have had to talk to another human. You check in at a little kiosk, weigh your bags yourself, put the tags on yourself, and load them onto the converyor belt. When you go through security, you don't have to take off your shoes, hat, or belt. They don't even make you take your computer out of your bag. Everything was going nice and smoothly...that is, until our approach to Christchurch. Just as we were chatting with the Kiwi sitting next to us about the beautiful scenery out of our window, the plane suddently dropped and started bouncing around pretty violently. "Oh yes," he said, "there's the winds." Apparently this was a common thing, but that didn't do much to comfort Steph. She spent the rest of the flight in the fetal position and had to sit in the terminal for a good 15-20 minutes to recover afterwards. After she started feeling better, it was my turn to hyperventilate - we were about to rent a car and thus drive on the left for my first time ever. Yikes. It seems very daunting. It had taken us all of our stay in Auckland to even somewhat get the hang of looking the right way when crossing the street. How was I going to do this? Despite how intimidating it seemed, it truly is a lot easier than it looks. We opted for the maximum insurance, which took a little of the pressure off. We cruised through the country just north of Christchurch in our little Nissan Sunny until I got the hang of it. Steph still has to remind me"stay to the left" every now and then, but I think I got the hang of it...

And I better, because we bought a car last night. There is a car auction place here in town that we'd heard was a good place to buy a car, so we went last night "just to check it out." That turned into "just test driving" a few, which eventually turned into buying a 1996 Subaru Legacy for $2400 (about $1500 USD). Turns out, car auctions are a lot of fun - and then you actually buy one and the panic sets in. What the heck were we doing? We don't know, but we think we got a good deal and the car drove pretty good, so we're just going to cross our fingers and hope for the best. We pick her up in about an hour. Until then, Steph has to learn to drive on the left - and neither of us is all to excited about it. Luckily it's not a big city and there's plenty of country roads nearby with light traffic. Wish us luck...

In other news, we now have cell phones. We went for the prepaid phones on the Telecom network - which is basically the AT&T of New Zealand. In fact, we witnessed our first strike while in Auckland - Telecom workers complaining about low pay or something. This was actually right before we were going to go in to get our phones, and for a while Steph refused because "what if the strikers see us in there?" After they had been gone for a while we went and got our phones. My number is 027 818 0970 and Steph's is 027 818 0971. We get incoming calls for free, so if you have Skype or some other way to call us that doesn't cost you much, feel free to give us a call. Just check the time difference - we are 16 hours ahead of eastern time. Also, we have a mailing address:

Adam Brown

#5278

Nomads Fat Camel Travel Desk

38 Fort Street

Auckland City

New Zealand

Basically they collect our mail and forward it to wherever we are. Care packages with candy or Chick-fil-a sandwiches are welcome. Anyways, we have gotta go pick up our new car!

Weeping willow tree in Christchurch park

Exploring Auckland

We've spent the past couple days exploring Auckland and getting used to life in New Zealand. At first, Auckland seemed new and exciting. Since we have yet to really explore much more than the city center (or centre, as they'd spell it here), it really has turned into your average big city. There are lots of people, shops, Starbucks, the usual. In fact, you really wouldn't know you're in a different country with all the American influences around (the driving on the left thing might tip you off though). There is American television, news, movies, music, food and drink. With regards to the food, everything is a bit different than back home. Rice Krispies are Rice Bubbles, and even though Froot Loops are still Froot Loops, they are a little bigger than normal and taste just a little different. Believe it or not, but Steph has yet to have Starbucks yet, so we'll see if that's any different soon. (We've been using a different coffee shop that has free internet - don't think she's ditched coffee altogether). Despite the abundance of produce that comes from New Zealand, the orange juice is terrible. I couldn't find any without pulp either - blast. Not only that, but the food is expensive here. Powerade bottles - maybe a little more than 20 oz (haven't quite figured out the mL conversion yet) - are like $4.50 (~$3 US). Skittles are $2 ($1.30 US) at the internet cafe I'm at. (Don't you like how my "food" examples are Powerade and Skittles? They're just examples, people). There wasn't a whole lot of choice either, at least not at the grocery store we went to. There was only about a quarter of an aisle of cereal choices, compared to a solid three-quarters back home. For shame. Maybe when we get out in more rural areas or visit different grocery stores it'll be different. We will see.

Back to Auckland. Like I said before, we have successfully opened our bank account here, so we've mostly converted to New Zealand dollars. I say mostly because we only have an debit card, which you can't run as credit over here, so we can't use it online. For now all our online bookings (plane tickets, hotel rooms, etc.) will have to be in good ol' US dollars, which seem to be tanking at the moment, but that's for a whole other blog. Currently we are debating what kind of cell phone plan to get. Let me tell you, this is no easy decision. Evaluating cell phone plans here is like going back 10 years in the States. I guess they don't talk on the phone much, because most plans only include like 30-50 minutes per month. Of course, they are only about $30 ($20 US) per month. We have no idea how much we'll be using our phones, so we may go the prepaid route. It's not really that big of a deal, but we're having a tough time making the decision. Gonna put if off for a few days. Oh, and we have to buy our phones too. Adds to the dilemma.

Today we switched to tourist mode and explored the city a bit. This morning we checked out a couple weekly markets they have around the city - bought some fruit (NZ Jazz apples are my new favorite - they have them at Whole Foods in the US), crepes from the "French-style" market, and sampled some of the often strange concoctions people had cooked up. It seems there are a lot of different ethnicities here in the city - there are a LOT of asians, plus a lot of Kebab stands, and seemingly a lot of Turkish food. It's a melting pot, if you will. Afterwards we went to the Auckland Domain, which is a huge park in the middle of city which also is the site of the Auckland Museum. We wanted to visit the museum to learn more about New Zealand and its past - especially the native Maori people. If you're playing along at home, I believe it's pronounced "Maudree" - "mau" rhymes with "now". Don't hold me to that. Anyways, we saw some really cool artifacts from the Maori and other Polynesian peoples as well as learned about the natural and cultural history of New Zealand. It was really cool, and since a couple hours in any museum is getting a bit much, at least we were smack in the middle of a big park. We took a little break afterwards and sat on a big green hill (eating our NZ Jazz apples) and watched a cricket game. For the life of me I can't figure out that game. It's a strange one. Speaking of games that I don't understand, there is a HUGE rugby game tonight - between the New Zealand All Blacks and the Australian Wallabies. You can imagine this is a big deal around here, and it's all you hear about on the news. Steph and I are hoping to catch the game at one of the many pubs around here, where hopefully someone can explain to us what is going on. Anyways...GO ALL BLACKS!

The plan from here is to spend two more days in Auckland before flying down to Christchurch in the South Island. The idea there is that it will be a good place to buy a cheap car and hopefully a lot easier place to learn to drive it. There are too many strange turning lanes and rules around here to add to the confusion of driving on the left side. Then we'll do a mini-tour of the South Island before heading to Queenstown, where we plan to settle down and get jobs. In the meantime, we'll explore Auckland a bit more. It's a pretty big city with lots of options for day trips, so we'll do a bit of research and find something fun to do, at least before we go off and get lame part-time jobs in some beautiful mountainside resort town...it's horrible I know. We'll get by.

Sky Tower at dusk from our balcony

Maori statues

Cricket game in Auckland Domain

Fiji pictures are up!

Sorry to say that we didn't take that many pics at Fiji, unfortunately. I did take a good amount with my underwater camera, though. Most of these turned out blurry, but some came out good - especially a couple shark pictures.

CORRECTION: Found the shark video! Check it out below...

Lagoon at Kuata Nature Resort

Oriental Sweetlips

Fiji to New Zealand

Kia Ora from Auckland, New Zealand! After almost a solid year of planning and saving, we have finally arrived in New Zealand. Not to be cheesy, but the moment the plane landed I knew that we had made the right choice and that we were going to love New Zealand. Ok, that was cheesy... Before describing New Zealand, lets backtrack a bit to Fiji. Ah yes, Fiji...

Bula! Everyone in Fiji says Bula! (with enthusiasm, too). It basically means a warm hello, but they seem to say it all the time in all sorts of situations. When you arrive at a resort in Fiji, at least in the Yasawa Islands that we were visiting, the resort staff play guitar and sing you an arrival song, at the end of which they yell BULA! and you yell back BULA! They sing to you on the way out too, as well as during meals. There is a lot of singing in Fiji.

As Steph said in the last post, we stayed at Octopus Resort for 5 nights so I could get my Scuba certification. While doing that, I had 4 open water dives in the reefs just off the island. During these dives, I saw white-tip reef sharks sleeping on the sandy bottom, a giant sea turtle hiding out under a rock (like 4 feet wide), big lobsters, lionfish, clown fish (Nemo), and all sorts of fish of crazy shapes and colors. Not to mention the beautiful soft and hard corals that my dive instructor pointed out. She loved to point out these tiny little sea slugs that were beautiful bright colors called nudibranches. She also pointed out this reddish hard coral that when you touched it, the entire piece of coral turned snow white - they call it ghost coral. The good thing about Fiji, or at least these islands, is that most of this stuff you can see on the reefs right off the beach. The water was so clear and there were so many colorful fish that you literally felt like you were in an aquarium. In fact, there was this fish in an aquarium in Vegas that had a horn-looking thing coming out of his head. I remember thinking "I've never seen a fish like that before." Sure enough, we saw loads of them right along the beach in Fiji. Awesome.

As Steph said, despite our incredible run of weather in the states, we didn't have great weather in Fiji. It didn't rain that much (mainly at night), but it was cloudy a lot and really windy. It wasn't all that hot so unless the sun was out, it was pretty cold to get in the water. Lucky there were lots of other travelers to talk to. We made good friends with the German couple that Steph mentioned. We met a guy from Atlanta that works with my parents next door neighbor. We met people from England, Australia, Wales, but suprisingly no Kiwis. The resort was really nice and the food was great. There was one small problem - we got sick. Neither of us have been sick in years, yet of course get sick while we're in Fiji. Go figure. It started with me and a slight fever and cough. I didn't let this keep me from my scuba stuff, but I guess I passed it to Steph, who of course got the brunt of it. Fever, headache, cough, nausea, soreness...5 days later she's still feeling it. Anyways, that will just give us one more excuse to go back.

Despite being sick, we still had to travel to the northern part of the chain to Safe Landing resort for our last night in the Yasawas. Rough seas did not help Steph's sickness (who knew?), and she was even worse off during our stay there. She toughened up our last morning and we took a trip to some famous caves in the area. We started out by swimming out into this little clearing with huge rock walls on all sides. Apparently a scene from the movie Blue Lagoon was filmed here. Then, it got really interesting. You had to swim underwater under a little wall to get into this cave. I went first and came up in a pitch black tunnel with barely enough room for your head and only the guide's flashlight guiding the way. Steph came next, popped up, and was firmly griping onto the guide for comfort. She looked at me and you could just see the gears turning in her head. She screamed! Apparently she thought the guide that she was hanging onto was me! After calming her down, we had a nice swim through this dark, creepy cave. There were a couple spots where a little sunlight could make it in, reflecting cool patterns on the cave walls. Once the guide told us there were bats in the cave sometimes, it was time for Steph to go. All in all a really cool experience and really impressed how well Steph handled it - I don't think she knew what she was signing up for!

If you asked us a couple days before leaving Fiji, we would have said we're so ready to leave and get to New Zealand. Not that Fiji wasn't great, but we were dirty and a little cold and the skies were overcast. Then, the weather turned. When the sun comes out, the waters completely change colors and all the blues and turquises come out and it is truly stunning. The last two days the weather was brilliant and we were suddenly really sad to be leaving Fiji. Despite that, we are really excited to finally be in New Zealand. So far, Auckland reminds me a lot of Seattle and Portland. Everything is green, clean, and beautiful. We have a great view of the harbor and the Sky Tower from our hotel room on the 23rd floor. Today we opened our bank account here and hopefully we'll get cell phones tonight or tomorrow. Right now we are about to go grocery shopping so we can make dinner in our room (we have a full kitchen - nice!). We're at an internet cafe, so I'm not sure how to upload photos from Fiji, but we will soon. Hope everything is well. Talk to ya soon!

Bula from Fiji!

We just have a few minutes on the internet, but we thought we would try to do a quick post. We made it to Fiji (the flight wasn't so bad) and are having a great time. The beach and water here is beautiful - the water is crystal clear and the snorkeling is awesome. There is coral in every color you could imagine, lots of colorful fish, and we even saw an octopus. The first resort we stayed at was pretty basic (it was a little like camping in a hut), but it was still really cool. It was village owned and the money they make goes to build and keep up the school, church, and community center. We stayed there a couple of nights and are now at our nicest resort for 5 nights so that Adam can get Scuba certified. This resort is great with lots of good food, massages, and hot showers...but so far since we have got here we haven't had much sunshine. Today it looks like the sun is starting to peak through, so keep your fingers crossed!

We have met a good many people from Europe that are doing the same type thing that we are, so we have got to hear all their stories. Yesterday we met a couple from Germany that spent a year in NZ in the same town we are thinking about living. They said they loved it which made us a lot more excited to get there.

Time is up on the internet...Talk to ya soon!

Farewell America

In a mere three hours Steph and I will be boarding our flight to Fiji and out of the US for who knows how long. We've had a great stay with my cousin Betsy in her awesome house here in LA. Despite no celebrity sightings, we've pretty much seen the majority of what there is to see in this massive city - minus the beach. We also got a chance to spend a little with Steph's Uncle Bean, who also lives in LA. He and his wife Sanita (spelling?) took us to a restaurant in ThaiTown. Despite being the only white people there, it was a great meal and we topped it off with some tasty Thai desserts from a girl who literally had her stand set up in a parking garage. Needless to say it was a little different experience.

I know I promised some rankings of the things we did and saw on our road trip, but there is simply no time (we always seem to wait until the last minute for things). Maybe if we can find internet in the airport... but probably not. We are also not sure if we will get internet while in Fiji, so it could be a while until you hear from us. But worry not, I'm sure we'll be doing just fine on a little island in the South Pacific. In fact consider it a good thing if you don't here from us. Also, our cell phones are set to shut off in a couple days, so don't bother calling us. We're basically trying to get away from all of you, so don't try to contact us. Only kidding of course, we will call/email/blog when we get a chance in New Zealand.

Farewell!

SoCal

It seems consecutive daily posts didn't happen after all. Oh well...

Wednesday we were still trying to recover from that 20-mile hike in Yosemite. In the meantime, we wanted to go up to Sequoia and Kings Canyon NP's to see the giant forests. We made it up the mile-high hill into the Giant Forest of Sequoia before the Jimmy had had enough and just spazzed out. It was hissing and gurgling and spewing antifreeze everywhere (broken record, I know). This time it kinda freaked us out pretty bad so we gave it a while to chill and ate lunch under an "averaged-sized" giant sequoia. The Sentinel, as it is called, is actually incredibly huge, but not nearly as large as some of the other sequoias in the park. Unfortunately we didn't get to see any of these since we headed straight back to town, but it was cool to see the few giants that we did.

Eventually we figured out that the Jimmy didn't leak unless the engine got up to a certain temperature. We were able to keep it pretty cool the way back (all downhill) and kept the leaking to a minimum. The next morning we took it over to a repair shop near our hotel. $500 for a new water pump (what was leaking), hoses, and belt. I opted out of the hoses and belt and got the cost down to about $300. We hate to put that much money into a car we'll use 2 more days for the next year, but we didn't exactly want to put Steph's brothers in any worse of a situation than we have to (they are driving it back to Georgia for us). After all, there are plenty of bald tires and squeaky suspensions for them to worry about.

With the Jimmy fixed and ready to roll, it was on to Los Angeles for our last 2 nights in the country at my cousin Betsy's house. We were greeted upon arrival with incessant barking from her dog Christmas. The past day we've been working on arranging the car, packing our stuff, and seeing the obligatory tourist spots in LA. We've seen the Hollywood stars, Grauman's Chinese theatre, Kodak theatre, Hollywood sign - the whole nine yards. Despite our best efforts, though, we have yet to spot a celebrity. Still time though...

Tomorrow we conclude our 27-day journey across the US, and we're actually pretty exhausted. If only we could have a week or so vacation... oh right, we're going to Fiji for 9 nights. I suppose that will do. Final road trip post and special edition countrywide rankings to follow before we leave...

Vegas through Yosemite

Once again it's been a while since our last post, so we've got a lot of ground to cover here. Where were we? Ah yes, we were about to leave Vegas. On our last night there, Steph's uncle Ryan and his wife decided to take us out to dinner and down to the strip to "see the lights." After a good dinner at a Thai restaurant, they seemed a bit hurried to get downtown. It wasn't until the car ride down there that I started to put two-and-two together. Why are we in a rush? Especially since it'll be light outside for a couple more hours - what lights are we going to see? It was then that I realized that Jerry Seinfeld was in town for 2 nights only and Steph's aunt and uncle are also big fans. Sure enough they had gotten us all tickets, which was a sweet surprise for me. Seinfeld was of course great and the guy that opened for him, Tom Papa, was hilarious. Perfect last night in Vegas.

The next morning we cleaned and re-organized the Jimmy and headed off towards Death Valley. I am seriously wondering why this place is a national park. I mean, its pretty cool - lowest elevation in the country, interesting landscape, but come on. It's not like the place needs conservation from development or something. One of the factoids they give you is that it has more abandoned mines than any other national park. Really? Not only that, it was 125 degrees. No joke. It was ridiculous. I was happy to see it and experience it, then happy to get the heck out of there. We camped that night at Brown's Town campground in Bishop, CA (couldn't pass up a name like that).

As we drove up the hill to Yosemite the next day, we noticed a burning smell so, being totally paranoid about the car, pulled over to check it out. Of course the smell was the brakes of the cars coming down the hill, but while pulled over we noticed what looked like oil spewing out the bottom of the Jimmy. Oh great. I coaxed it back down the hill and ended up at a little auto shop being run by the most stereotypical Californian dude - complete with Ray Ban's and all. Nothing was leaking out anymore at this point, but they took a look at it and told me it was antifreeze. No, I assured them, I was sure it was oil. I guess the mechanic is used to dumb car owners so didn't exactly take my word for it - he was sticking with antifreeze and said to keep an eye on it. Unable to convince him that I'm not an idiot, I said OK and moved on. As it turns out, the car was running pretty hot again today and I noticed the leak again and it was antifreeze after all - oops! Anyways, on to Yosemite.

We found a campsite at Porcupine Flats campground, which was a good site despite no running water (much to Steph's chagrin). We spent the first afternoon exploring the upper part of the park - which is supposed to be the lesser visited areas. I guess this doesn't apply in the middle of summer. Just about every parking spot and pullout and any other place you could park a car was pretty much full. A lot of those were climbers taking advantage of the abundance of rocky slopes and cliffs the park has to offer. We checked out Tuolumne Meadows and I took a brief swim in the not-too-cold mountainside Tenaya Lake. Since we had the entire next day free, we decided to find a nice, long hike down into the valley where all action is. Despite the park ranger at the visitor center warning us that we couldn't possibly do it in one day, we decided on a 16 mile trek with the option to do a 4 mile add-on to the top of Half-Dome. Steph was actually all about this thing and woke up at 5 am in the pitch dark and 34 degree temperatures to get ready. We hit the trail at 5 til 6 and were off. Other than Steph wheezing as we went up the first hill, we made really good time and made it the 10 miles to the Half-Dome trail by about 10:30am. Since it was only 2 miles each way from here, how could we not do it? Turns out, there is 1800 feet elevation gain in those 2 miles, and the last bit you literally pull yourself up an extremely steep, bald granite face with a big steel cable. Not only this, but it is also an extremely popular day hike. We had to sit and wait for a few minutes at the steepest part of the slope - not a good place for a traffic jam. It ended up taking us about 3 and a half hours to make it up there and back, which gave us about 3 hours to make it the last 6.2 miles to the valley floor so we could catch the one and only shuttle back up to our car. This seems easy since it was all downhill, but after about 10 miles of it, even downhill can be pretty hard. By the time we got to the bottom we were hurting all over and of course had run out of water. Still, we made it all 20 miles in about 10 hours total. If we weren't so tired and sore we might have gone and rubbed it in that ranger's face. Needless to say we went to bed early that night.

We got up this morning and were so sore and tired that we basically packed up and took the quickest route to our hotel about 3 hours away in Tulare, CA. Yosemite was beautiful and we hadn't gotten to see much from the valley floor, but you just can't get in between Steph and a hot shower after she'd hiked 20 miles the day before. Tomorrow we'll drive up to Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks to check out some big trees. We don't plan to do much hiking. We have a hotel room tomorrow night too, so we should get consecutive posts for once. All pictures are uploaded to Picassa.

Lowest point in US - also 125 degrees

Tenaya Lake in Yosemite NP

Steph at top of Cloud's Rest - Half Dome is on left side