Tag: hiking

Revisiting New Zealand

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Darlene and I joined her sister Shel and Diane, Regina, Rochelle, Lori, Brianna and Rachel on a trip to New Zealand this past month.  Darlene and I had both visited New Zealand before but individually, before we met.  Rachel, Darlene and I flew out to meet the others in the South Island, in Christchurch and Rachel got her first experience on electric scooters.  From there we drove to Akaroa for a boat cruise looking for dolphins and other wildlife.  We continued down the Otago coast hitting up the very cool Elephant Rocks near Oamaru and the Moeraki Boulders on our way to Dunedin.  We stayed several nights in Dunedin, visiting sights like Tunnel Beach, Larnach Castle and Toitu Otago Settlers Museum.  We also did a bit of hiking, saw the glowworms at Nicols Creek, visited the Royal Albatross Centre and got to spy on both the Yellow Eyed and little Blue penguins in the wild.

We continued on to Queenstown, where we enjoyed a steamship cruise to Walter Peak sheep farm for a BBQ dinner and sheep shearing demo.  We took in the views via the gondola to Bob’s Peak and had a blast riding the wheeled toboggans down the Queenstown Luge.  We visited an ice bar (and lots of shops) in town, I spent a day biking around Lake Wakatipu while everyone else went zip-lining in Glenorchy.

At this point, we split up with some of the group heading home and others continuing on to the west coast.  Darlene and I stayed a couple more days in Queenstown doing some hiking before heading south to Te Anau.  Some late winter weather closed the road to Milford Sound for a day or two but luckily the weather cleared up again and we were able to make a day trip from Te Anau with lots of stops to enjoy all the waterfalls and snow-covered mountain views both along the road as well as in Milford Sound on an afternoon boat cruise. The day was only marred by an attack of Kea birds damaging our rental car while we waited our turn to pass through the tunnel.

After Te Anau, we continued our road trip to the south coast and the Catlins region, stopping off at Gemstone Beach (we came away empty-handed) and lost the afternoon in Invercargill dealing with a damaged tire (unrelated to the Kea birds) and swapping out our car rental.  As a result, we arrived after sunset at our somewhat remote accommodation (Mohua Park, lots of dirt roads to get there but oh so worth it) and we were still blown away by the gorgeous setting in the hills, surrounded by a sheep farm.  As nice as the location was though, we spent our two days there out exploring and hiking along the Catlins coast.

From there we headed back north, all the way to Aoraki and Mt. Cook Village where we spent a couple of days enjoying fantastic hikes both below and partway up the surrounding mountains.  We also managed to book a helicopter sightseeing tour when we saw the weather was likely going to clear – it was a spectacular flight on a gorgeous day, soaring among the peaks of the “Southern Alps” and landing on one of the glaciers.

After a long drive back to Christchurch, we took an evening flight to reach Auckland on the North Island.  From Auckland, we set out for the Hobbiton Movie Set near Matamata, stopping off at a surprisingly creative and captivating botanical garden, the Hamilton Gardens.  The Hobbiton afternoon tour, dinner banquet and night walk was all really great and we were incredibly impressed by everything they’ve done and how well it’s maintained and presented.

We filled the following day with a couple of cave tours in Waitomo to see cool cave formations and more of the famous New Zealand “glow worms” as well as a visit to a bird sanctuary where we could see nocturnal kiwis among other native New Zealand birds, albeit in captivity.  With our last day and a half in Auckland, we enjoyed the Weta Workshop tour, went up the Sky Tower, rode scooters out to Mount Eden for the city view, tried our hand at a couple of escape rooms and explored an amusing “sensory maze” experience.  But then it was time to fly home again… until next time!

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Backpacking into Desolation Wilderness

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Darlene and I went for a short backpacking trip into the southwest corner of Desolation Wilderness (near Lake Tahoe), camping a couple of nights at Twin Lakes.  We had nice weather except for the heavy and unrelenting winds each night.  We spent our layover day making our way cross-country over and up to a nearby peak.  Darlene chose to take a nice nap at the saddle, while I finished the climb up to the top for some tremendous views.

 

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Sightseeing in Switzerland

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Just another dramatic backdrop in Mürren

Topping off our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I flew from Stockholm to Geneva to spend three weeks traipsing around Switzerland in June.  In Geneva, we walked around and rented electric scooters over a couple of days.  One day we took a train to walk around the medieval town of Annecy in France.  After that we were off to the other side of Lake Geneva to visit Lausanne, Vevey and Montreux – checking out the Olympic Museum, the wonderful Chaplin World and the historic castle Château de Chillon.

10-minute video montage of highlights from our time in Switzerland

Then we were off to stay a couple of nights in the tiny walled medieval town of Gruyéres – known of course for its cheese and fondue.  We visited the castle museum there and the surprisingly extensive HR Eiger museum.  We also enjoyed tours at the cheese factory La Maison du Gruyére and the chocolate factory Maison Cailler in Broc.

Continuing on, we spent a few hours in Bern after dropped off our rental car to continue by train to the main attraction for our trip, the Jungfrau region.  We broke it up by spending four nights in Wengen, three nights in Grindelwald and two nights in Mürren.  With so much to see and experience in the region and so many tremendous vistas in every direction, we could have happily spent many more days exploring the area and following the many hiking and biking trails – and perhaps we’ll come back someday to try out the many ski areas.

Staubbach Falls in Lauterbrunnen valley
Hiking towards Jungfrau peak

Besides gawking at all the incredible views every which way, some of the other highlights of the Jungfrau region were seeing the thunderous subterranean Trümmelbach Falls, ascending to Jungfraujoch and traversing across the top of the Aletsch Glacier, walking through the Grindelwald Glacier Gorge, hiking beneath the peaks of Eiger and Mönch, visiting Schilthorn peak and the Piz Gloria above Mürren and taking a side excursion into the St. Beatus-Höhlen cave system near Interloken.

The view among the wildflowers looking up to Eiger and Mönch.

After the Jungfrau region, we traveled to Zurich, stopping mid-day to see some sights in Lucerne.  We had three nights in Zurich and wandered about a bit.  We missed out on getting a tour through the Lindt Home of Chocolate (d’oh!) but our day excursion to go see the amazing Rheinfall (Rhine Falls) was so worth it.

There’s still lots more we haven’t seen of Switzerland and so I’d love to go back – and maybe in winter for some skiing in the Alps!

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Exploring Sweden

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View from Skulebergets nature reserve along the High Coast

Continuing our extended Europe trip, Darlene and I crossed over from Copenhagen into Sweden in mid-May.  We had two weeks to explore a bit of Sweden, starting in Malmö.  We visited several connected museums in Malmö before venturing out to the southern coast to see the standing stones at Ales Stenar.  After Malmö, we made our way north along the west coast, stopping in Helsingborg, staying overnight in Falkenberg, visiting Tjolöholm Castle and an automobile/aviation museum before reaching Gothenburg where we spent three days exploring the city via foot, bicycle and canal tour.

4–minute video montage of our trip

After Gothenburg, we left the west coast to traverse across the country and north to the more remote High Coast region of Sweden, stopping along the way at a castle, Läckö Slott (apparently just missing the one daily midday tour) but then overnighting in Skultuna.  Our destination was the city of Örnsköldsvik, from where we went hiking in Skuleskogen National Park, kayaking in the bay, climbing up Skulebergets and touring the coast.


Our last five days were spent in Stockholm, walking and/or electric scooting around the city, visiting several museums, including the spectacular Vasa museum which houses the world’s best preserved 17th century ship – raised and recovered from the harbor sea floor.

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White Sands National Park

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Onward to White Sands National Park in New Mexico – the world’s largest gypsum dune field.  We spent a few hours hiking around and taking pictures.  The fine gypsum feels nice and cool underfoot – it doesn’t heat up in the sun like sand.

I had hoped to also visit the Trinity test site but it’s open to visitors only two days each year (once in April and once in October) due to the site being part of the active White Sands Missile Range. We left the park an hour or two before sunset to find a nice dispersed campsite beyond the next little range of mountains:

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Carlsbad Caverns

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Continuing on our return trip, next stop was Guadalupe Mountains National Park in Texas near the New Mexico border.  We checked out the visitor center and went for a hike in the afternoon before continuing on to camp on some BLM land in New Mexico near Carlsbad Caverns National Park.  The following day was of course to visit Carlsbad Caverns.

We bought tickets for the self-guided tour and spent several hours enjoying and following the extensive walking paths of the cave system.  There are ranger-led tours to some more isolated portions of the cave but these are very limited and get booked up well in advance.  After exploring the cave at our leisure and having lunch back in the van, we waited around to join the ranger-hosted twilight event to learn about the bats that use the cave for much of the year and to wait for their grand, swarming, evening exit from the cave.  No photography allowed (or any devices or talking for that matter) but we did get to watch many hundreds stream out.  Apparently at later times of the year, you can see many hundreds of thousands of bats exit the cave.

We camped on some more BLM land that evening but woke the next day to a forecast for severe high wind and dust storm expected for hundreds of miles in every direction later that day.  We had already planned to restock food in the town of Carlsbad so we ended up just renting a hotel room in Carlsbad to sit out the storm.

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Big Bend National Park

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On our return trip from watching the eclipse in Central Texas, Darlene and I first headed to the southwest edge of Texas to spend a few days exploring Big Bend National Park along the Mexico border.


We didn’t have campground reservations and of course everything in the park was booked out for weeks but we were able to snag backcountry sites which you can only reserve in-person 24 hours in advance.  These are a handful of very dispersed but specifically designated sites along some of the unpaved back roads.  Know that some of these roads require high clearance 4×4 vehicles and some of the sites are very remote, requiring hours to reach.  We actually chose not to take one of these sites because we didn’t want to have to spend so much time to get to it and from it.  As it turned out though, we spent over an hour trying to get to a camp area outside the north end of the park.  In hindsight, we should have looked to find a campground out the more built-up west entrance of the park.

Anyway, we spent three full days hiking, biking and touring very different areas of the park, from desert to mountains and along the Rio Grande.  If you go, make sure you don’t skip out on the really well done Fossil Discovery Exhibit.

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Petrified Forest National Park

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On our way to Texas to see the eclipse, we enjoyed an afternoon checking out the Petrified Forest National Park in Arizona: lots of wide vistas and pretty landscapes, some pueblo ruins and petroglyphs, Triassic era fossils and of course lots of colorful “rockified” (okay, petrified) tree remains everywhere.

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