Travel Photo Friday: Yosemite National Park, California

From the archives.

In 2007 we lived in Walnut Creek, California, which is about an hour (maybe a bit longer) away from one of the Yosemite entrances. We went there for one night with another couple in April. It was cold and rainy! And we could hear bears in the campground at night. I didn't sleep a wink. Gorgeous scenery though and I'd like to go back some day with Muffin.

Photo Friday is hosted by DeliciousBaby.com.

I Booked a Vacation

It may not seem like much, but this is a big deal for me. Mike's been on several work trips since we arrived last November, but Muffin and I have been in H'bad nonstop since Day One. Summer is almost over so we're running out of time to take a summer vacation. And for some reason it just seems physically and mentally difficult to book a trip within India, so I'm proud of my accomplishment.

We are going to a somewhat remote area that doesn't have online booking for hotels and has very little online information about hotels there in general. Every site that popped up had the exact same wording copy/pasted. Some sites call the region by its colonial name and some call it by its Indian name and it took me about a week to sort that out and realize everything I was looking at actually was in the same place. I contacted some travel agents for help and they all directed me to the Andhra Pradesh Tourism Development Corporation (APTDC). Their website offers friendly online booking for hotels, but really what you do is fill out a form, then exchange many emails back and forth, then end up going into town to visit the office in person before you get some specific questions answered. They wanted to sell me a standard package tour, but in all my Google searches I'd actually been able to narrow down the names of some hotels and activities we wanted.

Visiting the office in person was kind of a drag and took longer than expected, but ended up getting me what I wanted. The woman I'd been emailing with was there and she helped me quite a bit. It was easier for me to watch her sit on the phone with the different hotels, relay the room options to me, and let me make the decisions rather than me call the different hotels and have language barrier issues and/or email back and forth with her several times. She could also advise which activities we wanted to do were close to which hotels, helping me put together an itinerary that involves as little time in the car as possible. And she booked the car for us, along with the hotels.

(Yes, more than one hotel. Unfortunately the jungle camp I really wanted only had a cabin available for one night; my new APTDC helper-friend negotiated the same price, though, for a luxury suite at a hotel for the remaining nights. We'll see how "luxury" it really is, but we're not too picky. After one night in the jungle camp with Muffin, maybe we'll be ready to have an additional star or two added to our accommodations.)

We've done a lot of traveling with Muffin, but it was all for ending up here in H'bad. This will be our first vacation with her. She adds another level of complication to the trip. I have no idea how to pack for her. Lots of diapers I guess. And socks, since it will be quite a bit cooler there than it is here. She's never worn shoes and I can't find any in this city that fit her, so hopefully thick socks will be warm enough.

In about two weeks, we'll be headed for the hills.

Fifth Day of Climbing

14 Feb -- 5th day of climbing
Sitting in Barafu Camp, resting up for the final ascent. We’ll wake up around 11:00 pm and start climbing by midnight.

Day 3 – Shira Camp (3,840m/12,600ft) to Lava Tower (4,630m/15,190ft) to Barranco Camp (3,950m/12,960ft), 15 km

Angela decided to throw in the towel. We set off for my birthday trek to Lava Tower and she set off for the ranger station for a ride into town.

The trek up was long. After lunch the first part of the trek down was steep, rocky, slippery, cold, and damp. I did not have fun. Then the terrain got flatter.

Mike had the porters sing "Happy Birthday" to me and they ate all my chocolate.

Valley after the Lava Tower descent

Day 4 – Barranco Camp (3,950m/12,960ft) to Karanga Camp (4,200m/13,780ft), 7 km

Steep climb with some scary rock scrambling. Up and down ridges, hard but a fairly short day. Arrived in camp early afternoon and burst into tears, coming down from the adrenaline of the rocky trek.

Day 5 – Karanga Camp (4,200m/13,780ft) to Barafu Camp (4,550m/14,930ft), 13 km

Very short day, but I think steepest so far. Up a gravely ridge, then flat, then up again to highest and most barren campsite. Windy, but toasty in the tent when the sun is out. Arrived around 11:00 am. Lunch was served at 1:00 pm. I’m losing my appetite for camp food but eating as much as I can. The fresh fruit is good.

As Tina Fey said to the writers on 30 Rock, "We as a group don’t smell so great.” I’m a little tired of being dirty, but it must be done.

Having mild headaches that up until today went away as soon as I stopped to rest. Felt weak on the trek today. Drinking plenty of water. Taking an Aleve and a multivitamin with snack every afternoon.

This morning when we started I realized that in 24 hours I’ll be at the summit.

See photos on flickr

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post. 

Second Day of Climbing

I'm typing up my notes from the trip and posting them with just some light editing. Each day will be a new post.

11 Feb 2009 -- 2nd day of climbing

Yesterday was long. Something was mixed up with our tents and porters so we started with another group and met our guide at camp. Walked with an Australian girl who lives in Boston and two girls from Denmark.


Machame Gate, the very beginning

It started to rain toward the last hour which made us kind of miserable. But tea, popcorn, and dinner by candlelight cheered us up. Angela’s having a tough time and not having fun. We and the guide (Malisa) are trying to convince her to keep going, one day at a time.

Tuesday night slept surprisingly well. Woke up at 2 am to go to the bathroom and the full moon over the campsite was gorgeous.

Wednesday was a shorter hike, 9 km, but very steep. We went up,up, up, then down a couple hundred meters to rest and sleep at the lower attitude. I have a very mild headache that comes and goes. It might be from the cold. I’m drinking tons of water.

Shira Camp, end of day 2

See photos on flickr.

Day 1: Machame Gate (1,290m/4,890ft) to Machame Camp (2,980m/9,780 ft), 18km

Day 2: Machame Camp (2,980m/9,780 ft) to Shira Camp (3,840m/12,600ft), 9km

I Achieve 24 Hours in Nature

We made it! As Mike told my dad, nature threw its shallowest streams and lightest rains at us and we prevailed. It was a hard hike with a heavy pack and using trekking poles for the first time. But all the equipment worked and we stayed warm and dry all night long.

The scenery was gorgeous. I wish I hadn't been so afraid of falling in the river so I could have enjoyed it a bit more. The trail is little-used and not blazed. You basically go upriver to the falls and downriver to the parking lot. The trail goes along the river, then abruptly ends, and you have to wander around in the river a bit, sometimes crossing it, to find the trail again. This happens several times.

Once I got my feet wet and got over not wanting to get them wet, the hike was a bit easier. After a while I figured out how to use the poles to my advantage, too. And while my pack wasn't so uncomfortable that it made me sore, it was heavy enough to change my center of balance and I was still struggling with that on the hike out this morning. Balance isn't my strong point anyway.

Mike has a new camp stove, and it was awesome. We fried potatoes and onions last night and heated up sausage and beans. It was such a good camping dinner. This morning we made hot cereal and Mike tried out a new doodad that turns his waterbottle into a coffeepot. It was great.

Now we are lounging at home, exhausted now that we've had the chance to stop and think about it. But I'm glad I did this night out in the woods. It was a good test of our gear and it made me even more eager to climb Kilimanjaro.

We forgot the battery for the camera, so there's no photographic evidence of our trip, unfortunately.

Off we go

Just a quick cup of joe before we head out to St. Mary's Wilderness in George Washington National Forest. This is my first attempt at backpack camping. My pack's kind of heavy and I haven't even added all my snacks yet. But I have to do this in order to find out if I can do it for Kilimanjaro.

We Attempt Camping

The 2-person tent we bought for Kilimanjaro.

On Friday afternoon we packed up and met some friends at the Big Meadows campground in Shenandoah National Park. It was hot and muggy in D.C., but cooler and crisp in the mountains. The weekend started off great with relatively no traffic and easy tent set-up. We got the fire started and ate lots of yummy camping food. We drank and chatted around the fire. It was not raining and not freezing, so sleeping in a tent was much more enjoyable than the last time I camped.

Saturday dawned warm and sunny. Mike and I were up first and went for a short walk. The deer have lost most of their fear of humans in the campground and they wander through at all times of day. The ones with fawns are a little more cautious though, and about a mile from the campground I saw a doe and the littlest fawn I've ever seen. It looked small enough to scoop up in my arms. When we got back from our walk everyone else was up and we fired up the grill again to cook breakfast. More unhealthy, but totally delicious, camping food.



No spatula? Try a hatchet.

Our mission for the day was to hike to a waterfall and then splash around and swim in the water. We hiked and hiked and it was getting warmer. We got to the falls... and you couldn't go in. First, there was no access to the water. You watched the falls from an observation platform. Second, there were signs up all along the trail that the water is contaminated so don't go in it.

The hike back to camp was uphill and the weather seemed even hotter and more humid than the walk down. We could hear thunder rumbling in the distance and tried to remain optimistic that storms would go around us. Tensions were starting to rise between the six of us. I was trying to power through the negatives (heat, no waterfall swimming, bugs) because I'm keeping my Kilimanjaro objective in mind and was trying to stay in the spirit of "Well, that's camping".

After a lunch of sandwiches we decided to check out the visitors' center. We had nothing else to do for the afternoon and it looked like a shower was headed our way, so some time indoors wouldn't be the end of the world. We bought a couple bottles of wine there and popped into the restaurant for a snack while a wicked thunderstorm raged outside. But the storm passed and the sun came out and we began to think that maybe the worst was behind us and the evening wouldn't be a rainout.

Nope. Another storm came through once we were back at the campsite and the area totally flooded. A thick fog rolled in and we could barely see each others' tents. The wind blew the rain sideways into the shade screen we'd set up over the table. The three wives retreated to cars for the worst of the rain. Thunder clapped and lightning flashed all around us. It just wasn't pleasant any more and the tension between some of the husbands and wives was getting thicker.

But just as quickly as it came, that storm blew out too and the sun came back. Someone in our group walked up to the ranger station for the evening weather report. Four or five more hours of the same kind of passing storms. That's it. Time to pack up. It was about 5:30 Saturday afternoon. It looked like we'd be spending the night in our individual tents or cars rather than sitting around the fire chatting and drinking, so it seemed pointless to stay just for the sake of it. We packed up during the brief dry spell and left just as the next storm started spitting rain on us again.

For the record, I told Mike that I would have toughed it out through the rain if that's what the group consensus had been. But I was also happy to be clean, warm, and dry and in my own bed by 10:00 that night.


Just before the downpour started.

More photos on flickr.