Kauai Adventure

I’m not sure Elizabeth and I were prepared for how quickly the whole thing would pass by. I’m talking about the wedding, not the honeymoon. Oh trust me, I’ll get to the honeymoon. We had been engaged for a year and a half, had plenty of time to prepare everything, the wedding weekend would be a walk in the park right? In hind sight, it was a walk in the park as everyone, friends and family included, were unbelievably helpful. However, in the moment, things past by like a bullet train headed for the 4^th of July. It was the best day of my life! And interestingly enough, with each passing day from the wedding; the memories of the day seem to get better and better… I’m no love expert but I feel like we done-did something right then.

The wedding weekend quickly came and past. We blinked and it was over but at the same time just beginning. Liz and I had the first flight out of Indy to Phoenix on Monday morning. We then flew the too many hour long flight to Kauai. Lets get it started up in herr.

DAY 1 – CHICKENS AND MAI TAIS

We got off our flight and located our locally rented rental car. It was a smoking hot 2001, white Hyundai Accent. We had to walk through a few roosters to get to the car. We chuckled, thought of the character Hay-Hay from Moana and thought “oh what a funny one time experience that was ha ha ha”… WRONG. We had no clue that roosters had taken over the island. They were everywhere for the whole week. You couldn’t always see them, but you can hear them… especially at 3 am.

Here’s a picture of Grandma, our smoking hot 2001 Accent with no power windows. It did have power steering and could dominate the intense Kauai terrain! We also blended right in with the local crowd. All the tourists who use Hertz or Enterprise get fancy Mustangs or Cadillacs but we had Grandma!

We stopped into a restaurant called Lemongrass on our way up to our condo. I was heavily influenced by the sign which read something to the extent of “Happy Hour 4-5 pm Come drink lots”… Okay, okay, it didn’t say exactly that but that’s how I read it in my mind. I looked at Grandma’s faded time and it was 3:53. I made a squeeling turn decision to stop for food there. Liz was very happy with my driving so far! We had our first Mai Tai’s and dinner which were both amazing! Goodness did it feel great to sit with no where else to go, or anything to get done. Let the good times role.

DAY 2 – TO THE WEST

We got up early on Tuesday to make our way to the rigorous west side of the island. It was a two-hour drive and we were nearly circling the entire island to get there. Picture driving clockwise from 1 o’clock to 10 o’clock on a analog clock. That’s what we did. It would have been quicker to drive counterclockwise but that’s not how time works! But for real though, to get from 1 to 10 o’clock the short way would involve getting through the intense terrain of the Napali Coast. This is impossible as there are no roads that traverse the Napali Coast. You can only traverse it on foot. Liz and I actually had permits to hike the beautiful coastline but it was closed due to the historic flooding that occurred there in April (I was more disappointed about this than Liz was… The Napali Coast is a intense hike!). Napali aside, we drove over to the Kalalau Lookout and had a few hours just to chill and talk in the car on our way there. As we ascended into the high terrain of the west side of the island, it felt like we were approaching Arizona’s Grand Canyon. It was very rocky, canyon-like terrain!

We ended up hiking an unofficial trail off the Kalalau Lookout which a local told us had great views of the Napali Coast and wasn’t too strenuous… The local was actually our waitress from Lemongrass the evening before. From beginning to end, the locals were a huge help. We sat next to a Mrs. Morgan on our flight in who gave us so many great tips! Basically, don’t be nervous to talk to the locals. Back to the hike… IT WAS A GREAT HIKE! Breathtaking views the entire way. Probably because we were staring down a thousand foot drop on either side of the ridge we were hiking. Needless to say, there was some fairly decent exposure but the trail was dry and well established so we were never worried for our safety. Although I have much more hiking experience than Liz, she was more comfortable on this hike than I was. You see, I am afraid of heights and I kid you not that the views were amazing the entire way. The rush of nature was overwhelming. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves.

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On our drive back, we stopped at Kokee Lodge and Museum for our 2^nd round of mai tais. We were happy hikers.

As we slowly made our way back, we decided to go to Polihale State Park to catch the sunset and some well needed beach time. Little did I know what we had to go over to get there. I do not suggest traversing a 3 mile rocky road with a 2001 Hyundai Accent. I think my thoughts the entire way down this road consisted of something like, “PLEASE GRANDMA, JUST HANG IN THERE.” It was slow going, 15 mph slow, but we made it to the beach and we nearly had the whole beach to ourselves! It was well worth the wait. We played some ultimate frisbee for a while and Liz wants me to comment on the fact that I threw it in the water multiple times to make her chase after it. I will say that it may or may not have been on purpose. We left the beach as it started getting dark and it stormed our entire way back to the condo as we made our way through the south and east side of the island. We had easterly flow most of the week which means the west side of the island was high and dry but the east side of the island was a different story. WEST SIDE, DRY SIDE!

DAY 3 – SLEEPING GIANT

Liz and I didn’t realize how much we really did on Tuesday (Day 2). How we were even alive the next day is beyond us, especially following the wedding weekend. So we chilled out and enjoyed some Kalua coffee in the morning with our bird friend Frank (see below) and then shipped out to hike sleeping giant in the afternoon despite the soreness. This is a very popular hike, I figured it would be fairly easy and quick. Which it was! We were just a little sore from all the walking around we did from the previous day which made this hike a little strenuous. There also weren’t amazing views to distract you from your tiredness like the day before. This hike is located on the eastern-middle side of the island, so the ecosystem is much more tropical on this side of the island. We trudged through what felt like jungle until we reached the summit which treated us with some awesome views of Kapaa and the eastern side of the island.

Afterwards we ran over to Sleeping Giant Grill for their fish tacos (a different local told us to go there… the locals were very friendly) and they were AMAZING! It could have been how hungry we were, but the fish in these tacos were amazing!! We ate a ton of fish throughout the week and it was some of the best fish I’ve ever had. There was a dance bar called Tree’s in the same complex as the grill which we went to after thinking we could find a place to dance for a while. We had none of it though. Nobody was dancing. Not that it would have stopped us but the DJ was playing some weird low-fi hip hop music which I enjoy, but not when you’re trying to get people dancing. Either way, we still had a good time dancing to a few songs and enjoyed more mai tais!

DAY 4 – SURFS UP!

Learned how to surf in the morning. Our instructor set the standard from the stereotypical surfer bro. His name was Clay. Good guy. Seeing as we were in the water, there are no pictures, but I can assure you that both Liz and I got up on a surf board. Interesting tid bit, I was talking to Clay while we were waiting for a good set of waves to come in and was asking how his place survived the rains in April. He wasn’t on Kauai at the time but told me to look at the mountains in the back drop of Hanalei Beach. You could see many brown stripes which extended the entirety of the cliffs on these mountains. Apparently, they were all waterfalls back in April. The mountains I was looking at had received 3 feet of rainfall within 24 hours, so it was a historic amount of rain we are talking about. Here’s an article about it. From surfing in the morning, we rented and road some bikes on the east side trail in the afternoon and finally got some time for Liz to shop around Kapaa. We had a great dinner at Olympic Café which is located right on the main road through Kapaa. We got a table right on the road and we had some great views. Liz wants me to say her Pina Colada was excellent!

Small note, throughout the whole week we nearly exclusively referred to one another as husband and wife to make it sound like this was all real… I’m still not sure if it was or not.

DAY 5 – What Day Is It?

We had lost track of the days at this point in the honeymoon. What a blast we were having. We had no plans starting off each day, we more or less planned our days as they came. This day, I managed to go on a run earlier in the morning which allowed me to explore the area we were staying which was Princeville. I managed to run my way to an abandon resort off of Hanalei Bay! This was not on purpose, I just stumbled upon it. It was incredible looking. I felt like I was discovering the abandon Jurassic Park. It was a huge resort on the east side of the bay back in the 1970s but Hurricane Iniki in 1992 wiped it out and it was never rebuilt. Being alert for dinosaurs, I managed to find my way down to the beach following a relatively defined path. To my left, a gentleman was painting the forgotten views of the mountains behind Hanalei. What I ended up finding was another extremely secluded beach. Personally, I found this beach to be much nicer than Polihale. I ran back to tell Liz about the place and we ended up spending the afternoon enjoying that beach.

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And in the evening, we EAT!!! We had tickets to a Luau in the evening and I’m not sure I have ever eaten so much food… I kid you not, just ask Liz. I was sooo full. It was an all you can eat buffet and open bar (yes the bar included mai tai’s). We had a great time and enjoyed the show that went along with it. Liz’s favorite guy was the one that spun the fire… To which I say typical. In addition, we were not the only Bauer’s there! There was another table which was filled with Bauer’s. We were not related but based off there enthusiasm for life, I wanted to say we were.

DAY 6 – Rocky Day

Enjoyed the condo in the morning. By this point in the week, we learned that we had a smart TV which had Netflix on it so we enjoyed bits of a few movies. Overall though, we didn’t spend too much time in the condo but it really was VERY nice. We got it through AirBnB which is basically a website which rents out houses like a hotel, except in most situations you get the whole house to yourself. Its also cheaper than hotels. Anyway, come the afternoon we made our way to another hike which would take us to Secret Falls. With all the hiking and walking around we had done throughout the week, we were unadmittedly pretty tired. That being said, we were defeated by this hike. There was some rather significant rock maneuvering which made for a pretty slow and exhaustive hike. Not to mention that it was mud city everywhere. This was hike where all the bugs came out to play as well, otherwise the bugs on the island were minimal. We got very dirty on this one. We didn’t make it to the falls but still had a fun time enjoying what I would say was the closest we came to seeing what Kauai was truly like.

I almost forgot, we had more mai tai’s in the evening! This should not be a surprise at this point.

DAY 7 – Church Clothes!

Church was done right in Kauai. First off, they celebrated the sacrifice of the mass, this is good! They also greeted us with leis and the church was open so there were birds inside the church. You would think it would be annoying, but it actually sounded natural. It was a very simple church and it was a fantastic mass as they all are. From mass, we had an urge to get a good brunch, we are Catholic after all! So we made our way to the Kountry Kitchen. This was a restaurant filled with pictures of roosters! At this point in the week, if we never had to hear a rooster again; we would be completely okay with it. The roosters had become wild across the island after Hurricane Iniki and they were literally EVERYWHERE and they would never shut up. It would be 3 am and we would still be hearing them. Brunch was awesome though! After brunch, we made our way to Shipwrecks Beach. It was a pretty windy day so we napped on the beach a bit and then decided to hike down the coastline to Makauwahi Cave. I actually have a ton of GoPro pictures from this little adventure so enjoy a few of these below.

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DAY 8 – Napali Wannabe

As I mentioned previously, we were unable to hike the Napali Coast because of the rains back in April. I knew this before we got to the island but I was still hoping to be able to get to the trailhead to view the potential for a great hike in the future. So this morning we decided we would drive down there and explore a bit. Well, I was going to explore; Liz was planning on sitting on the beach. Turns out though, they have the national guard blocking the road with M16’s! We drove just past Hanalei before the road was completely blocked off. We weren’t able to get anywhere close to the trailhead. I was pretty bummed about this but we ended up having a good time walking and shopping around Hanalei.

We stayed close to home in the afternoon and decided to knock out Queens Bath which is a very popular site to see on the north side of the island. We walked there and it involves a very brief, but MUDDY hike to get to and the views of the coast are a huge benefit for the amount of time/effort it takes to hike there. Once there, the cliffs were amazingly different than what we had witnessed across the rest of the island and had a great time jumping into one of the inlets which had turtles swimming in it! … Not sure how I felt about swimming with giant sea turtles… Jack Sparrow! A quick side note, I would not recommend jumping in if you are not a good swimmer or climber as it takes some strength to be able to pull yourself out of the very turbulent waters! Many people have actually died jumping into the water in this area. We made sure we had a good exit strategy before we jumped in and had no issues. We continued to hike around the area for a while before we walked back to the condo. We went back to Hanalei in the evening to shop around and then literally ran to the beach to catch what looked like would be an amazing sunset. It decided to rain on us instead… classic Kauai.

DAY 9 – Hippie Day

Our flight left Kauai at 10:01 pm on this day and we had to be checked out of our AirBnB by 10 am. This means we had 8-9 hours to kill before we had to be at the airport. So we decided to do a “usual” touristy activity. We went to Princeville Ranch and did their 4×4 tour which included driving ATV’s, zip lining, swimming and even MORE HIKING. We were a little tired of hiking at this point. We had a fun overall experience. By far the best part about it was not having to worry about food, water or directions. They provided everything and told us where to go for the whole morning which allowed us to just enjoy the experience and each other.

As one can note, we got very muddy again… Mud is everywhere in Kauai… We needed a place to shower after the Ranch. We asked our guides and they explained that there were some public showers at Anini Beach so we headed that way as we no longer had the luxury of being able to go back to the condo to clean off. We were so tired that we ended up going right to the beach and just taking a nap for an hour. We awoke to hermit crabs scavenging for lunch right in front of our eyes which ended up keeping us from falling back asleep. The thought of a crabs crawling across our stomachs was not a pleasant one. I showered at the beach which had functioning showers. This was a very campy, hippie-esque beach. There were multiple people who clearly lived on the beach here. One guy lived out of his van which was filled to the brim with stuff and had grass the size of Kansas wheat surrounding it. He waved and I calmly waved back. The whole island had been unbelievably welcoming to us the entire week. I was not ready to go home.

We got some nice, clean clothes on and made our way back to the big city where we went to the Koloa Rum Company for some free rum! The last thing we did before we headed to the airport was eat dinner at a place called Keokis. It had great food and an awesome atmosphere! Liz also managed to get some last minute shopping in. I was so thrilled.

As we made our way to the airport and dropped off the car, things came down to earth very quickly. We did not realize it, but we had just had the best couple weeks of our lives to date. Liz had graduated, I had my bachelor party, then we had the wedding and we just finished the honeymoon. Now a drive to Wichita would be all that would stand between us and the “real world”. As I finish this blog post nearly a month into marriage, I can say that I still love Liz and I’m pretty sure she still loves me. All is going smoothly in Wichita and we can’t wait to make it back to Kauai someday. Here’s to a life spent happily ever after! Mahalo!

Sorry… had to sneak in a few of my wedding favorites.

A Colorado Adventure!

Its amazing what a week in the wilderness will do for you. Regardless of whether you think you need it or not, making sporadic or planned trips to nature refreshes the body and soul in ways that you won’t be able to aptly explain when all is said and done. God definitely has a plan for us to enjoy his awesome creation to bring us into a greater communion with Him. For my most recent outdoor adventure, I took to the San Isabel National Forecast northwest of Buena Vista, Colorado with the pastor of my church Fr. David and a group of 10 other guys. The trip’s dates were Tuesday, July 11th through Monday the 17th. The goals for the week; hike mountains, catch fish, stay dry, quote as much Spongebob as possible (“pizza would be nice”), and not run out of TP. For those that don’t know, TP means toilet paper… I’m surprised you didn’t know that 🙂

With stops factored in, the drive from Wichita to Buena Vista is about 10 hours. We do gain an hour heading out west which was nice but it was still 10 hours. Bleh. Driving up to the Front Range of the Rockies Tuesday afternoon we ran into some summertime, “gnat” thunderstorms. We had 8 of us and our gear packed into 2 trucks. Trucks is significant because all of our gear was uncovered in the back which lead us to frantically cover everything to keep things from getting wet. It ended up storming pretty much everyday on our trip, so looking back, it really was a meaningless endeavor to try and keep things dry, but its the thought that counts right?

… Ya nevermind, it was worth it. It preceded to sporadically storm for the rest of our way to the trailhead.

Thankfully the rain cleared up just in time to keep us dry as we hiked from our trailhead (North Cottonwood Creek) to our campsite late in the afternoon on Tuesday. We hiked into the night before we established camp just east of Anglemeyer Lake at a little over 11,000 feet.

DAY 2

This adventure was one which was unlike anything I’d ever done before. Never have I gone on a trip where I knew so few people for such a long duration of time. Not that this worried me at all but it allowed me to observe how each one of the 12 guys settled into a role in the group throughout the week. Cheese aside, we found Anglemeyer Lake the morning after we established camp. This lake was actually quite difficult to find in the thick foliage below the tree line as the trees and boulders were hefty. Once we found the lake, we fished for a while. All I have to say is trout are stupid (actually smart, but I think stupid). We didn’t catch anything. To make ourselves feel better, or just for entertainment, we (Joe, Patrick and I) did manage to climb up to the tree line towards Birthday Peak to be gifted with some nice views of the valley below. As we started hiking down we got caught in a storm which would be a regular experience by the end of the week.

Anglemeyer Lake… Mucho stupid trout in this lake.

Somewhere up Birthday Peak looking towards Mt. Harvard… to be conquered later in the week. Mt. Columbia to the far upper right.

DAY 3

THE DAY WE ALMOST DIED BY LIGHTNING. It was a great start to the day. Everyone was ready to knock out a 14er with our sights set on Mt. Columbia. A few others and myself had scouted out the trail going towards Columbia the afternoon before (once it had stopped raining that is) so our morning hike was pretty routine other than some shoe swallowing areas of mud. Even up to when we started climbing. It was a beautiful morning! Pretty much every morning started off with some cloud cover, but would dissipate as the nocturnal boundary layer would get mixed out. The nocturnal boundary layer aids in keeping moisture near the surface overnight. As the ground cools overnight it can create a thick layer of clouds at the top of the layer or in some cases fog. When the sun comes up, air rises through this layer as the ground warms and “cleans it out”. Sorry for the weather tangents on this post… The weather blew my mind this week.

Looking south towards Yale from the base of Columbia

Back to mountains! As we started our accent, we missed the trail going up… Fail. This led to us scrambling up some pretty complex terrain. Terrain varied from dirt which gave out under each step (more like quick sand) to large boulders which required some significant scrambling. More than half of our group ended up turning back towards camp about half way up the mountain. I found myself bringing up the back of the group, so when the other group turned back I got to happily climb my way up the complex terrain to catch up with Fr. David and his brother Mike. I have to note that I was terrified of causing a giant rock slide multiple times along this journey between SLOW GROUP (woop woop!) and Father in which I was on my own.

Anyway, we summited! I was actually VERY tired at this point and wanted the ability to summon pizza at will, but at least I had my weight in spicy jerky, mmmmm so much jerky. The summit was in a cloud when we arrived which was awesome to see how the complex terrain impacted the movement of air which the condensed parcels (clouds) portrayed beautifully. After some time resting at the summit, the clouds cleared out right as we were leaving which allowed us to grab some quick pictures before our decent.

Clouded Mt. Columbia summit. Pretty large drop off on either side here

Looking towards Mt. Harvard. I think all the soft white covering on the mountain is graupel.

A cleared Columbia summit! Woo! Looking northeast of summit here.

On our way down, the weather quickly started deteriorating. What started off being just a few frozen hydro-meteors (ice) falling from the sky quickly turned into an all out graupel (like small hail) downpour! As we stopped to pull out our rain gear to stay dry and warm, we suddenly felt a large pressure change and a release of electrical energy which was rapidly followed by a large flash and BOOOOMM!! I’d say a bolt of lightning was easily within 100 yards of our position. This was the most scared I’ve been in a while and the closest I’ve ever been to a lightning strike. At this point, Fr. David led us down the mountain in haste with it pouring a mix of ice and rain… It was pretty terrible. My hands and feet were soaked and freezing cold. Honestly, thoughts of just surviving the day were coming into my head as I said a prayer that God would let me get through this. Ya, I need to calm down. We made it obviously … It was an intense experience though. It made reaching a warm sleeping bag and a warm cup of water all the more satisfying. Night came, and so was DAY 3.

Climbing down… Ya thats the storm.

DAY 4 

After a trying previous WedThurs?? … Eh screw it, I’ve lost track of days at this point. We rested up and fished at Anglemeyer again. Having a warm breakfast was fantastic while lunch was pretty much nola bars and my weight in jerky, mmmm jerky. Ricardo caught 3 trout, not saving any for the rest of us. I think this was also the day he knocked over a tree… I can’t remember. So funny story, this guy knocked over a whole tree close to our campsite as everyone was napping. It sounded loud enough to be a gunshot but felt like an earthquake. This was no scrub tree either! It was a mongo tree! Dang, Ricardo was the man on this trip. We hiked back to camp after fishing, cleaned the 3 fish we caught and cooked them on the campfire. Although there wasn’t a lot to go around, the fish was amazing!!! I’m not sure if it was because I was super hungry or if fresh water mountain trout are just that good but it was some dang good fish. We were going to cook dinner in addition to the fish but a rain storm moved in before we could do so and it preceded to rain the rest of the evening. This forced us to spend the rest of the evening in our tents. Our plan going into the next day was to wake up early and climb Mt. Harvard which we were about to do without a dinner. Well this could be a disaster.

DAY 5

BEST HIKE OF MY LIFE.

Despite there being no dinner the night before, moral exponentially increased as we hiked above the tree line. In addition, we decided to split into two groups for Mt. Harvard. A faster group and a slower group. This made everyone more comfortable on the climb with everyone being able to hike at a pace comfortable for them. We had a cloudy sunrise that gave way to some warm sunshine as we accented the steepest part of Harvard. I like this hike already!

Coming up Harvard, just after sunrise and above the tree line. Views of the valley were amazing. The best is yet to come…

Really quick, I have to mention Osa (Fathers dog) which is the reason I managed to grab so many awesome pictures on the way up (including the one above). She kept losing her booties on the way up. So yes, this lead to us hunting for booties a time or two. She didn’t really like wearing them but it was rough terrain with plenty of sharp rocks and cactus. These were no ordinary “foo-foo” booties but the equivalent of  mountaineering boots for your small 15-30 lb dog. This dog Osa is probably the most BA small dog I’ve ever met. Anyway, I’m not really sure how to put into words my summit experience on Harvard as we reached the top. It was cold and windy at first but only got warmer as more of our brothers reached the top. The views were breathtaking.

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Usually people would associate being at the summit as the best part of the hike but in this particular case that wasn’t so. Both groups combined at the top and once everyone was well rested we made our way back down together. Helping one another out, cracking jokes and enjoying company. I will never forgot the immense feeling of peace that I felt as a gazed on the vast valley below me with the company of my new brothers. I tasted a bit of heaven. Praise God. We had fun as we made our back down the mountain, even managed to get in a snowball fight with Ricardo (my tent mate) where I nearly cracked my knee open (still have the scar). Father said mass for us in the evening. He did this everyday which was AMAZING and preceded dinner. FOOD WAS SO GOOD.

“I’m sleepin’ well tonight boys!”

DAY 6

The following day was spent much like day 4 was except everyone was in awe of the hike we had the day before. Ricardo, Paco and I made our way to Anglemeyer to get an early start on some fishing. It apparently was a weekend this day because there were a decent amount of tents camped up along the lake. I still had no clue as to what the date or day of the week was. Shortly after we arrived, some guys broke out some cool fly fishing skillz which looked cool but they didn’t catch anything… Trout are still stupid. We had been using lures the previous few days but had switched to live bait in the form of worms by this point. It was WAY more effective. Its how Ricardo caught his 3 fish a few days earlier. We did have to dig up our own worms though which was kind of a new adventure for me in itself. I searched for a while! I ended up finding a bunch of them down along the stream in the valley. This made for a productive day of fishing. Mike, Father’s brother, ended up catching 3 fish. Father caught 2 and Ricardo caught 1 which was double the amount of fish we had from a few nights ago. Hoozah! Dinner! Although I never caught any fish cause trout are stupid, I did manage to clean my first trout and enjoy a good portion of the best fish I’ve ever had. Night came, vanilla Crown Royal followed. Cheers.

DAY 7

We packed it up on what I now remember to be Monday the 17th. I only remember because I had to be back at work on Tuesday night. Booo. Although we were packing up, it was amazing to see how we had all settled into roles around the camp. There’s always things to get done around a camp site and each one of us found something to work on. Ricardo knocked over WHOLE size trees with is bear hands for dry fire wood. Multiple guys would help out with meal prep while a few different guys would help out with clean up while others were simply and extraordinarily being fathers. It was a cool thing to witness.

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Once we got back to the cars, we headed off to Leadville, CO for some beer and a meal. We stopped at a place that I was really fascinated with called the Silver Dollar Saloon. Its a place thats been around since the gold rush in the 1860s and had quite a bit of fun history to it. Famous old gun slingers like Doc Holiday and Oscar Wilde used to walk through its doors. Not that those names are supposed to be super memorable or anything although Doc Holiday rings a bell with me. Bottom line, the place had character! I enjoyed a Sam Adams Summer Ale and a Colorado Bourbon Whiskey while learning all this random stuff. Being at a higher altitude, I must say I was gone after those 2 drinks. Afterward, we walked over to High Mountain Pies for some pizza. Thank the Lord for pizza! I grabbed a PBR and a pesto chicken, fancy pants calzone because I’m apparently Ben Wyatt. It was the best!! From there, we headed back to Wichita, but not before picking up a bottle of something special before I left. Ask nicely and I may let you have some.

More various pictures below…

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A Southwest Adventure

Another two weeks of summer have flown by. Thankfully the last two weeks of my summer have been arguably the most fun two weeks of any summer I have ever had. Some people enjoy water parks for vacations, others enjoy amusement parks, but how about the United States National Parks? My group and I managed to hit 5 of them. Figuratively of course. Clint Lacure, a good friend of mine who will be deploying in the Army soon, and myself had been talking throughout the spring 2014 semester at Purdue about doing a road trip out west to hike the Grand Canyon. We eventually decided to officially start pursuing the idea toward the end of the semester when we added Andy Hesselbrock to our line up. We had no idea how much planning a trip like this could take! To get backcountry permits in some of these National Parks, you need to reserve them up to 6 months ahead of time! Many of the hikes we did were some of the most popular in the world. We being college now-planners started planning only about 5 weeks ahead of our departure date of Friday, June 20th, so needless to say, we were a bit behind on our planning. I was however amazed in retrospect how quickly and efficiently we were able to put this trip together. Our trip began on Friday, June 20th, where we departed at 4am EDT for St. Louis, MO to visit the Gateway Arch. Our trip then concluded back in West Lafayette, IN on Sunday, July 6th at around 8am EDT after 17 hours of continuous driving. SO MUCH CORN. Everything in between is found in my journal entries below. Enjoy!

Saturday, June 21st – Grand Canyon National Park

Me outside the NWC in Norman, OK

Driving straight here was an unbelievable experience! Not to mention stopping at the Storm Prediction Center and Meteor Crater. So much science!! This trip may turn out to be quite educational. Working with SPC chief Roger Edwards was unbelievable. He taught me a lot about the importance of analysis. This guy has been working in SPC for close to 30 years and practically was speaking in another language to me expecting me to understand it all. I tried, sometimes in vain, but this gives me something to strive for! Repetition, repetition, repetition… Seeing the Grand Canyon again is like seeing it for the first time. Your head literally cannot wrap its mind around it. It’s probably not real. Aliens… thats the usual cause of crazy things right? I feel as though I can come here a thousand times and not get bored of seeing it. Pictures can’t capture the depths of its landscapes and neither can yo brains… ITS CRAZY. AND I’M GOING IN IT!!!!!

 

Its amazing how much of a different world it is out west. From soil contents, to climate, to people. Its a very different region that has a completely different natural beauty that I believe as a native Hoosier can fully appreciate.

Wednesday, June 25th – Powell Lake in Page, Arizona

So going into the Grand Canyon is way better than seeing it from the top. It was hot on levels I didn’t think were possible, but it was unbelievable to experience such a sight from within to put everything into perspective. I took an uncountable number of pictures today that I am sure will not come out as I hoped cause this thing is just SO BIG … well, GRAND! On our way down, we started very early at about 4am. I had 3 liters of water packed for since the there is no water on the South Kaibab Trail and took us about 6 hours since we stopped to enjoy the scenery so much. It was 7 miles in length and 4780 feet of decent. If you really wanted, you could nearly cut that decent time in half with no breaks. The sunrise from Oh Ah Point was one of the best I have ever seen and also makes for great pictures. I highly encourage any future hikes to start before sunrise and then stop at Oh Ah for a snack and water break. Did I mention it was hot? Both hikes on the way down and up were hot! At Bright Angel Campground (where we stayed), it was 109 in the shade and 124 in the sun by midday! The heat was like a wall that just kept you from wanting to do anything at all… So we didn’t. Thankfully, there was a heavenly cool stream right next to our campsite that made the day heat more bearable. A note for the future, SECURE your food in the campground! The fat squirrels will eat anything and everything. Those jerks ate my banana chips and bagels. On the way back up, we woke up at 2am so we could be on the trail by 2:45am. Our thoughts were that if we started early enough, we wouldn’t have to hike in the day heat at all. Bad news about the early start, scorpions were everywhere. I saw 2 before even leaving our campsite. It was a hard hike back up Bright Angel Trail, but we made it out by around 9:30am. Thankfully, there were many water stations along Bright Angel, so we didn’t have to carry as much water as we did on the South Kaibab. It was 9.5 miles in length and 4380 feet of elevation gain. In other words… ALL YO LEGS WILL BE SORE! I consider myself to be very strong aerobically as I am a runner, but I was breathing heavy and my legs were feeling the elevation swag. It would be useful to train at least a little bit before this hike. Funny story on the way up, many of the tourists asked us what we were doing and cheered us on as if we were in a competition. As if we had discovered the place. This was very encouraging and actually helped us handle the hike up. It also was SUPER helpful to say hi to everyone on the trail too.. and I mean EVERYONE! This keeps your moral high and your thoughts off of how tired you are, helping you to further enjoy the experience. Also, a ton of people acknowledged my Purdue shirt, just noting that Purdue is one heck of a big network!

Just after Skeleton Point.

As of currently, I journal from Page, Arizona and am comfortably drunk. The last two nights we have gotten drunk to help us fall asleep in the 80+ degree heat. Sounds immature, but its worked wonders! Sleeping in the desert is hard. I will never take air conditioning for granted again after this trip. Powell Lake, the place we are staying, is such a wonderful place. HOT, but beautiful in its own way. The lake itself is created by the Glen Canyon Dam which we managed to tour for $5 during the day. We saw it as a way to get out of the heat. Back at Lake Powell, Clint and I made our way to a large rock in the middle of the lake this afternoon and it was a lonnnnng way out there (about 100 minutes round trip), but fun! Bugs everywhere, sandstone, freezing cold water in the 100 degree heat but you know. Otherwise met some awesome people that gave us free food on the beach tonight! SO GOOD! … Clint probably ate too many beans. I say nothing more. We definitely would’ve spent more money without them though. Thank God.

Powell Lake… View of giant rock we swam to on the left.

I’ve also learned so much about the stars from Andy. Yay for Andy! I love the stars and have been looking at them for a long time but have never had someone knowledgeable enough to teach me. The night before we started our Grand Canyon hike, we went to the Grand Canyon star party were all these astronomers had brought their telescopes for us to use. We saw Saturn, Mars, clusters and stars that were a long way away. Its pretty much awesome. MORE SCIENCE!! We leave for Zion tomorrow, can’t wait! Good night.

Friday, June 27th – Zion National Park

What a crazy day at Zion National Park. Got in yesterday to grab our permits, apparently you can’t leave the backcountry without buying another permit… This is dumb because it means we need to find a new place to stay tomorrow for when we are done with the narrows, which will be sweet!!

Anyway, today we hiked 12.2 miles and gained 1870 feet of elevation from camp to observation point. Our camp was located where the East Rim Trail and the Trail to Cable Mountain split. Great location and great hike from there to obs point. Long, but some very nice scenery along the way and obs point was unbelievable! Also, starred death in the face multiple times today. First, we saw 2 flibin raddle snakes right on the trail to obs point. We flipped out to say the least. I’ve never heard Clint (an Army man) raise his voice before, so when he did, I made sure to BACK UP! Than I ran out of water within 30 minutes of leaving obs point (it was maybe 2 hours back). By the time we made it back to camp, I was exhausted and quite dehydrated. Very dry mouth, beginning to feel dazed and all this after only an hour and a half. Couldn’t imagine coming here for the first time and having to bring water to survive. Crazy.

Tomorrow we head to the narrows! Will be packing the Go-Pro and hopefully will get some great pictures! Stars out, good night.

Monday, June 30th – On the Road

Wow! Zion NP is definitely my favorite stop so far on our trip. The trails were great, the weather was relatively comfortable, and the scenery was fantastically variable in comparison to the Grand Canyon. The Grand Canyon wins by far in terms of its views and vistas, but Zion had much more to offer. Observation point is the biggest view in the park I would say and Angels Landing is practically a climb with an almost equally cool view as observation point. My favorite hike of this trip so far was the Narrows! Your trail IS the Virgin River and your surroundings are unbelievably breathtaking. The water is very cool but you can stay warm since the air temperature is so spice. We also found a few places where the water was deep enough for us to jump in off of rocks. Some of those jumps might have been a bit sketchy, but it turned out okay. The only down side, this is Zion’s most popular hike so it is very heavily populated, but even so it was still an awesome hike! Andy did not have his phone on him (good thing too!) so we don’t know how far we went in. We estimate that we went about 3-4 in and out, giving us a total of about 6-8 miles.

We then hiked Angel’s Landing after the Narrows. We wanted to make it back before the last bus left at 9:45pm, so we were in a big hurry going up the 2881 foot cliff. As tired as we were from our day at the Narrows, the view of the sunset from Angel’s Landing was well worth the hike!

 

 

Tuesday, July 1st – Fruita, Colorado

So here we sit in a little camp ground in Fruita, CO. Our tour of the south west is over and so begins our final leg of our trip. Its hard to believe we start our way back home in 3 days but I’m gonna try hard not to think about it, its been real fun. Today we hiked out of Canyonlands. Roughly hiking 4 miles out and about 5 miles in. Our camp ground was unbelievable! Campsite CP-2 and it was way out in the middle of no where. We saw a beautiful sunset as we ate our dinner. Truly an experience I won’t forget from this trip. Canyonlands is a weird place. More aliens probably. I say weird as a positive adjective because the place made it seem like we were on a martian planet. All of the trails were over rock, so they were marked by rock piles which made navigating a tad more interesting. We got to Canyonlands late in the day so we wanted to make sure that we made it to our campsite before sunset so we would not have to navigate rock piles at night. Doing it during the day is sometimes hard enough.

For the rest of the CURRENT day, we played at Arches National Park. And when I say played, I mean we sat on rocks, climbed on rocks, walked on rocks, looked at rocks, but they were all cool rocks. It was hot and we were pretty tired, so it was hard to enjoy. However, it was really cool to see the arches/windows and was super fun to climb some of them too.

Try and find me!

Got my heart pounding today when I lost my Go-Pro! So many awesome pictures would’ve been lost, but thankfully I found it when a French gentleman overheard Clint and I talking about finding it, he pointed us to its location and it was still there!! Woo! That’ll make your day.

 

Thursday, July 3rd – Colorado Springs, Colorado

Went to Garden of the Gods yesterday and rock climbed! I’ve been rock climbing before but never for real. We climbed a 100 foot rock to the top and I was scared to death but was so crazy fun! I now know that I will not be taking up rock climbing as a hobby. Clint and a friend named Joel did most of the “real” climbing. From there we went to where Katy was staying for the summer which apparently was just some navigator staff members house. It was so nice of that family to let a bunch of strangers crash at their house! Chad, and all the Koesters were there! We all went out for Mexican and had way too expensive margaritas, but it was fun. We got to tell all of our stories and people definitely respected us for the trip. I might need to get used to it for the next few weeks.

 

Saturday, July 5th – Back in corn country…

On our way home! Hard to believe its all over. Driving through corn fields are as boring as I remember. Last night was really fun without considering the fireworks. A day hike to a water fall in snow mountain, putt putt, followed by traveling to grand lake for the afternoon. People of all nationalities were present. Just an absurd amount of people for such a small town, but I’m sure local businesses were loving it. It rained for maybe 30 minutes 2 hours before the fireworks show. It was kinda bad though thankfully our spot was being held by others. Clint, Sam and I managed to find some cross country backpackers named Stride and Smiles. What a crazy story they had. They started on the border of Mexico in late April and have been backpacking north ever since. Their goal is to reach Canada which I’m sure they will do by early August. Stride had hiked the Appalachian Trail, the PCT, and they were currently doing the CDT. Unbelievable! Wow would it be cool to do that if I had the money and time.

Clouds in Colorado…

Last night we ended up staying at a friends house garage in Granby. It was actually super nice not having to set up tents or anything. Slept super deep and really feel used to “roughing it”. Time to go home I guess. Another quick point, I brought way too many clothes on this trip. Probably because I thought I would sweat buckets… On the contrary, it has been so dry out here that all moisture evaporates instantly.

Lastly today, we went to visit Clints Aunt and Uncles place. They bought us lunch and his uncle showed us the business that he worked for and was very passionate about. Super nice of them! Data View was a company that made plates for laser cutting of waffles (kinda like motherboards for phones… Not the food), to make them more flat. It was interesting!

Tuesday, July 8th – Owen Main Office

Nothing like being back in the humid Midwest! Typing on a computer makes my fingers feel like they are old rusty gears that can’t move smoothly. It’s definitely great to be back in home with a bed and air conditioning, but I definitely don’t recognize how awesome this trip was. I may never again be able to visit (AND HIKE) 5 national parks in the span of 2 weeks. I know I will go back to many of these places, but not like this time.

Things I won’t miss… Giant annoying crows (aka Frank) waking us up every morning, FAT squirrels eating my food, chipmunks climbing my back TRYING to eat my food, peanut butter, crunchy peanut butter, granola bars and peanut butter, granola bars and crunchy peanut butter, freaking Denver traffic, the crammed backseat of a Chevy Cobalt, unpacking and repacking of the backseat and trunk of said Chevy Cobalt and lastly… THE HEAT.

This was a trip of a life time, and I hope to keep finding adventures.

 

 

Find more pictures on my Facebook.

 

Update: Well shoot dang. So I can’t believe I did this, but I forgot that Arches is a National Park! So we actually hit 6 national parks on this trip!

Also here are some interesting facts from our trip:

• 70 miles of hiking
• 2.5 miles of elevation gain
• about 4,300 miles of driving
• Max temp: 109F (124F in the sun) | Min temp: 46F