Beach on the North Shore
Jessica | January 9, 2009 10:45 pmI passed this beach walking back to my hostel on the North Shore of Oahu. It’d been pouring rain for about a half an hour and cleared up just in time for sunset
More Vandwelling tips at the Indie Travel Podcast Website
Jessica | January 7, 2009 10:11 amI have a new article up at the Indie Travel Podcast Website. This is a follow up to last months article in which I list off what I think are the basic 4 things that should be done to a vehicle for living in it. Those 4 things mostly dealt with privacy and stealthiness. In this article I get into more about making it comfortable. If you have any additional suggestions please leave a comment on the article. Also, I’d love for you to StumbleUpon it or Digg it as well. Thanks!
Anyone have an suggestions for a topic for next month’s article?
Kalalau trail, but not to the Kalalau Valley
Jessica | January 5, 2009 6:04 pmAlas, I did not make it to the Kalalau Valley on my hike. The whole trail is 11 miles with a campground 6 miles in. My plan had been to go the first 6 miles, camp and then hit the rest the next day. The second half includes some pretty crazy cliffs off of a tiny trail. Or so I’m told. I didn’t make it past the 6 mile mark. Those first 6 miles took me 9.5 hours and when it poured rain all night and the next morning I decided I didn’t feel like doing those cliffs. So I turned around and did the first 4 miles back, camped another night and did the last 2 miles the third day. Hitched a ride down to Kaapa and hung out with my cousin for a couple days, (more on that in a future post). Perhaps I chose a rather ambitious trail for my very first backpacking trip. (It’s rated a 9 most places I read). By the time I got to the 2 mile marker I realized that I might be over my head when it was clear that my (I thought) conservative guess of 1 mile per hour needed to be changed to 1 mile per hour and a half.
Oh well, at least I got an idea of what backpacking is like, (even if I did spend only 3 days rather than 6 out there). I don’t think I’ll be doing the Appalachian Trail anytime soon, but I would still like to do some shorter trail (hopefully with more success than the Kalalau trail). In fact, I think I’m going to make it one of my new year’s resolutions to do either a backpacking or bicycling trip sometime this year.
Not as planned.
Jessica | January 3, 2009 10:40 pmToday, a surfing move that didn’t go quite as planned.
While in Hilo, I took a tour from Arnotts Lodge (same family as the Arnotts of Tim Tam fame) to see the observatories on Mauna Kea. Despite spending about an hour at 9000 feet acclimating to the elevation before continuing up to the top I think I started to get altitude sickness up here. It really surprised me. I managed to ride my bike around the rocky mountains earlier this year and got out of breath a lot, but never had any nausea from the altitude. The actual summit of the mountain was a bit of a hike away (thought not actually much higher than where we were). I decided to sit that out and just enjoy the sunset.
