Author: mochatruffalo
In the days of social media, it has now come down to this - if you want to access a particular trail, you will need to book your parking and entry permits 30-90 days in advance. Gone are the days when you can stroll onto a trail after having read about it in a guidebook … Continue reading Park Permits & Reservations
We are half way through 2021, and next year’s traveling is starting to take shape. Unlike this year’s monthly domestic excursions, next year will involve more international traveling - fingers crossed that Asia and Africa will have most of their people vaccinated against Covid by then. If Havasupai opens up next February as they’ve projected, … Continue reading Trip Planning 2022
One of the reasons we had timed our Zion and Grand Canyon visit for this week was so that it would coincide with the Resorts World opening. What we were interested in wasn’t so much the hotel itself, but in their Famous Street Eats featuring all the famous hawker foods in South East Asia. Since … Continue reading Vegas Eats
After spending a night at the luxurious suite at the Palazzo, it was hard to say goodbye. Alas, good things must come to an end. Before checking out, I logged 10 numbing miles on the fitness center’s treadmill, instead of running outdoors in 90F weather. Dry heat or not, it’s still too hot. I used … Continue reading Wynn Las Vegas
The key to snagging luxury for a bargain in Vegas is to visit on weekdays. Weekend nightly rates easily reach over $500, but weekday rates can be as low as half that. So I purposely booked one night at the Intercontinental Alliance Palazzo for a Sunday night after our weekend in Utah and Arizona (weekday … Continue reading Intercontinental – The Palazzo Las Vegas
There are 3 popular trails that bring hikers down into the canyon - South Kaibab and Bright Angel from the South Rim, and North Kaibab from the North Rim. People will attempt rim-2-rim by hiking down North Kaibab, stay overnight within the canyon and hike up either Bright Angel or South Kaibab. For day hikers, … Continue reading North Kaibab Trail
The Grand Canyon is one of my favorite National Parks, if not the favorite. In the 5 years we’d lived in Tucson, we’d been to Grand Canyon 3 times, including an overnight at the Bright Angel Campground at the bottom of the Canyon. However, all 3 trips were to the popular South Rim. After a … Continue reading Grand Canyon North Rim
In years past, we’ve always saved our valuable vacation days for off peak season travel in order to avoid the crowds and high costs of everything. Visiting popular National Parks like Zion and Grand Canyon, where you go seek solitude, during the busy summer months did not appeal to us. Our first Narrows hike back … Continue reading The Narrows
En route to Zion from Las Vegas is a not so well known Nevada state park called Valley of Fire, so named after its fiery red rocks. In contrast to the surrounding grey rocks laid down during the Paleozoic era, the red rocks were formed later during the Mesozoic era. This entire area used to … Continue reading Valley of Fire State Park – White Domes Trail
Being situated in Coastal CA is most ideal for us. We have the Pacific on one side, and, in my humble opinion, the most spectacular landscape in all of America on the other side. I am referring to the Southern Utah and Northern Arizona region, where you will find my 2 favorite National Parks - … Continue reading Virgin Hotels Las Vegas – Curio Collection
I’ll be the first to admit - I LOVE planning for trips. Retirement has given me all the time in the world to do just that, and this year’s trip planning has been particularly rewarding. Unlike last summer, this year is starting to look like an expensive summer for travel. It all comes down to … Continue reading Trip Planning – A Competitive Sport
Two “baby” hikes. For our last day in Tahoe, we decided to go on a hike that the kids would be able to do. After some research, I decided on the Cascade Falls trail. A baby hike of just 1.4 miles out and back. The beginning of the hike looked promising with a wide and … Continue reading Cascade Falls & Eagle Lake Trails
After yesterday’s 10-mile hike, we decided to take it easy today. Spent the day at Meeks Bay paddling the day away. Rented boards from SUP Tahoe - highly recommend these guys They racked up the boards on top of the minivan for us Whiling away the hours on the lake
We were supposed to do stand up paddling today, but due to high winds we postponed it to tomorrow, and I made the last-minute executive decision to move up our Mt. Tallac hike to today. As a result of the last minute change, we ended up starting our hike very late - 11AM, instead of … Continue reading Mt Tallac Trail
We finally made it up to Lake Tahoe after having lived in CA for the past decade. Joe had always wanted to check out the place, but for some reason I’ve always felt there’s something better than going to a lake. For me, lakes are for fishing, swimming and, subsequently, contracting some kind of brain-eating … Continue reading Rubicon Trail
It took 5 weeks to finally get my cardiovascular conditioning back to baseline. Short runs had felt so tough week after week that it had me wonder if I had developed long term lung damage from possible COVID last year. However, the last 2 runs have finally reassured me that I’m back in shape. I … Continue reading I’m Baaaccckkk
That’s the 2021 Boston Marathon cutoff, the amount of time needed under the respective qualifying times in order to enter into the in-person race this October. This is the biggest cutoff ever, due to the much smaller field size. In prior years, BAA took around 26k qualified runners, but due to COVID concerns this year, … Continue reading 7:47
Month 7 of retirement. The first 4 months of retirement involved mostly traveling for me, so the reality of retirement really didn’t hit me until after I came back from Taiwan. There were some adjustments in the beginning, but I’ve finally fallen into a nice routine after I started running again. There’s no such thing … Continue reading Do Whatever, Whenever
With travel beginning to thaw, the industry is pulling out all the stops these days to try to get people to sign up for their rewards cards. With Delta’s 90k sign-up bonus, Capital One Venture’s 100k, and Amex’s 75k, it can be hard to decide which one to sign up for. After some research, I … Continue reading Points and Miles Traveling Part Two
This is the year of traveling for “free”, thanks to credit card points and mileages accumulated. We have 4 upcoming domestic trips, between the end of May and the end of October, all covered by points and miles (I’ve decided to hold off on international trips for as long as the US requires Covid testing … Continue reading Points and Miles Traveling
My racing shoes arrived today! This is the same shoe that Eliud Kipchoge wore when he broke 2 hours in Vienna, Austria. I don’t plan on setting any records, but hope that these shoes will make it easier for me to cross the finish line. Additionally, I hope these (like the 1st generation Nike vaporfly … Continue reading Nike Alphafly Next%
It’s been a year since I last ran. Suffering from burnout from running and non stop training for the last 8 years, I was toying with the idea of giving myself a break from running. Back in April of 2020, the California State Parks (including my training ground) closed due to the pandemic, and that … Continue reading Back To The Old Haunt
Going home! It’s been a while since we’ve traveled to a place where we’re happy to be going home. There’s nothing wrong with Morocco, but we think Turkey ruined it for us. Our trip to Turkey was absolutely one of the best (a close second after Botswana and Tanzania), and after having just been there … Continue reading Traveling Back To The US
Most important thing to take care of today was to get our Covid test, otherwise we wouldn’t be able to return home. A dizzying and confusing array of breads and pastries. Not sure if I was having breakfast or afternoon tea. We got to Meknés an hour later and found a crowd outside the testing … Continue reading Chefchaouen – The Blue City
First order of business today was to get our Covid test in order to get back to the US. Breakfast at the riad. Carbs on top of carbs, paradise for a carb lover. Unfortunately, I’m not one of them. After arriving at the public Covid testing site, we realized that the turn around time was … Continue reading Fez And A Bonus City
FIRE'd @ 47 