Category: Hiking
The Boston Marathon is traditionally held on Patriot’s Day in April, but due to Covid and repeated postponements, this year’s race was held in October. The week of the race coincided with peak fall foliage in the Northeast, which gave us the chance to go leaf peeping up in Acadia National Park in Maine. Having … Continue reading Jordan Pond Trail
Phoenix is an urban sprawl much like LA, albeit cheaper. One wouldn’t expect to find any nature paths or scenic hiking trails in such a mega city, but there is one — the popular Echo Canyon Trail on Camelback Mountain, which reaches up to 2706 ft in elevation. Not a very imposing height for those … Continue reading Echo Canyon Trail @ Camelback Mountain
There are several trails in the Koke’e State Park that bring you out onto ridges to view the NāPali Coastline. The 2 most popular are the Awa’awapuhi and the Nu’alolo trails. There is the option to do both by hiking the connecting Nu’alolo Cliff trail between the 2 to form a 12-mile loop, which is … Continue reading Nu’alolo Trail
Owing to yesterday’s Hanakapi’ai Falls hike, waking up this morning was incredibly hard. Is this another sign of aging, where we can’t do back to back 8-mile hikes anymore? Since we only have 2 more days of hiking on the island, I decided to push the agenda. I have 5 trails on my hike list. … Continue reading Pihea Trail
Anyone who’s watched the movie Jurassic Park will be familiar with the famed NāPali Coast. To view the NāPali coast, one would have to be on a helicopter, catamaran, or kayak. Since none of those options appealed to us, we decided on the second best option - hiking it. The Kalalau trail is the 11-mile … Continue reading Hanakapi’ai Falls Trail
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
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
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
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
Joshua Tree National Park is about a 2 1/2 hour drive from us - a nice day trip for a hike. Of the 15 National Parks we’ve been to in 6 states, this one ranks smack dab in the middle of my favorite (#1&2 being Zion and Grand Teton). Judging by my list of favorite … Continue reading Joshua Tree National Park
Being in nature makes me happy, and National Parks are a great source of that happiness. I’m sure I’m not the only one who feels that way, because the people you meet on hiking trails are in general the nicest and happiest bunch you’ll ever encounter. How can you not be happy when Mother Nature … Continue reading Death Valley National Park – Day 2
Once retired one has nothing but free time. Add a little dose of spontaneity, and you get last minute trips like our Death Valley National Park trip. Thanks to the internet, a quick research can help cobble up a trip in less than 12 hours. And thanks to credit card reward points, one can score … Continue reading Death Valley National Park – Day 1
The site we visited today is a mouthful - Double Dragon Waterfall Rainbow Suspension Bridge (雙龍瀑布七彩吊橋). The Double Dragon refers to the double waterfalls, and the rainbow suspension bridge is the longest in Taiwan. The town that it’s located in is named after the two waterfalls - 雙龍 in Nantou (南投) area, about an hour … Continue reading Double Dragon Waterfall Rainbow Suspension Bridge
My initial expectation of the Xitou Nature Area (溪頭自然區) was that it was going to be a walk in the park, so all I had with me was a small daypack with my sweatshirt, wallet, and passport. I donned my Vans and was ready for a stroll with the parents. Entry fee is 200NT ($7) … Continue reading An Unexpected Hike
After weeks of rain and cold weather, the sun finally came out these last 3 days. We took advantage of the warmer weather to visit the Wulai 烏來 area, which is known for its hot springs, waterfalls, and aborigines. We decided to go to NeiDong 內洞 National Forest with our packed breakfast to enjoy the … Continue reading Wulai 烏來
We’ve been on a roll with respect to traveling to sites via public transportation. Today we took the tram to the Antalya bus terminal to catch the dolmuş to Korkuteli. There are two separate terminals, one is the ilçeler (counties) terminal and the other is the sehirlerarasi (intercities) terminal. Korkuteli bus is at the counties … Continue reading Termessos – Eagle’s Nest
There is no doubt that Turkey has a rich history. Everyday there’s something new and amazing to learn about this country. However, not everything is great and glamorous. One of the darkest days in recent Turkish history has to do with exiling it’s minority Christian citizens (e.g., Armenians, Greeks) after the rise in Turkish Nationalism … Continue reading One More Month To Go
It’s been a while since I’ve slept through the night and not gotten woken up by something before I was ready to wake up. While staying in the city and town centers, we’d invariably get woken up by the muezzin who announces the morning prayers at 5-6AM. We thought our problems would come to an … Continue reading Left Our Thinking Caps At Home
Our time in Istanbul seemed like eons ago, and it was the last time we stayed in one place without moving for more than a week. Since then, we have been changing accommodations every 3-5 days going from one town to another. It felt like a whirlwind of packing/unpacking, riding public transportation, and walking with … Continue reading A Mini Break
After finally getting the rental car, we made our way to Dalyan, an hour drive from Marmaris. The sole purpose of staying a night in Dalyan was to check out the Lycian Tombs, and the Airbnb that I had specially picked out had a full frontal view of the tombs. Airbnb common areas View from … Continue reading The Goat, The Boat, and The Bal
Another morning of hot air balloon viewing from our hotel. Today was quite possibly my favorite day in Turkey, because we got to go on a beautiful hike in Rose Valley via Meskinder Valley. Our initial plan was to hike the Red Valley loop as well, but Joe needed WiFi to get his trading systems … Continue reading Rose Valley Hike
FIRE'd @ 47 