After we left Kenai, we stayed at the Denali state park campground. Denali is a completely undisturbed environment, except for a single road going through the middle of it and a few buildings on the side. Its scenic and has lots of wildlife. The plan was to go to the national park and take the bus tour. We did, the bus we took was the cheapest available, so there wasn't an official tour guide driving the bus. Luckily, driving a bus the same way back and forth every day is actually quite boring, so they tell us about the park to help pass the time. I didn't get to sit with my family, instead I say by a guy with an enormous camera. It was one of those camera's that you need to rest on something to keep it steady, so it was sort of like a really fat sniper rifle.
The first bus tour was kind of uneventful, it was really foggy and we didn't see much of anything at all. The second day was much better, I sat by my sister and there was no fog. About an hour into the tour we saw a few brown bears on the side of the road so we watched them for a while until the driver decided we had been there long enough. It was a little odd how the bears just ignored us like we didn't exist even though there were about 20 of us watching them. We kept driving and saw more bears, I still can't believe how many we saw, in all the other parks we went to we were lucky to even see one. When we got to the visitor's center we decided we would walk a little ways back, it wasn't a bad idea since we could hitch-hike with any green bus we wanted to. We were making jokes that my older brother, who had a foot brace on, would be the first to go if we got attacked by a bear. After we walked about a mile, a park ranger pulled over and said we needed to turn around because there was a bear and her cubs just around the corner. My mom managed to convince him to give us a ride past them. He was a strange guy, and I don't think he got out much. The first thing he said when we got in was: "We only give rides during emergencies, so whats your emergency?" He knew we didn't have one, but I guess he had a change of heart once we got inside. My brother said: "I broke my foot last month," and that seemed to work. I can't believe he let us get in, there was a massive 12 gauge shotgun on the car's ceiling right above my head that I could have easily taken.
We saw a total of 8ish bears that time, and some other animals. We saw some golden eagles, a falcon, tons of mountain goats, but no wolves. One of these days I'm going to see one up close. We didn't see Mt. McKinney (the tallest mountain in North America) though, the mountain was always cloudy when we tried to see it. I liked that trip, all the flights were a pain but it was worth it.
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
South Alaska-Part 1
Last summer (1 year ago), the 5 of us went to Alaska with the airline miles my dad had accumulated from flying around for his company. We went to Kenai Peninsula, and Denali national park. This trip was different than the others because instead of bringing our camper, we rented a small RV that we got a good deal on. The first thing we noticed when we got there at 5am, was that it was not dark out, in fact it seemed like the sun was rising very slowly. Through the whole trip it was like this, it wasn't (completely) dark there until around 2am, and the sun started to rise at about 4am. It was really weird and disorienting going to bed when it looked like it was 3pm outside.
We got our rental RV from the rental place and drove to the Kenai Peninsula, the first thing we noticed were the huge and snowy mountains. These mountains were a recurring theme in South Alaska. Not all of them were snowy, but they were everywhere. We got there and camped in a couple different places but only one of them is worth talking about. When we got to the site we started to look at the large amount of birds that seemed to be flying around, then we noticed that all of them were bald eagles. I mean they were everywhere so it was kind of creepy. I felt like one of those kids they talk about on TV that have crows following them since childhood, except these crows were large, flesh-eating raptors. We walked down to the beach to find a group of about 20 of them. Some of them were fishing, some of them were circling above, and we saw a pair of fledglings (which were huge but I could tell because of what color they were) have a bit of a tussle over a piece of fish carcass.
My mom learned that the Time Bandit, a crab fishing boat from my dad's favorite show: Deadliest Catch, was docked on Kenai. So we went there and took some pictures, its always sort of cool seeing something in real life that you've seen on TV. We also went salmon fishing because apparently we were there during the salmon run. We got a charter for the fishing, it was cheaper than renting a boat but we didn't know jack about salmon fishing so we needed a guide anyway. Apparently salmon are cannibals, because we used their eggs as bait, so did everyone else. By everyone else you may think that I mean me and my family, not quite. We got to the fishing spot at about 7am, that was the time we had to wait until we could legally fish. We were parked (or is it anchored? I don't know) in the same spot as about 20-30 other boats, the boats were all about 50 feet apart at the most. Fishing lines were getting tangled, people were yelling at other boats, it was as chaotic as a fishing trip could be. My mom was the only one to catch a fish, so when we finished we were going to take it home. The guide (who my mom luckily made friends with by talking politics the whole time) asked for our fishing licences, which we didn't have. My mom thought we didn't need them because it was a charter. Long story short: he liked us, so he let us go without reporting it, and gave him our fish for the trouble.
That was the last thing we did when we were camping on Kenai, we headed up to Denali after that. Kenai was a really cool place, seeing all those bald eagles at once was just incredible considering that I never thought I would see even one up close in my entire life.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
Yellowstone
Yellowstone is America's first national park, located in northwest Wyoming. No other place in the world has such an abundance of seismic oddities such as geysers, mud pits, strange colored water and rocks, and other unique things. This was not my favorite trip, just because I didn't care much about geysers or sulfuric rocks, but I enjoyed the wildlife part. The five of us went there on two separate occasions, once when I was a child, and again when I was 13 (I don't remember the exact age). On both occasions we drove with our camper in tow and stayed at a local campground. We camped almost everywhere we went, so we all got pretty good at setting up the old pop-up tent and loading it with our stuff from the car.
Our first stop was the place everybody goes first, the Old Faithful geyser. We got there and waited for it to erupt, which it did once every hour. It was really tall, I don't have a clue what else to say about it. Mud pits were another thing, but they were more randomly spread across the park than geysers. They are just pits of mud that are boiling, if something living were to fall in, it would be roasted immediately. There were also many hot springs, and if I remember right they were filled with very toxic and acidic chemicals, drinking or touching the water there was a very bad idea. The ground sometimes gives way there too, exposing new springs or mud pits so its a good idea to stay on the boardwalks. The wildlife fall victim to not being able to understand the nature of boardwalks in Yellowstone all the time. They will be walking along eating grass and bothering nobody, when out of nowhere the ground beneath them gives way and exposes something like a mud pit or hot spring, completely engulfing the animal and leaving no trace of its existence behind, not even the bones sometimes.
Wildlife was the only thing I really cared about when I was down there. The only problem was only the Buffalo were easy to find, it was like the other animals were smart enough to understand that the word "roadkill" comes from the word "road." Not that it would be possible to kill a Buffalo without doing serious damage to your car; they are very large, very stupid, and sometimes very aggressive. Grizzly bears were the signature animal of the park, they are much bigger than black bears and far less common. We saw a grizzly bear running through a pack of elk after a baby elk. We didn't see it catch it though because it ran after it into the woods, that would have been cool. Elk are just big deer, a little smarter, but there's not much else to them. We saw wolves from about a quarter mile away, wolves are really smart (for animals) so they keep their distance from humans. They actually had a team of surveyors tracking them and taking pictures from a distance, like they didn't want to lose them or something. We saw lots of Coyotes, that is if you count their flattened corpses strewn across the road. We saw one by the road catch a mole and eat it. It wasn't afraid of our car at all, but I'm sure it would have ran if one of us got out. We need to build cars that will scare wildlife away, the fact that wildlife isn't afraid of cars is a problem for everyone.
Not a super exciting trip, but I would still go again if I had the chance. I still haven't seen wolves up close in any of the parks I've been to, so that needs to be one of my goals if I go back.
Our first stop was the place everybody goes first, the Old Faithful geyser. We got there and waited for it to erupt, which it did once every hour. It was really tall, I don't have a clue what else to say about it. Mud pits were another thing, but they were more randomly spread across the park than geysers. They are just pits of mud that are boiling, if something living were to fall in, it would be roasted immediately. There were also many hot springs, and if I remember right they were filled with very toxic and acidic chemicals, drinking or touching the water there was a very bad idea. The ground sometimes gives way there too, exposing new springs or mud pits so its a good idea to stay on the boardwalks. The wildlife fall victim to not being able to understand the nature of boardwalks in Yellowstone all the time. They will be walking along eating grass and bothering nobody, when out of nowhere the ground beneath them gives way and exposes something like a mud pit or hot spring, completely engulfing the animal and leaving no trace of its existence behind, not even the bones sometimes.
Wildlife was the only thing I really cared about when I was down there. The only problem was only the Buffalo were easy to find, it was like the other animals were smart enough to understand that the word "roadkill" comes from the word "road." Not that it would be possible to kill a Buffalo without doing serious damage to your car; they are very large, very stupid, and sometimes very aggressive. Grizzly bears were the signature animal of the park, they are much bigger than black bears and far less common. We saw a grizzly bear running through a pack of elk after a baby elk. We didn't see it catch it though because it ran after it into the woods, that would have been cool. Elk are just big deer, a little smarter, but there's not much else to them. We saw wolves from about a quarter mile away, wolves are really smart (for animals) so they keep their distance from humans. They actually had a team of surveyors tracking them and taking pictures from a distance, like they didn't want to lose them or something. We saw lots of Coyotes, that is if you count their flattened corpses strewn across the road. We saw one by the road catch a mole and eat it. It wasn't afraid of our car at all, but I'm sure it would have ran if one of us got out. We need to build cars that will scare wildlife away, the fact that wildlife isn't afraid of cars is a problem for everyone.
Not a super exciting trip, but I would still go again if I had the chance. I still haven't seen wolves up close in any of the parks I've been to, so that needs to be one of my goals if I go back.
Saturday, July 23, 2011
Backpacking up a Mountain
The is one trip in particular that I remember well, we went hiking up a 6 mile one way mountain (I can't remember the name of it) trail . I was in 7th grade at the time, but I was in relatively good shape because we hiked up Kennesaw Mountain every day in preparation for all the mountain hiking we were going to be doing. I was never the biggest fan of hiking, but my parents loved it so they took me and my siblings along with them. We were planning on spending the night at the camp site at the end of the trail. We got an early start to the hike so we would have time to set up camp. For this hike, we were going all out, we had huge backpacks with sleeping rolls attached to them, a tent, anti-bear crap (airhorns, food containers, pepper spray, bells), and other various camping supplies. Being the kid who never used his locker at school, and instead just carried all his books in his backpack, I wasn't bothered by it much.
We made it to the campsite in the afternoon, I'm surprised we didn't miss it, the only thing indicating that it was more than a flat place of grass-less dirt was a tiny sign with a picture of an arrowhead on it. We stopped to set up camp, but after about a half hour or so, me and my sister started to feel sick. To put it plainly we threw up because we were dehydrated. Something about the altitude made our bodies require more water, but I was young and I didn't really notice the difference. And I'll never forget what my mom said to me after I threw up, something like this: "You can walk back down and sleep in the car if you want to." I sat there and thought to myself, this was highly unusual behavior for her to send me, a 12 year old boy, down a six mile trail in the dark through grizzly bear country. I don't think she would have actually let me do it if I said yes (which of course I didn't), but it was still quite strange and completely out of character for her.
I thanked God that I didn't go down the trail that night, because as the 5 of us laid there in our tent, the most intense thunderstorm that I've ever experienced in my entire life rolled in right on top of us. The tent was rocking all over the place, it wasn't going anywhere because we were inside, but it was still kind of terrifying (and cool, I mean I was 12 so it was kind of awesome). It was hailing, pouring rain, and thundering all at the same time. I can't even imagine what my parents were feeling, they must have been freaking out that whole night out of worry. On the hike back down we saw a bunch of camping supplies strewn out on a boulder as if they were drying in the sun, some unlucky travelers we bumped into got caught in the storm before they could set up their camp, so everything was wet. I think that made my parents feel a little bit better about themselves. Also, one cool thing we did was filter our own water, we were low on our bottled supply on the way down, so we used a small filter to get clean water from a stream we found.
I have fond memories of that hike, it was quite the adventure for us.
We made it to the campsite in the afternoon, I'm surprised we didn't miss it, the only thing indicating that it was more than a flat place of grass-less dirt was a tiny sign with a picture of an arrowhead on it. We stopped to set up camp, but after about a half hour or so, me and my sister started to feel sick. To put it plainly we threw up because we were dehydrated. Something about the altitude made our bodies require more water, but I was young and I didn't really notice the difference. And I'll never forget what my mom said to me after I threw up, something like this: "You can walk back down and sleep in the car if you want to." I sat there and thought to myself, this was highly unusual behavior for her to send me, a 12 year old boy, down a six mile trail in the dark through grizzly bear country. I don't think she would have actually let me do it if I said yes (which of course I didn't), but it was still quite strange and completely out of character for her.
I thanked God that I didn't go down the trail that night, because as the 5 of us laid there in our tent, the most intense thunderstorm that I've ever experienced in my entire life rolled in right on top of us. The tent was rocking all over the place, it wasn't going anywhere because we were inside, but it was still kind of terrifying (and cool, I mean I was 12 so it was kind of awesome). It was hailing, pouring rain, and thundering all at the same time. I can't even imagine what my parents were feeling, they must have been freaking out that whole night out of worry. On the hike back down we saw a bunch of camping supplies strewn out on a boulder as if they were drying in the sun, some unlucky travelers we bumped into got caught in the storm before they could set up their camp, so everything was wet. I think that made my parents feel a little bit better about themselves. Also, one cool thing we did was filter our own water, we were low on our bottled supply on the way down, so we used a small filter to get clean water from a stream we found.
I have fond memories of that hike, it was quite the adventure for us.
Thursday, July 7, 2011
Caving Trip
I believe I was a freshman in high school when we went on this particular trip. We brought our camper with us, and stayed at a local campsite with some "family friends." To be more specific they were my friend's family and two of they're friend's families, and I'm sure my dad, brother, and sister had a wonderful time talking with strangers about stuff they didn't care about, in a place they didn't care about. My mom probably did have a wonderful time, filling the semi-silence with her semi-babble. However the main reason we made this venture was to go into a nearby cave, to climb rocks and explore.
We were each required to bring "disposable" clothing, something to change into, a head lamp, a helmet, a backup flashlight, and backup batteries. As most caves tend to be, it was dark. It was all rocks once we got past the first stretch of mud. I emphasize the mud part, there wasn't much dirt at all actually. There were also bats, I remember one time, a kid that was about my age saw a bat hanging on a low ceiling so we approached it slowly. We started to test it, to see if it even noticed us, we even yelled at it and made all sorts of quick movements, yet the bat did not budge. That same kid who found it reached out to poke it, I think we all expected the bat to freak out and bite him or something, but it didn't. The bat fell to the ground, like it had been hanging there dead for days. I don't know anything about bats, but either it was a very heavy sleeper or it was stuck to the ceiling when it died. Being the sadistic child that I was, I laughed at it falling to its misery. I feel kind of sick to my stomach when I think about that.
I recently went back to that same cave not 5 days ago. The experience was the same, in that we all came out completely covered in mud (I do not exaggerate, the only part of me that wasn't muddy was parts of my face), and we were thirsty and tired. It was different because last time I went, I didn't follow the group down into the rest of the cave because there was a 30 foot drop I didn't want to go down. This time I did go down, and it wasn't very hard at all I have no idea what made me not go the last time. I am still afraid of ladders and I always will be (ladders are a terrible invention), however I believe I conquered my fear of heights on this latest trip and I'm glad I went back.
Here's a fun fact I learned: don't chug a bottle of water when you're dehydrated.
We were each required to bring "disposable" clothing, something to change into, a head lamp, a helmet, a backup flashlight, and backup batteries. As most caves tend to be, it was dark. It was all rocks once we got past the first stretch of mud. I emphasize the mud part, there wasn't much dirt at all actually. There were also bats, I remember one time, a kid that was about my age saw a bat hanging on a low ceiling so we approached it slowly. We started to test it, to see if it even noticed us, we even yelled at it and made all sorts of quick movements, yet the bat did not budge. That same kid who found it reached out to poke it, I think we all expected the bat to freak out and bite him or something, but it didn't. The bat fell to the ground, like it had been hanging there dead for days. I don't know anything about bats, but either it was a very heavy sleeper or it was stuck to the ceiling when it died. Being the sadistic child that I was, I laughed at it falling to its misery. I feel kind of sick to my stomach when I think about that.
I recently went back to that same cave not 5 days ago. The experience was the same, in that we all came out completely covered in mud (I do not exaggerate, the only part of me that wasn't muddy was parts of my face), and we were thirsty and tired. It was different because last time I went, I didn't follow the group down into the rest of the cave because there was a 30 foot drop I didn't want to go down. This time I did go down, and it wasn't very hard at all I have no idea what made me not go the last time. I am still afraid of ladders and I always will be (ladders are a terrible invention), however I believe I conquered my fear of heights on this latest trip and I'm glad I went back.
Here's a fun fact I learned: don't chug a bottle of water when you're dehydrated.
Monday, June 13, 2011
The Grand Canyon
Let me first be clear that me and my siblings were kids when we went on most of these trips, and looking back we are grateful for our parents putting up with us and taking us anyway.
It is easily a natural wonder, in that there is nothing else in the world like it, but can you spend an entire day there during the dead and dry heat of an Arizona summer? Well sure, if you want to go stir crazy and then die of heat stroke. Me and my whole family went there once when I was a little kid, and it wasn't the most pleasant time I've ever had, as a matter of fact I hated it. I was a kid, I didn't give a crap about beautiful scenery or any of the stuff my parents loved. They dragged me, my older brother and my younger sister around on these trips every single 3 day weekend and sometimes regular weekends except for memorial day, where we would catch our breath. This was only a small part of our "big summer trip," which we would take every summer, where we drove to a national park somewhere and camped, then camped somewhere else, then drove 300 miles and camped somewhere else, because camping was cheaper than hotels (Me and my siblings hated camping too, but in hindsight our tent/popup was much cleaner than a disgusting hotel room). Anyway, back to the main topic.
Our first impression, or the general feeling we got, of the Grand Canyon was as follows: "Wow that's cool...........okay where to next." I mean I thought it was impressive, and I'll never forget it, but all you need to do there is look at it, take it in, and then leave. It was a very hot summer and the sun was beating down on us so that only hurried us along. We stayed for a while and looked around, it felt wrong to just leave right after seeing it. Ok, not really but that's how my mom felt so we were pretty much trapped.
After going back to the canyon when I was 18, I appreciated it more, and we spent an entire day there, it was peaceful and actually not that bad. But most importantly it wasn't hot.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)