riverECHO

From Victor to Buhl to Flagstaff to Sedona to Prescott to Tempe to the McDowell Range to Fruita to Moab to Capitol Reef to Zion to St. George to Big Bear to Joshua Tree to Kernville to Camp Nelson to Sequoia to Kings Canyon to Oakhurst to Yosemite to Santa Barbara to Big Sur to San Juan Bautista to Palo Alto to Sonoma to Martinez to Truckee to Victor, we covered some ground in just under 3 months. Here are some highlights:

We spent two weeks surfing near San Juan del Sur, Nicaragua in November with a solid crew of friends and family (including BJ’s brother Brandon, Clay Steph & their 11-month old Ellery, Gretchen, Becky, Angela & John).

The View from our San Juan del Sur House in the Trees

The walk down to the beach

The entire crew at Mango Rosa

Just the ladies

Ice Cream “Truck”

Ellery and his favorite Tio

Playa Maderas

Mmmm … Sand.

The Brothers

Oh yeah … We went surfing

Our Chilly Pool

Swimming at Mango Rosa

Boat Trip to Panga Drops a.k.a. Drop you on your ass

Clay and Steph swim home to Ellery

Granada Chapel

The House in Granada

Synchronized swimming in the Laguna de Apoyo

Cigar Factory

After three years, we made it back to Cordova, Alaska for a week of heli-skiing and a great time with a few old friends. We skied three days out of the week, sitting out for a few days in the middle while the snow gods came in and dumped another few feet of fresh snow. BJ and I skied with separate groups on the first two days. He joined a group of Aussies from Melbourne and I joined the only other lady in house, from Japan, and a couple of guys from France. While BJ’s crew hit some of the steepest runs out there, my group had a blast on mellower, but equally terrifying, runs.

Our “down” days were spent on a moss covered nearby hiking trail, playing dodge ball in the local gym, eating way too much food, catching up with Kevin and Jess, and spending time with the PNH crew and clients over a couple beers.

We had booked a 5pm flight out on our last day and had accepted the fact that we wouldn’t be able to ski without making our groups call it quits a few hours early. We planned to spend the beautiful blue bird day on a sea kayak or a walk into the small town of Cordova. That is until Kevin (the owner of Points North and long time friend) came up to us and said “go get ready … you’re skiing with me.” We were thrilled and quickly ran to our room to pack up our bags so we would be ready to head to the airport right after skiing. And sure enough, after an epic day skiing in the Chugach with Kevin, we were dropped off by the heli at the lodge, ran into our rooms and changed into a pair of jeans and sweatshirt, packed our skis, and hopped in the van to head to the airport so we wouldn’t miss our flight.

Nothing like finishing off a great week with a great day … flying around in a heli above glaciers and snow covered peaks and skiing run after run of 3,000 vertical feet.

And just like that we are back in Jackson, Wyoming crossing our fingers for more snow, getting our ski legs back, and testing our lung capacity in this thin dry mountain air. If you are up for it, we’ve put together a slide show covering the last 14 months in Fiji, New Zealand, Thailand, China, and Australia. Looking through all of these photos, we have shocked ourselves with how much we have done and seen. Great memories!

Click on the image to see the slideshow:

Just after Christmas, we picked Shalyn and Randall up in the Melbourne airport to spend a handful of days exploring the city, driving the Great Ocean Road, eating at only the best restaurants, becoming thoroughly engrossed in the sport of cricket, and simply enjoying the company. We packed a lot in to the few days with Shay and Randall and we wish we could have held on to them even longer.

We spent our first day together exploring Melbourne with a visit to a couple of the popular Sunday markets and a long walk across town to the beach side neighborhood of St. Kilda. It didn’t really matter where we ended up, we were just excited to see each other and catch up.

Day two we rented a car (Slim isn’t suited to take four people on a scenic drive) and headed to the Great Ocean Road. Although the entire day was spent in the car, save a few delicious burgers in Lorne, the sights were beautiful. The guide books warned that the scenic part of the drive doesn’t start until you reach the 12 Apostles, what is today 6 rock stacks just off the coast. The funny thing is that it was the opposite for us. The initial part of the drive from Lorne to Apollo Bay was stunning … turquoise blue water, lush green hills, and a curving skinny road. Despite the fact that it was Monday, it was the perfect Sunday afternoon drive. Once we reached the highlight of the drive at the 12 Apostles we also encountered every single tour bus and its occupants in the country, as well as the flies. Yes, it was really pretty, but the crowds took a bit of the splendor away and we only truly appreciated where we were when we looked through the photos at the end of the day.

A theme was quickly building during our visit as Randall was engulfed by the intricacies and wonders of the sport of cricket. This is a sport that BJ and I have continuously looked upon with a set of rolled eyes … boring! Oh, but how wrong we were. It just so happened that Australia was playing Pakistan in Melbourne for a test match. A test match is old school cricket, spanning over 5 days. Players start at 10am and play until 6pm daily, with breaks for lunch and, of course, afternoon tea. We hadn’t made any plans for our final day together and at the last minute decided to catch a half day of the match. I won’t go into all the details but after prying Randall with questions over and over again during the match, I think we all discovered a new found respect for the sport.

One of Shalyn and Randall’s favorite activities while on vacation is finding and eating at great restaurants. They had done their research and had picked out a handful of places to eat before flying into Melbourne. I could go on and on about every place we ate but nothing will compare to our final lunch together at Movida. We were denied the evening before because we had failed to make a reservation, but we were able to sneak in for lunch the following day, just after a morning of cricket and right before Shay and Randall had to head to the airport. Movida is a tapas restaurant so all but a few of the dishes were single servings. We must have ordered about 20 things all together and my mouth is starting to water just thinking about it. At the end of our many-course-meal with dishes like anchovy with tomato sorbet, croquettes, truffle custard in a perfect egg shell, shaved lamb in macadamia gazpacho, and our favorite, smoked mackerel with pine nut sorbet, I honestly felt like we should go hug the chef. If you love food, go drool over this menu for a while: www.movida.com.

We said goodbye to Shalyn and Randall as they were on their way to spend New Year’s Eve in Sydney, home of unarguably the best firework display in the world. We were almost convinced to drive the 10 hours as they flew the 1.5 hours to meet them to ring in the New Year in Sydney, but we ended up with no plans but to head downtown Melbourne on New Year’s Eve. Just as we hit the streets, dark clouds started to close out the evening light and we soon found ourselves trying to dodge rain drops. We spent most of our evening in a bar just below Federation Square with fellow travelers and others avoiding the rain, but made it back outside just before midnight to join in on the countdown and firework display over the city. 2009 was an eventful and fun filled year for us but we can’t deny our excitement to return home, see friends and family, and of course, plan out a number of adventures for 2010. Happy New Year!

16,023 kilometers around Australia

We drive barely two hours to Melbourne (southeast Australia) today to pick up my sister and her husband and Western Australia seems like ages ago. It’s hard to believe that we were there, 1800 miles away, just last week. Since our last post, we spent a couple more days in the town of Esperance, the highlight of our stay being a visit to Lucky Bay and climbing Frenchman Peak. At the summit a huge cave, called the “Eye,” looks out over the coast line. To everyone in Jackson, I think this climb was the equivalent of climbing about half way up Mt. Glory and the most vert we’ve hiked since we arrived in Australia. We are going to be in tears when we get to Jackson and back on our skis in January.

The much anticipated drive across the Nullarbor Plain was painless and, in fact, covered in trees. The road follows the southern coast of Australia, which in most places is one seamless cliff wall. We took a few detours on some not so well maintained roads to look out over the cliff edge and to the sea below. I’m not sure what made the drive go by so quickly but all of a sudden on Monday night we arrived in Adelaide where Christmas cheer was definitely in the air. Every RV and family size tent at our caravan park had twinkling lights and even full size Christmas trees. Other than a bright red $2 Christmas t-shirt that BJ found at a thrift store and a Christmas tree headband that I found at the grocery checkout, we felt a little unprepared.

For Christmas Eve and Day we splurged on a cottage in the shadows of Grampians National Park. The air is pleasant and cool up here and the rocky terrain and mountainous relief are a nice change. We spent Christmas morning (yesterday) reading, drinking coffee, and making heaps of phone calls to family in Idaho, Arizona, California, and North Carolina before whipping up somewhat disastrous eggs benedict (it tasted good, but didn’t look very pretty). A few rounds of coffee later we headed out to tour a couple of the top attractions in the Grampians, including a huge waterfall. When we returned “home” we were still bouncing with energy and decided to pick up a game of tennis at the on-site court. Neither BJ nor I have played tennis since P.E. in high school but the court and rackets were just sitting there beckoning us to give it a shot. The game was highly entertaining, especially since we were barefoot.

This Christmas has hit us harder than we were expecting. We definitely miss home and the feeling of being around family at this time of year and I can’t wait to pick up Shalyn and Randall this afternoon.  Everyone in Australia loves talking about plans for Chrissy. I can’t tell you how many people (including a number of grocery store clerks) asked us “So, what are you doing for Chrissy?” On behalf of Australia, Merry Chrissy!

13,299 kilometers around Australia

We spent a few days in the sleepy town of Walpole exploring the giant Tingle trees and walking along the 38 meter tall Tree Top Walk (totally worth it and not as touristy as we were expecting) before we pushed on further down the coast to the super hip and hippy friendly town of Denmark. This was a place that we could have called home for a while. One of the first days we were there a huge craft market and free concert took place on a large green right in town. We couldn’t get enough of one of the bands called Laliya . . . two musicians, one didgeridoo, one djembe drum, a bunch of shakers, and one crazy instrument called an Appalachian dulcimer. It’s not the type of music that will make you really shake it, but it’s perfect for a Saturday afternoon in the sun. Here’s a little sample:

Our last day in Denmark was definitely the highlight as we spent it on Ocean Beach taking a surf lesson!! The waves were miniature but they were perfect for learning and we had a blast. It was so shallow that you could actually walk out into the waves with board in hand. It made it really easy to go over and over and over again. No photos to share for that because we were having way too much fun to get out of the water. Besides, we should probably wait until we are a little better to start posting photos of each other surfing.

We left Denmark via the gorgeous Greens Pool and Elephant Rocks and then continued east toward Bremer Bay for one night and on to Esperance. Although the town is a little more industrial than we expected (BJ says Idaho Falls on the beach but I don’t think it’s that bad) we are very close to beautiful beaches and a national park. We’ll spend a few days here before making the trek along the Nullarbor across southern Australia.

12,227 kilometers around Australia

We spent a week in Margaret River wine tasting at Voyager and Leeuwin Estates, riding our bikes along a couple awesome unmarked mountain biking trails, enjoying our proximity to town and drinking way too many coffees, and actually seeing some live music by the regionally well known Grace Barbe. The relaxing week seemed to fly by and in the middle of our weekend, we decided it was time to drive a little further south. We stopped at Cape Leeuwin where the Indian and Southern Oceans meet and then headed east.

The road heading inland from Margaret River runs straight into an area known as the southern forests. Huge karri trees, basically a huge type of eucalyptus, tower over the forest floor. These enormous trees are almost as tall as the famous giant redwoods in Northern California. Back in the day, fire lookouts used to shimmy up these trees with a rope and spikes on the inside of their boots. It would take them 6 hours to complete the round trip up and down. Finally they decided to build a sort of ladder made out of rebar that is drilled into the tree and spirals to the top. Each bar is about two feet above the previous bar and if you were to slip through the bars, there is nothing to catch your fall. At the top of the tree, they built a four story platform, each story connected to the next by a skinny ladder, which reaches well above the smaller branches and provides the perfect lookout to watch for fires.

So what? Well there are three of these climbing trees in the southwest that are open to the public. They are free to climb and there is no tree-lifeguard on duty to make sure you don’t fall. You just park your car and start climbing. We arrived at Dave Evans Bicentennial Tree early in the morning and had it all to ourselves. The tree is 75 meters (246 feet) tall. I don’t consider myself afraid of heights, but this thing was terrifying … in an exciting sort of way. You have to make a point to not look down and can only move one limb at a time. My hands actually hurt afterwards because I had been squeezing each bar so tightly. The view from the top was definitely worthwhile but the climb itself was the highlight, especially coming down.

Our next stop was the very small town of Northcliffe, where we had heard about a number of great mountain biking trails. We stopped by the visitor center and received a couple of “maps” of the trails from a very enthusiastic lady who had us convinced that we had come to the Moab of Australia. She pointed us in the direction of the local campground, called Round Tu-It Camp, but forgot to mention that the campground itself has actually built their own 5 km bike trail. We weren’t expecting much but it turned out to be a really fun trail and the campground will be hosting the first ever 24-hour mountain bike race in Western Australia on the same trail come January. We should have stayed at camp the following morning to ride the trail again. But instead, we took our cute mountain biking brochures and headed out to try the local trails. Our first clue should have been the access road which was covered in leaves and branches and looked to get very little use. But we were determined and proceeded to spend the next hour thrashing along a trail that was totally overgrown. To give the town credit, it could be a really cool trail if it were maintained. But while BJ kept wiping spider webs off his face and dodging tree branches, all I could think about were the snakes that were disguising themselves as sticks all along the trail.

We are now further south at a place called Walpole, along the southern coast. We are sharing a huge grassy field with a kangaroo family and some very loud kookaburras. I am really going to miss waking up to the birds when we go home.

11,742 kilometers around Australia

While we may not have had the most traditional Thanksgiving celebration around family and lots of food, we kept ourselves busy and thoroughly entertained on the mountain biking trails in Wellington National Park. We zipped around a few purpose built trails at Leonard Hill but our favorite ride ended up being a trail that left right from camp and followed the Munda Biddi, a cycling track that spans the length of SW Australia, before meeting up with a walking track that followed the river back to camp.

After we had our fill of biking we pointed to the coast and to the Margaret River region. Picture Napa Valley. Then picture beaches and water in the Caribbean. Finally add in epic surfing. Put it all together and you get Margaret River. We’re not sure what the next few days will bring, but we like the town, we like our little camp, and there are beaches, trails, and wine tasting within minutes.