riverECHO

This weekend offered a good excuse to get the blog rolling again. Sorry for the lull in posts, that is, if anyone is out there keeping track of us.

BJ’s brother Brandon drove into town late Thursday night to hike the Teton Crest Trail with us over the weekend. We couldn’t have picked a better weekend out of the summer There were no crowds. We had warm Indian summer nights. And the fall colors were insane.

Click on the image to see all photos from the trail.

We started the weekend with a bike ride in the Big Holes. Shannon and Jimmy also joined us for a long loop in Horseshoe Canyon. Shannon’s quote of the day: “when do we hit the downhill?” That was after about 20 minutes of continuous down but these Teton trails can be quite deceiving.

Despite an early wake up the following morning, we somehow managed to delay riding up the tram and starting our hike until noon. Shannon, Jimmy, and their service dog Keoki met us at the top of the tram to hike with us until Death Canyon. BJ, Brandon and I pushed on to spend the night on Death Canyon Shelf. With three of us in a tent and unusually warm temps, I slept outside of my sleeping bag the entire night.

The next day we continued on through Alaska Basin and spent the night in the South Fork of Cascade Canyon. It’s no wonder how the canyon got its name. We must have used the word “beautiful” over 200 times.

On day three, with a couple sore knees and a few blisters (one of which BJ nicknamed my sixth toe), we walked out Cascade Canyon and back to our car.

Catching Up:

Just a few weeks ago we joined Sam, Mareike, and Schmitty for an amazing three day hike in the Wind River Range. Located just south of Jackson, this was surprisingly our first time in the Winds. It was cold but not freezing, wonderfully mosquito free, and we had beautiful weather. The lakes are endless in the Winds and the fish are plentiful. Although somehow they were able to evade both BJ and my many casts. Wait, that’s not true … BJ caught a minnow.

In late August my dad and Fran drove out to visit us in their ’85 New Horizon RV. We spent a few days in Teton Valley and then took a road trip together out to Craters of the Moon, Stanley, and Sun Valley, Idaho, spending some time in a natural hot spring, hiking along Redfish Lake, and celebrating my dad’s 75th birthday at Redfish Lake Lodge.

The following weekend, we joined Andy and Claudia and drove to Helena to visit Kevin, Crystal, and their two kids Carly and Haven. They showed us around Helena, helped us find a local bike ride called the Ridge Trail, and cooked us amazing amounts of delicious food. The visit was long overdue and we’ll definitely be back.

For further reading pleasure, our friends Tom and Julia are on an epic trip around the world. Their stories have been so much fun to follow. Check out their blog here: http://www.weddingsandwhitewater.com/

BJ put this mountain biking video together after our ride in the Big Holes:

I know this sounds a bit morbid, but on my dad and Fran’s last day in Queenstown we spent the better part of the morning googling “When will I die?” Fran had been amazed at BJ’s ability to simply ask Google a question and find an answer, so she tried to come up with a really difficult question (and one she thought very useful). After two hours, we had submitted answers on questionnaires on a few different websites and learned that both Fran and I, simply because we are women who do not smoke, will probably live to be about 100. BJ and my dad, because of their family history and simply because they are men, are going to leave us, the two women in the room, lonely during our final years. We were able to find quite a bit of humor in our fortunes as Fran, who is usually on one sort of diet or another and who was appalled at the idea of living to 100 years, found that if she actually gained a few pounds would die earlier.

Once we were satisfied (or unsatisfied) with our fortunes, as told by Google, we ventured out into another rainy day for a brief wine tour of Gibbston Valley. Since it was Sunday, Mount Edward’s Winery was closed so we settled for a cheese and wine sampler at Gibbston Valley Wines. BJ and I practiced our wine tasting skills and all agreed that we needed some coffee to turn around our late afternoon sleepy wine heads. We headed into downtown Queenstown for some cappuccinos and a movie . . . Slumdog Millionaire. It was by far (and I’m sure I’ve said this before but this time I mean it) the best movie I have seen this year. The cinematography was brilliant, in both color and style. It moved so quickly, jumping from scene to scene, that it almost gave me the feeling of being in India. It was a really creative way to share a story about Indian life in the slums.

After the movie, we spent a “Last Night in Queenstown” dinner at the Fishbone where we continued to laugh about certain scenes from the movie and reminisced with my dad and Fran about their entire trip. They saw the most of New Zealand you could possible see in a month’s time and loved every minute of it. I felt like our time together flew by. We were busy bouncing to the West Coast and to Milford Sound, but had an unexpected blessing with a chunk of rainy days in the end where we could all relax together in Queenstown. I think they truly enjoyed a bit of time to relax while they were on vacation.

We dropped my dad and Fran off at the bus station yesterday morning so they could bus back to Christchurch before flying back to San Francisco and joined Ali and Steve last night for yet another movie . . . The World’s Fastest Indian, a great film about a kiwi whose love for going fast on his Indian motorcycle takes him from Invercargill, New Zealand to the salt flats of Utah. Something about Anthony Hopkins’ character reminded me immediately of my dad, whether it was his love for engines, his white hair, or his mannerisms. After the movie and before going to bed I had a sudden wave of missing my dad and I burst into tears. Despite spending the last week and a half with him, I feel like we never truly had a chance to catch up and I had this regretful feeling that if we continue on with our travels, I may not see him for a long time. While they were here, we had briefly discussed meeting up again with them . . . and maybe even in India. So Dad, we’ll just have to make it happen!

We’ve made it through both the first and second films and are about to embark on the third one. My dad and Fran have even watched most of the extras that go into how the trilogy was filmed, the costumes and props, and the characters. While BJ had to return to work the day after we returned from Milford Sound, the rest of us drove up to Glenorchy, a small town just an hour’s drive up the lake from Queenstown. We knew many scenes from the Lord of the Rings had been filmed in that area but didn’t know which or where. We weren’t a minute away from the house when the questions started coming and I decided that we better prepare ourselves with a bit of solid information to guide our journey instead of just making it all up. We stopped in Queenstown before our departure and went into an official Lord of the Rings Store where Fran purchased a Lord of the Rings Location Guide. My dad narrated the drive up to Glenorchy and we followed a dirt road out to an area called Paradise. It was beautiful and we could see the glaciated peaks of Mount Earnslaw in the background. It was fun having the guide to tell us what had been filmed where but to be honest, all of the names in films sound so similar that I could never really picture which part, or even which of the three films, they were referring to. After a while along the road to Paradise, we backtracked a bit and drove out towards the Routeburn Track where we strolled along the nature walk for a while.

As we left Glenorchy we could see clouds starting to build in the mountains and sure enough the rains came pouring down the next morning. Our big outings over the last two days have been to a local coffee shop and to the cinema and museum in Arrowtown. It’s actually been quite refreshing for us, and my dad and Fran, to have some down time while it rains.

Sunshine is usually unheard of in Milford Sound, but we somehow timed it perfectly (with the good weather luck from my Dad and Fran) and experienced the stunning fjord under the hot summer sun. When BJ and I had quickly visited Milford after a long hike a couple months ago it was pouring rain and thousands of tiny waterfalls lined the steep walls of the fjord. Under the sun, the temporary waterfalls had disappeared. It just so happens that you can’t have the best of both worlds in Milford Sound. When the sun is shining there will never be as many waterfalls and when there are a thousand waterfalls there will never be sun.

We started out our tour of Milford Sound with a day in Te Anau. We checked in to another Holiday Park, went on a self guided tour of a small bird sanctuary, and then spent a few hours reading and writing on the grassy lawn in front of the holiday park. While I was writing this blog on paper, BJ took a sip of beer and then sprayed it all over me and my paper. I thought it was a joke at first until he said that a bee had slipped into his beer and stung him on his lip. It had started to puff up pretty quickly. Later in the day we went to the local cinema to watch a film on the area called “Shadowland.” BJ noticed that one of the local beers that they were selling was called Wasp. He thought it was very fitting. Unlike the horrible film we saw in Franz Joseph, this film was beautifully done. Some of the scenery and accompanying music even gave me goosebumps.

It’s hard to describe the insignificance and smallness one feels in Milford and the photos will never do the area justice. But I can say that it is one of, if not “the” most beautiful places in New Zealand. We toured Milford on a small “nature cruise” boat which was able to get closer to the shoreline than some of the larger cruises. They taught us a few things as well . . . Milford Sound is actually a fjord and not a sound at all. It was incorrectly named by Captain Cook and the name stuck. A fjord is an area that has been carved out by glaciers and filled in with sea water and usually has very steep and dramatic mountains that jut up from the ocean. A sound is a flooded river valley . . . think of Puget Sound in the Northwest. We also learned that Milford Sound has many “treevalanches.” There is so little topsoil on the massive rock mountains that the trees either cling on to cracks within the rock or they grow on top of one another. If one tree comes loose from the rock, an entire string of trees below it will come crashing down with it, grabbing on to more and more trees as it slides down to sea level.

Probably the highlight of our boat cruise in the Milford was our experience under the Lady Bowen Waterfall. After the captain advised everyone who didn’t want to get wet to go inside, the boat slowly inched toward the base of the falls, which plunge into the fjord from over 500 feet above. The boat dipped its nose directly into the waterfall and BJ and I, although somewhat hiding below the bow, were instantly soaked.

On the return back to the boat dock, we had the option of stopping at an observatory called Milford Deep. Milford receives about 8 meters of rain a year which creates a fresh water layer over the salt water. Unlike the muddy rain water that you would see during a typical rain storm, there is no mud for the rain water to pick up. The rain water turns a little bit darker in color from tannins but is not murky. The fresh water layer that ends up above the salt water shields enough of the sunlight that fish and sea creatures like black coral, eleven-armed starfish, sea urchins and sea cucumbers that would normally live much deeper in the ocean can live closer to the surface of the ocean. Obviously, this was a beautiful and yet very informational tour of Milford Sound.

My dad and Fran arrived in Queenstown last Thursday night and it has been go go go since then. I had a wonderful 28th birthday and I thank all of those who sent me e-cards (especially from my little sister who sent me a talking squirrel) and notes on facebook . . . oh, what would we do without the internets. We spent the day making plans for the following week together, leisurely exploring Queenstown, on a short hike that I had remembered as flat but was very much up and down, followed by a beautiful dinner and delicious sangria at a new restaurant for us called The Bathhouse, along Lake Wakatipu’s waterfront.

On Valentine’s Day, the following morning, we loaded up the Holden to head west over Haast Pass to visit Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. BJ and I had quickly visited the area on our initial drive down to Queenstown but only hiked the 5 minutes to the lookout at Franz Joseph and missed Fox Glacier entirely because it was closed . . . we didn’t realize glaciers closed and opened for business. My dad and Fran had brought the good weather with them and as we made our way over Haast Pass we stopped the car at pretty much every attraction including the Blue (actually quite green) Pools and Thunder Falls. When we arrived in the town of Franz Joseph we checked in to a Top 10 Holiday Park where my dad and Fran had reserved a room and we pitched our tent. Because of all the backpackers and campers in New Zealand, these holiday parks are quite the fad. They have a variety of rooms, campsites, huge kitchens, and usually a lounge with games, TV and internet. They are a bit more expensive option for setting up a tent but a much cheaper option for someone looking for a bed who doesn’t want to share a dorm room with a bunch of young backpackers. We had dinner in town and then quickly made our way to the Franz Joseph Hot Pools . . . a great business idea for a place where it rains so often. We have a great buddha-like photo of my dad in the pools, but had to remove this as requested. There were three pools, each a different temperature, surrounded by lush native rainforest foliage. Despite the 80’s decor of a neon wall that faded through different colors and was supposed to look like a glacier, the pools were quite peaceful.

We were Franz Joseph glacier bound the following morning. We had contemplated hiring a guide for the walk but since we weren’t planning on actually walking on the ice we thought, and correctly assumed, that it would be a waste of money. The trail follows an almost paved walkway for about 20 minutes before opening up to the wide river valley below the glacier. The “proceed at your own risk” trail continues on along the river bed for another hour before reaching the toe of the glacier. The glacier looked huge at the lookout but not until we we were standing below it did we realize its scale. We watched as a few groups put crampons on and began hiking up the ice steps that were perfectly carved out of the glacier by their guides. Next stop . . . Fox Glacier. This time the glacier was open but the minute we turned on to the dirt access road it began to rain and we decided to wait until the next morning to see it and head back to town to watch a film called “Flowing West” made by a local helicopter company. The imagery was beautiful but they sped all the scenes up to give it an “artistic” effect. It, and the horrible music, just made me dizzy. We spent the rest of the evening cooking dinner and playing a few heated games of hearts and gin rummy back at the holiday park.

Just as we planned, we woke up the next morning to sunny skies. We didn’t hike to Fox Glacier but took a ton of photos at a couple lookouts, one of which showed off the entire glacier, top to bottom. Both Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers are some of the fastest moving glaciers in the world, moving up to a meter a day, and some of the only glaciers that are now actually advancing as a result of the amount of moisture and snow the area receives.

As we drove back over Haast Pass we stopped at Fantail Falls, were visitors had slowly created what looked to be a graveyard of cairns. We added our creative piece and continued along our journey. Although we are not avid Lord of the Rings fans, the movie and its locations were the topic of conversation during our trip back from the west coast . . . so much in fact that we planned the entire evening back in Queenstown around watching the first film in the LOTR trilogy. Luckily our roommate Steve was there to answer my dad every time he asked “Where’s that?” Not surprisingly, a majority of the country’s tourism industry is based on the release of the movies, and there are a ton of tour companies that offer LOTR guided trips to all of the filming locations.

We spent last weekend, our last weekend in Jackson before leaving for New Zealand, just outside of Nashville, Tennessee. My brother, Jeff, who turned 46 this year, got married for the first time. Elke, my now sister-in-law has two kids, Bridget – 11 and Lex – 8, from a previous marriage.  They are the sweetest kids and my brother is doing a great job at being a new dad.

Their wedding was small, but perfect. They got married in a church camp NaCoMe just outside of Franklin, where they currently live. When Jeff and Elke originally went to look at the location, Jeff had a large pavilion in mind for the ceremony. As Elke was looking around the property she found a small chapel, built in 1988 but looks to have been built a hundred years ago, back in a tree grove and away from the rest of the buildings. It sat 20 of us tightly. The chapel had two doors, one opened toward the camp to watch Elke walk down the “isle” and the other opened toward the never ending forest behind the chapel. Whether they did it knowingly or not, they picked a wonderful time of year to get married. The trees were in their peak stages of fall transformation. We couldn’t get over how beautiful it was.

They focused the ceremony on the union of a family instead of a union of a couple. Elke’s two kids were her best man and her maid of honor. After exchanging rings, Elke and Jeff then placed a necklace on each kid symbolizing the union of their family.

The guests included my dad, Fran, my Uncle Chuck and Aunt Alice, their kids Steve and Leigh, and of course many others. But it was a pleasure reconnecting with my dad’s side of the family, whom I haven’t seen for many years and whom BJ has never met. My aunt and uncle live in West End, North Carolina and most of my memories of spending time with them at their house are from christmas’ when my mom and dad were still married.

Although it was a quick visit – 36 hours – in Nashville, I don’t get to see my brother often and it was so wonderful sharing the weekend with him and his new family.