The Scenic In-Between

Tag: National Park

  • Mammoth Cave National Park, KY

    Mammoth Cave National Park, KY

    I spent two days at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Like Mesa Verda, you mainly see this park through tours. There are a few hikes above ground that you can do on your own, but I didn’t do any of those. Mammoth Cave is the largest known cave in the world. 426 miles of the cave have been mapped, but researchers think that might only be half of the cave. It’s pretty cool to think that this cave, like the Grand Canyon, was forged by a river.

    On Friday, I did the Historic Tour and the Domes and Dripstones Tour. As the name suggests, the Historic Tour takes you through the historic section of the cave, the part that was first discovered and has been used for many purposes for a long time. It covers about 2 miles. As opposed to all the other caves I’ve been to, this section of Mammoth Cave is dry. There is no dripping water and there are no stalactites or stalagmites. A lot of this section just looks like a subway tunnel, but as you go a little deeper, you see some rock formations and Mammoth Dome, a massive vertical shaft. There is one part, called Fat Man’s Misery, where you walk through a narrow, winding path that has a low ceiling at times. That was fun to get through.

    The Domes and Dripstones Tour starts at a different entrance to the cave and covers about 0.75 miles. As opposed to the historic part of the cave, this part is wetter. You might get “cave kisses”, drops of water falling on you, and there are stalactites and stalagmites. You start out the tour by descending 300 steps. I was amazed by how deep and tall the cave can be in some sections. Both tours go through parts of the cave that have electric lighting, but in both, the guides turned off the lights at one point so we could experience the cave in its natural form. It was pitch black. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face, even when it was touching my nose. And it was completely quiet, which was both eerie and wonderful. While the lights were off, the guide told us that that’s what the entire cave looks like, so we can say that we’ve seen all 426 miles.

    I had booked the Violet City Lantern Tour for Saturday. It’s a 3 mi tour where you use lanterns as illumination and is supposedly the best tour. I was excited for it, but I ended up canceling my reservation. I had a headache all the previous night and had it on and off during the day on Saturday and I was exhausted. I looked at a few videos of the tour of YouTube and decided that it didn’t look exciting enough to make it worth going on given my current condition.

    My headache continued through the next night and I had a mild headache all day today while driving to New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia. I’ve also had an itchy rash on my neck the past few days, which is weird. I get headaches every once in a while, but I don’t get rashes unless I’ve been petting bunnies or cats, which I haven’t been doing. I took all this to mean that something is off in my body, so I’ve been trying to be nicer to my gut to see what happens. I haven’t been itchy in the last few hours and my headache is almost gone, so it seems to be working. Hopefully I’ll be all good tomorrow morning, but I’m going on a hike with or without a headache.

  • Cotopaxi National Park, Cotopaxi, Ecuador

    Cotopaxi National Park, Cotopaxi, Ecuador

    On Sunday morning, we went to Quito’s historic center for Mass at the Basílica de San Francisco. In the US, I’ve often walked into a church with a friend, they’ve mentioned how pretty the church is, and my response has always been “meh, it’s fine”. Churches in Ecuador, especially Quito, are the reason why. If you grew up going to churches that are entirely covered in gold leaf, you’d also think the prettiest churches in the US are just fine. Though the basilica where my friend got married in Milwaukee was actually really beautiful, so amazing churches do exist in the US.

    The San Francisco church isn’t even the prettiest church in Quito. We tried to get into La Compñía de Jesús, the church that’s considered the prettiest in the city, but they weren’t allowing tourists to enter until 12:30 pm, when we’d already be gone. So we walked around the historic center a little more, saw the cathedral, and saw the Basilica del Voto Nacional, a neo-gothic basilica, from afar. Then we went back to our Airbnb to pack up and drive 2 hours to Cotopaxi National Park.

    Unfortunately, the Cotopaxi volcano was covered in clouds, so we weren’t able to see it, but we still had quite an adventure at the park. The visitor center of the park is at 12,500 ft. We drove past it with the intention of hiking up to the José Rivas Refuge, which is at 15,900 ft. Most of the park roads are unpaved, and the closer you get to the trailhead, the worse the roads are. There were holes and huge bumps and it was all dirt, so if you didn’t know how to drive through the bumps, your tires would spin and you’d get nowhere. Luckily, I was with Monica, who is an expert at driving in snow. And luckily, the tricks that work in snow also work on dirt roads. She told me to swerve left and right to catch the bumps at an angle. That worked. Our car was very dirty, but we were able to get all the way to the trailhead parking lot when many cars had to turn back.

    Earlier in the week, I was pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to hike the 8 mi around Laguna Cuicocha, but on Sunday, I was convinced that I’d be able to hike the 700 ft from the parking lot up to the refuge. It was only 1.5 mi roundtrip. I can totally do that, right? Wrong. It turns out that at 15,000 ft, I can either breathe or walk. I can’t do both. I’d take 10 steps and then I’d have to stop to catch my breath for a minute or two. I probably could have made it up eventually, after a few hours of taking 10 steps and breaking to breathe. Monica for sure would have been able to. But it was cold and windy and I could barely breathe, so we decided to call it a day and go back to the car after 20 or 30 steps. Even though it was cloudy and we didn’t see the Cotopaxi and we didn’t hike up to the refuge, the adventure was worth it. Monica drove us back down to give me a break. Then she drove us the 3 hours to Mindo, our final destination on our Andes mountains trip.

  • Cuenca, Azuay, Ecuador

    Cuenca, Azuay, Ecuador

    On Tuesday, July 21st, my grandmother, Monica, Becky, and I went to Cuenca. There is a spa there called Piedra de Agua that my grandma discovered recently. Since then, she’s been taking all visitors there. Naturally, I told her she had to take me. Since Becky’s birthday is in July, she got to come along too.

    My grandma hired a driver that would take us to Cuenca in her car. It’s about a 4 hour drive. On the way, we stopped at a few lookouts and at Cajas National Park. Cajas reaches an altitude of 14,600 ft above sea level and I could feel it. It was beautiful though. Part of me wishes that we would have had time to hike there, but the other part of me is glad because I know that breathing would have been a struggle. We also stopped at the Shrine of Our Lady, Guardian of the Faith, which is in the park.

    When we got to Cuenca, we went straight to lunch. Guinea pig is a traditional food in the Andes mountains. I had never tried it before and we ordered guinea pig empanadas as an appetizer. The meat was very seasoned, so I couldn’t tell the difference between guinea pig and any other meat they could have used. The empanadas were good as long as I wasn’t picturing a guinea pig while I ate them. After lunch, we went to the hotel to take a nap and then walked to dinner. Becky and I had been craving locro, a traditional potato soup, but the locro we had that night was disappointing. It was watery and didn’t have cilantro in it.

    The next day was spa day! We got to the spa at around 10 am and were pampered for the next 4 hours. First up, was the red clay pool. We got in the pool and our guide gave us some red clay to spread on our bodies to exfoliate, detoxify, and strengthen the skin. Then, we moved to the blue clay pool. We spread the blue clay all over to soften, smooth, and polish the skin. Next, we moved to the hot and cold pools. We were supposed to stay in the hot pool for 4 minutes and then cold plunge for 1 minute. The first time in the cold pool was awful because it was so cold, especially after the nice hot pool. But once we knew what we were expecting, it was easier to do the cold plunge. Monica also kept telling us to focus on our breathing while we were in the cold pool and that helped too.

    After the pools, we parted ways. Becky and my grandma left for their massages, while Monica and I went to the steam boxes. The steam was really hot and almost, but not quite, unbearable. It felt really good, like all the toxins were getting pulled out of us. Then, we went to sit by the regular thermal pools on the property and wait for our massages. In the meantime, we ordered our complimentary fruit plate and drink. They took a really long time bringing them to us and we had only taken a few bites before they called us for our massages. We had to scarf down the fruit. Luckily, they let us bring our drinks with us. The massage was amazing! When we were done, we met up with Becky and my grandma at the restaurant and had our complimentary lunch. We each picked a different dessert and had fun trying and rating all of them. The entire day cost less than a single massage costs in the US. So if you want a spa day, Cuenca is the place to go.

    On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at the Mirador de Turi, a lookout that has great views of the city. Monica and I nearly gave my grandma a heart attack by sitting on the railing. Then, we all took naps. Before dinner, we walked to a rooftop restaurant that has a great view of the cathedral and the main plaza. We had drinks there and then walked to dinner. I ordered locro again and this one was exactly what I had been craving. It was delicious!

    The next morning, Monica had clients. My grandmother, Becky, and I had churros and hot chocolate after breakfast and then they left to drive back to Guayaquil. Monica and I stayed behind, since we were flying to Quito that night. When Monica was done working, we walked around the city some more, saw a few churches, got to see the cathedral, which had been closed every other time we’d walked by, and we drank agua de pítimas, a medicinal herbal drink made by cloistered nuns. Monica was very confused about why I was making her drink a red liquid with a very interesting taste. It wasn’t bad but it also wasn’t good. It’s a cultural experience, so we had to do it. We ended the day with dinner in a courtyard next to the cathedral. We really got to see the cathedral from all angles on this trip. Then we went to the airport to fly to our next adventure.

  • Mesa Verde National Park, CO

    Mesa Verde National Park, CO

    On Wednesday, I took a day trip from Durango to Mesa Verde National Park. Mesa Verde is known for its Ancestral Pueblo cliff dwellings and it’s a UNESCO World Heritage Site in addition to being a national park. There are hikes you can do, but the best thing to do there is tour the cliff dwellings. I did the tours for Cliff Palace and Balcony House, which are very close to each other. Long House, the third one you can tour, is an hour away and I didn’t have time for all 3.

    I got to the park at around 9 am and the Cliff Palace tour wasn’t until 10:30 am, so I stopped at all the viewpoints on the Cliff Palace Loop. Most of them are overlooks where you can see various cliff dwellings. The last one requires a 1 mi hike to the overlook for Balcony House and Soda Canyon. When I got to the trailhead, it was almost time to head to my tour. I had a few minutes less than I actually needed for the hike, but I decided that I could power walk through it and be ok. I power walked and towards the end, ran a little when I realized I was actually late. I did manage to see the overlooks for 2 seconds each and I arrived at the tour in time to hear the safety instructions. However, while I was power walking / running, I started feeling my left knee. Throughout the rest of the day, my knee was fine, but put a pin in the fact that I was feeling it on the hike. We’ll revisit it in the next blog post.

    Cliff Palace is the largest cliff dwelling in North America. It was impressive to see structures that were built 700-800 years ago. What was more impressive, was thinking about how the Pueblo people got to the dwellings. There are now stairs to go down to the dwellings, but they didn’t have those back then. Our tour guide told us that when conditions in the area changed, the Pueblo people left the cliff dwellings and migrated south. Their descendants now live in Taos, New Mexico. It was really cool to hear that because I’m going to Taos in a few days. It’ll be a lot more interesting to see the Taos Pueblo now that I’ve seen where their ancestors lived 700 years ago.

    After the tour, I stopped to buy some fry bread. The reservation of the Ute people borders Mesa Verde. You can cross over to their land from the Cliff Palace Loop and there’s usually someone selling traditional fry bread there. The fry bread dough is flattened into a thin circle and then fried. You can eat it with different toppings. I had half with salt and honey and half with cinnamon and sugar. They also had a garlic option. It was delicious, obviously. There’s no way that fried bread won’t taste good.

    Once I had finished my bread, I drove through the Mesa Top Loop. There are lots of stops along the loop where you can see the history of the Pueblo dwellings. Pithouses were the first dwellings. They would make a shallow depression in the ground, build walls and a roof with wood, and then seal it with adobe. After every rain season, they’d have to re-seal it. Later, they started using sandstone blocks to construct homes, and eventually, they built the multi-story cliff dwellings.

    When I finished the loop, I went to my Balcony House tour. This tour is a little more adventurous. You have to go up multiple ladders, including a 32 foot one. And you have to crawl through a tunnel that’s 18” wide and 26” tall. I didn’t have a problem with the tunnel, but bigger people had to drag themselves sideways to fit through it.

    Some of you have heard of my friend St Medard. He’s the patron saint of weather and he changes the weather for me all the time. It was supposed to rain on Wednesday afternoon and I had asked him to hold the rain until I was driving back to Durango. During the Balcony House tour, it sprinkled for a few minutes, but that was it. After the tour, I stopped to see one more dwelling and then I went to the gift shop to buy my magnet and pin. When I was about to get back into my car to head home it started raining for real. When I got to Durango, it wasn’t raining there anymore, so I never got wet. Once again, St Medard came through for me. He’s the best.

  • Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

    Grand Canyon National Park, AZ

    I wasn’t made for Arizona. The humidity in Sedona and the Grand Canyon has been between 5% and 16% and it’s killing me. I’m a tropical country girl. I need more water in the air. I’ve been waking up with a bloody nose and chugging much more water than usual, which means I need to pee more than usual. I haven’t been sleeping well because I constantly wake up to pee. When I wake up, I’m really thirsty and my mouth is really dry, which means I have to chug more water, which means I’ll have to wake up to pee again in a few hours. And if I didn’t chug enough water, I wake up with a dehydration headache. There’s no way to win. There should be a law mandating humidifiers in all Airbnbs in Arizona.

    Anyway, I arrived at the Grand Canyon on Friday afternoon. My plan was to try to walk 8 of the 13 miles of the South Rim Trail, which, as the name suggests, goes along the south rim of the canyon. There are shuttles that stop at multiple view points along the rim, so I was planning to hop on the shuttle if I got too tired and couldn’t walk the 8 miles. As I walked, I kept wondering how there could be such a big hole in the middle of the country. I later learned that we have the Colorado River to thank for that. It carved the canyon over millions of years in its quest to get to the ocean. It’s incredible to think that the Grand Canyon started out as a relatively flat plateau.

    It turns out that I greatly underestimated the effects of the afternoon sun on a trail with no shade. After 2.5 miles, I stopped to ask myself why I was continuing to walk. I realized that the only reason was pride. I wanted to be able to say that I walked the 8 miles. I reminded myself that the point of this was to enjoy it and I really wasn’t enjoying it. I couldn’t even fully appreciate the views of the canyon because I could only think about putting one foot in front of the other in that heat. So I got on the shuttle.

    At the next shuttle stop, the driver announced that the walk to the next viewpoint was on an unpaved 1 mi trail with amazing views of the Colorado River. Now he was speaking my language. Most of the trail is paved and I don’t know what it is about an unpaved trail that makes it more exciting, but it gave me the energy to walk that additional mile. There were, in fact, amazing views of the Colorado River. By the time I got to the next shuttle stop, the heat exhaustion had kicked in again, so I took the shuttle to the rest of the stops.

    When I got back to my car, I realized that I was sunburned. I hadn’t gotten sunburned on this trip until now, which is impressive. My arms are actually tanned! This is new for me. I usually burn, peel, and then I’m white again. I guess that with all the time outdoors without sunscreen in the past few months, I got enough sunlight to tan over time, but not enough to burn. Surprisingly, I did put sunscreen on for the Grand Canyon, so the only conclusion is that the sunscreen caused me to burn. Just kidding, it was probably the fact that I walked a trail without any shade in the peak afternoon sun. Only my shoulders and legs are sunburned. Those weren’t tanned because they hadn’t gotten as much sun when I was hiking in cooler temperatures earlier in the year. You probably don’t care about any of this, but I need to document the results of my unintentional tanning experiment for future reference.

    My plan was to wake up at 5 am this morning to hike into the canyon. It’s 5-10° hotter in the canyon than at the rim, so you have to hike early. However, everything that I mentioned in my rant in the first paragraph happened last night. By the time 5 am rolled around, I had a headache and hiking into a hot canyon with a headache seemed like a bad idea. So I slept until 6:30 am and went to the park after breakfast. Weather-wise, I could have still hiked when I got to the park, but I still had a tiny headache. At 10 am I felt great and ready to hike, but it was too late to start at that point. Like Sedona, I need to come back to the Grand Canyon when it’s cooler, since we’ve established that 5 am wake-ups are not my thing. I’ll have to remember to pack a humidifier.

    Instead of hiking, I saw the 7 miles of the south rim that I hadn’t seen the day before. I took the shuttle to all the stops today. At one of the stops, I saw the great-great-great-(496 more “great”)-great grandson of the squirrel from the movie Ice Age.

    After seeing the rest of the rim, I went back to my Airbnb to watch another depressing Ecuador vs Curaçao soccer game. Now I’m going to chug water before bed so I’ll wake up 20 times to pee but can hopefully avoid a headache. Tomorrow I’m heading to Durango, Colorado.

  • Joshua Tree National Park, CA

    Joshua Tree National Park, CA

    I made it to the desert and unlocked a new fear: rattlesnakes. Luckily, I didn’t see any in my 2 hours at Joshua Tree National Park yesterday morning. I only did one quick hike to get a sense of the landscape and then drove through the park. There is a lot of sand and rocks and shrubs and joshua trees. That’s about it. It was cool to see, but I don’t feel the need to go back.

    I only had a few hours to explore the park, partly because it gets really hot there at this time of the year and partly because I had to drive to Phoenix and be there in time to pick up my friend Chiamaka at the airport. Initially, Chiamaka was going to meet me on my road trip in Asheville in February, but she had too much going on around that time. Then, she bought a plane ticket to meet me in Chicago in April, but a last minute work trip came up in those days, so we had to come up with a new plan. She has to be in San Francisco this week, so she thought about flying to Phoenix and spending a few days in Sedona with me. It didn’t make sense for her to drive 2 hours to and from Sedona, so I updated my itinerary to spend a few days in Phoenix (really, Scottsdale) with her and go to Sedona on my own after that.

  • Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, CA

    Sequoia & Kings Canyon National Parks, CA

    Driving through the Pacific Northwest and California has been really cool. I’m driving along for hours, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, I turn a corner and there’s a huge mountain or mountain range in front of me. It’s a pretty awesome surprise. Sometimes, the mountains stay with me for the rest of the drive. Other times, they disappear when I turn another corner and I wonder if I’m going to see them again every time the highway turns a little.

    That is exactly what happened on my drive from Sacramento to Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Parks. I’m not sure which mountains I saw though. Maybe the Sierra Nevada? My Airbnb is in Shady Cove, an hour drive to each of the parks and then it’s another hour to various hikes in the parks. I was not looking forward to all that driving. Even though I had a restful weekend in Sacramento, I was exhausted when I arrived in Shady Cove. I keep trying to figure my body out because I’m sometimes exhausted when I think I should be feeling great and I sometimes feel energized when I think I should be feeling like crap. But there are too many variables, so I haven’t been able to figure it out. I’m at least trying to get better at listening to what my body needs each day.

    On Tuesday, I stayed at my Airbnb because I really couldn’t deal with driving and hiking. On Wednesday, I was still tired and my legs felt heavier than usual, but I felt better than on Tuesday, so I drove to Sequoia. I was kind of underwhelmed by the sequoias. This was because of my ignorance and not the sequoias fault at all. They are actually very impressive trees. I was underwhelmed because I thought that there would be entire trails where I’d be surrounded by massive sequoias the size of General Sherman, the largest tree on earth by volume. In all the pictures I had seen of people at Sequoia, they were surrounded by these massive trees. I realized on Wednesday that those pictures were all taken in a small area where a few sequoias grow close together. The entire park is not like that. It just so happens that everyone posts pictures of themselves in the same location at the park.

    In case you’re ignorant about sequoias like I was, I’m going to include pictures of different parts of the park in this post so you know what you’re getting into when you go. I started out on Wednesday by walking the Big Trees trail. The name of the trail didn’t help my ignorance. Don’t get me wrong, all the trees on the trail are big, but they are sequoias of different ages, heights, and widths, so they don’t all look as big as I expected them to be.This hike is around a meadow that is surrounded by sequoias. It was cool to learn that younger sequoias have more branches farther down their trunk to maximize the amount of sunlight they get. When they get older, they don’t need as many branches, so they only keep the ones at the top. I also learned that mature sequoias can survive fires and that sequoias actually depend on fires for reproduction.

    After the Big Trees trail, I walked up the 400 steps carved into Moro Rock. The view from the top was stunning. Then I walked through Crescent Meadow and saw Tharp’s log. Tharp found a hollow fallen sequoia many years ago and turned it into his cabin. I had seen in AllTrails reviews that some people had seen bears on this trail. Bear spray isn’t allowed in these parks because there are only black bears, no grizzlies, and black bears usually leave you alone if you get big and yell at them. I was excited at the possibility of seeing a bear on this trail. I’ve come a long way since deciding not to hike in Yellowstone 5 weeks ago because I was terrified of bears. So I was walking downhill on the uneven dirt path, not looking at the ground because I was looking for bears. You might see where this is going at this point. I stepped wrong, twisted my ankle, and fell. But I was fine. I got up, dusted myself off, and kept going on my way without any pain. I didn’t see bears on the trail, but people who got back to the trailhead a little after I did said they did see some.

    After that, I hiked the Congress Trail. This takes you by General Sherman and then to the two sequoia clusters where I’m guessing everyone takes the pictures they post. It’s called the Congress trail because one of the clusters is called the Senate and the other is called the House. And there’s also a tree called the President. This was my favorite trail, partly because I had adjusted my expectations by that point and partly because there are a lot of massive sequoias there and they were pretty cool.

    As I was walking through the Senate, two guys came running back from farther along the trail and asked if I’d seen a bear. Someone had told them there was a bear about 100 m from the Senate. We looked for a few minutes, but then I continued along the trail. When I got closer to the House, there was a group of people who had found the bears. There was a mama bear and her cub. At one point, the mama bear started walking in our direction and we all started moving back, but then she turned around so we stayed and watched. I’ve now officially faced my fear of bears. Eventually, the two guys came back down the path and were able to see the bears too, in case you were wondering.

    On Thursday, I went to Kings Canyon. I thought it was more beautiful than Sequoia. Walking through forests with massive trees is amazing, but we’ve already established that I’m a mountain person. I like big nature. Huge nature. Mountain sized nature, not sequoia sized nature. Driving through the canyon at Kings Canyon was spectacular. The views from the top were amazing, but I didn’t even have to see the views to be awed. The canyon walls I was driving next to were enough. And there are also sequoias in Kings Canyon if you prefer that, including General Grant, the second largest tree in the world by volume.

    As I was walking through Grant Grove, where General Grant is, I was thinking about how cool it is that I get to see sequoias, despite my initial disappointment, and how crazy it is that my road trip is almost over. I’ve been on the road for 4.5 months and in just 3 weeks, I get to Nashville, the last official stop on my road trip. Though now I’m thinking of adding another leg to my road trip at the end of the summer. We’ll see what happens…

    Remember a few paragraphs ago, when I said I twisted my ankle and fell? You thought I was fine. I thought I was fine. But during the short hikes I did in Kings Canyon through Zumwalt Meadow and Grant Grove, my ankle and my knee on the same leg started feeling achy. Luckily, I hadn’t planned to do as much walking that day as the day before because by the end of the day, my knee was even achier. I can walk and my knee feels more sore than painful, but I still decided to make today another rest day. This wasn’t a difficult decision because I wasn’t looking forward to another 4 hours of driving into and back from the parks, though there were a few more hikes I would have liked to do.

    Today I’ve been sitting on the couch, reading and watching the new season of Sweet Magnolias on Netflix. The dialogue this season is full of quotes that are exactly what I need to hear right now. I won’t spoil it for any of you who are planning to watch it. The thing that resonated with me the most was the idea of “being in the soup”. One of the characters mentioned how we see caterpillars and we see butterflies, but we don’t see the soup inside the chrysalis that is the caterpillar becoming the butterfly. This resonated because I’ve been listening to Ella Langley’s song Butterfly Season on repeat during my road trip. The song exactly describes my life right now, to the point of saying “Don’t even know her, that girl from last October”. October was when I realized that my life had to change. I think I’m towards the end of my soup stage, soon to be in my butterfly season.

    Tomorrow I’m driving to Joshua Tree National Park. I’ll only have 2 hours in the park on Sunday, but I figured it’s worth at least driving through it. Hopefully I’ll be able to use cruise control on the highway a lot tomorrow so my knee gets more rest. It didn’t like pressing the gas and brake on my winding mountain drive back from Kings Canyon yesterday.

    P.S. I just watched another episode and one of the characters said that he’s in the soup with wings sticking out. I think that’s a more accurate description of where I’m at.

  • Crater Lake National Park, OR

    Crater Lake National Park, OR

    Today I drove to Crater Lake National Park. It’s just 2.5 hours from Bend, so I had the afternoon to hike. You don’t need to hike to see the lake, though. Honestly, the view of the lake from the visitor center was better than the view from Garfield Peak, the top of the mountain I hiked up. I’m still glad I did the hike. Today was a gorgeous day with clear skies and Crater Look looked unreal. The water was so blue that it looked like someone had put food coloring in it. And the reflection of the mountains in the water was so clear, that it was hard to tell where the mountain ended and the reflection began.

    The hike itself was a bunch of switchbacks up the mountain with great views of the lake every once in a while and at the top. I thought my legs would be jelly by the time I got to the top because the 1000 ft of elevation gain is more than I’m used to, but I was surprised that my legs were fine. My heart was the problem. I had to stop to catch my breath often. The good thing about the issue being my heart and not my legs is that after stopping for a bit and letting my heart rate go down, I felt brand new and could keep going. Honestly, I could have kept walking up more mountains once I was done with the hike, but I decided not to push it.

    When I was still working at the Runkeeper office in Boston before COVID, there was a time when everyone’s passion for running made me want to try it. So I trained for a 5K, ran the 5K, and then retired from running. I used Runkeeper’s My First 5K plan to train. In that plan, coach Erin talks you through each workout as you’re going through it. Sometimes, in the middle of a run, she would tell you to remember how good you felt the day before after your run and to use that feeling to keep you going today. I always wished I could tell her to stop saying that because the day before, I had felt like I was dying and I questioned why I was even training for a 5K. There was no way that feeling was going to motivate me during my next run.

    As I was leaving Crater Lake today, my legs were slightly sore, I knew I had blisters on my feet, and I was exhausted, but I was happy and felt really good. I think that was what coach Erin was expecting me to feel after running. Honestly, if I had felt that after a run, remembering that feeling would actually be a great motivator the following day. After today, if you told me to hike up a mountain that doesn’t have a good view at the top, simply to get that feeling back, I probably would. I’m glad coach Erin feels that way after running and I’m glad I figured out how to get myself to feel that way too.

    That was all the time I had at Crater Lake. Tomorrow I’m driving to Rocklin, CA to see more cousins.

  • Mt Rainier National Park, WA

    Mt Rainier National Park, WA

    I had 2 days to explore Mt Rainier. On Sunday, the weather was perfect. Since it was Memorial Day weekend, I knew the park would be packed, but I wasn’t sure how packed since it’s not peak season for the park. I checked Google Maps every few hours to see how long it would take to get into the park and it was always 50-ish minutes, so I tried to wait it out. At around 3:30 pm, I decided to head out anyway, in case Google Maps was wrong. It turned out that it was wrong. There were so many cars trying to enter the park, that the wait would be 90 minutes. I stayed in line for 20 minutes in case it moved faster than expected, but then I turned around and went back to my Airbnb. Luckily, it’s just 10 minutes from the park entrance, so I could easily go back to the park later.

    At around 6 pm, I noticed that there was no longer any wait, so I went to the park. I did the Bench & Snow Lakes hike, which was a shorter one. There were 2 deer on the trail that scampered into the trees when they saw me coming. On my way back, they were on the trail again and again, they scampered away. I felt bad for all the times the poor deer had to move off the trail with all the people coming and going. Bench Lake was nice, but Snow Lake was beautiful because of the ridge behind it. On the way back to the trailhead, I could see Mt Rainier in the distance. I was glad that it’s getting dark later these days so I could do an evening hike and still have daylight.

    After the hike, I drove around the park. It was nice being there so late because there weren’t many people. Though I did see groups of people at key spots waiting to see the sunset. I tried to see as much of the park as possible while it was still light out. There were some really interesting clouds in the sky. I drove back to my cabin right after sunset so that I wouldn’t have to drive down the windy mountain roads in the dark.

    When I got back, I had dinner and then got a big surprise. I found out that I had a little furry roommate. I thought I saw something running from the kitchen behind a couch, but when I moved the couch, I couldn’t see anything, so I figured I’d imagined it. A few minutes later, I saw movement again out of the corner of my eye and I saw a little mouse peeking out from behind the couch. I messaged my Airbnb hosts and they were very nice and apologetic. They said they had never seen a rodent in the cabin before and didn’t know how it got in and that they’d give me a credit and would come the next morning to set traps.

    Having Stewart (that’s what I’m calling it) as a roommate is annoying. I’m constantly worried that Stewart is going to get in my food or poop on the dishes I use. So I put as much food as possible in my little cooler, since it’s harder to get into than my grocery bags and I’ve been washing all the dishes and kitchen utensils right before I use them. I wasn’t worried about hantavirus, but now that there’s a rodent in my life, I feel like I should at least be slightly worried. Hopefully Mt Rainier rodents aren’t infected. The national park air must be good for Stewart’s immune system.

    I didn’t sleep well on Sunday night. I kept imagining Stewart crawling into bed with me. I know he’s more likely to spend the night in the kitchen than in my bed, but I’m not rational when I’m supposed to be sleeping. Even though I didn’t sleep enough, I woke up early to beat the crowds to the park. It was supposed to rain all afternoon, so if I wanted to hike, it had to be early. I left at 8 am and there was no wait to get into the park.

    The whole drive, I kept going back and forth on which hike I should do. My original plan was to do a 5 mi hike, but looking at the pictures of the views, I realized I could do better. I decided to hike part of the Skyline trail. It’s the most popular trail in the park and it’s currently covered in snow. I wasn’t going to have time to do the whole loop before the rain started and I didn’t think my legs would survive the elevation gain, but I would go as far as I could. Then I started overthinking things. I was tired and it might not be good to do a harder hike when I hadn’t slept enough. It would be terrible to get caught in the rain at the top of the mountain. So I thought about doing an easier and shorter hike that also has a good view, though not as good as Skyline.

    Last minute, I decided to drive past the parking lot where the trailhead for the shorter hike is and go to the Skyline trailhead instead. I would hike as far as I could before the rain started or my legs hurt too much from walking uphill in the snow. I had learned my lesson hiking Peyto Lake in Banff, so I put my hiking boots on and brought my hiking poles. Apparently, I didn’t learn the whole lesson because I didn’t put my spikes on my shoes, though I did put them in my backpack. Luckily, I saw people at the beginning of the trail putting spikes on and they convinced me that they’d be very useful in the snow. Spikes and poles were a game changer. It was so much easier and less slippery to walk in the snow. The views as I hiked were amazing. It was a winter wonderland.

    I got to the Glacier Vista, which was the point at which I thought I would want to turn back. But once I was in the fresh air, I felt very awake and all my gear made the hike easier than I expected. I still had energy to keep going. I walked a little more, but then the wind really picked up. And it was a really cold wind. I decided to turn back. I wasn’t going to have time to make it to the next lookout point before the rain started and I’d be miserable walking in that wind. I felt so confident on my hike down with my spikes and poles. I was so grateful that I had them. I was also very grateful that I had chosen to do the Skyline hike. It put me in a good mood.

    I drove through the park a little after my hike and saw some waterfalls I hadn’t had time to see the day before. Then I went back to my cabin and my roommate for a cozy day in. I was looking forward to hearing the rain outside while I read a book. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear the rain until hours later and I only heard it for a few minutes. It did drizzle throughout the afternoon, but that was it.

    As I finished writing the paragraph above, at around 9:47 pm PDT on Monday, May 25th, 2026, Stewart left this earth. I was writing, when I heard a trap go off a few feet away. The sound made me jump and my heart rate is only now slowing down, a few minutes later, after the startle of the noise and the anticipation of checking the trap. Part of me wanted to see a dead mouse there, but the other part of me didn’t want to see a dead mouse because that’s gross. There was indeed a dead mouse and it wasn’t as gross as I expected it to be. Both Stewart and I will be able to sleep in peace tonight, though Stewart will never wake up and I hopefully will. RIP Stewart.

  • Yoho National Park & Kamloops, BC

    Yoho National Park & Kamloops, BC

    British Columbia wins the most beautiful drive on my road trip award. I’m not done with my trip, but I doubt that anything will beat driving along snowy peaks, mountainsides covered in trees, running rivers, and blue lakes. I felt like I was in a magical fairytale kingdom. All that was missing, was the fairy princess’s castle.

    After leaving Banff, my next destination was Kamloops. I had to drive through Yoho National Park and Karan and Simar had recommended that I stop at Emerald Lake and Wapta Falls. They were quick, but beautiful stops. I had to hike to get to Wapta Falls and I only made it to the lookout point. I could have kept hiking all the way down to the river and gotten closer to the falls, but the hike was steep and I still hadn’t given my body all the rest it deserved, so I ate my lunch while enjoying the view from above.

    When I got to Kamloops, I picked up sushi for dinner. When I was driving to Okoboji a few weeks ago, I was on the phone with my friend Monica, who had ordered sushi for dinner. I’ve been craving sushi since then and I was finally in a city that was big enough to have it. After dinner, I was so exhausted that I went to bed. It was 8 pm. I slept for 11 hours, so I guess I really needed it.

    Kamloops was just an overnight stop on my way to Squamish, to visit my friend Alicia. She’s the one who recommended that I take the route that I took today, instead of a slightly shorter one. British Columbia has her to thank for getting the most beautiful drive award. I wish I could have taken pictures as I drove, but I had to pay attention to the windy mountain roads. The plan is to stay with her and her family for a few days, but I might end up staying forever. Her house has amazing mountain views and a hot tub, so I’m going to try to convince her to let me be her nanny. I’ll need to find a job at the end of my road trip, so this would work out very nicely.