Out West 2017! Grand Canyon Day 1

Next stop on our road trip is the Grand Canyon. Yes, it is amazing as everyone says it is.
We spent two days here and splurged a little and stayed on site. I wanted to make sure we had as much time as possible to get at the Canyon.

We drove up from Flagstaff that morning and it took about an hour and half to arrive. We had some time to hike a little before checking into our lodge Bright Angel Lodge.

We started with the South Kaibab Trail. It seemed like an easy day one hike to do. It was fall but still very warm in the sun. I wish I would have worn shorts and a t-shirt.

We hiked down to the recommended day hike stop, Cedar Ridge. There were bathrooms and some room to eat some snacks with a spectacular view.

This is also the trail where I lost a friend the previous year. In an unfortunate accident she fell below. I took a moment to remember her and her sparkle. Her name is also unfortunately in the book that chronicles all the canyon deaths.

Camping in Shawangunks (Day 2)

Minnewaska State Park

It has been a while since my last camping adventure.
I saw lightening bugs, something that reminds me of my childhood summers in Ohio. I got to see them anymore when I stopped visiting Ohio. It is too hot for them to be in Florida.
I also forgot how hard the ground could get.

Before going to sleep that night I made sure I drank a protein shake so I wouldn’t wake up in lactic acid pain.

I was smelly and sore but didn’t care, shower was not happening that night.

When I do something athletically strenuous I tend to have to urinate frequently. It was very uncomfortable to keep having to get up in the middle of the night and wander around in the pitch black to get to the toilets.

On my bathroom hikes I refused to look around in case something was lurking in the bushes – I didnt want to know.

The other downside is that I couldn’t sleep. First I was warm, then sore, and always uncomfortable and then cold. Brr was I cold.

I woke up early and took advatage of that shower. It wasn’t amazing but at least there was hot water.

Time to go hiking again? Maybe a swimming hole? I am so sore that I can’t imagine hiking again but you never know.

We pack up our stuff and head to Minnewaska State Park specifically Lake Minnewaska. Lake Minnewaska is a sky lake. A lake in the mountain top. It a few miles so we drive there. Luckily we get there early because the lot seems to be filling up. We park and fill our backpacks with what we need for the swimming hole.

We stop for a great view on the way.

We arrive at the swimming hole and no one is there. Turns out it doesn’t open for another 30 minutes.

I decide to change into my suit meanwhile and we go for a walk along the path around the lake. I walk for a little while and decide I need more rest before I start for the day. I go back to the beach area to setup to lay down. I read and nap while Carlos does laps around the lake. I decided against going in the water because I overhear someone comparing it to diaper water. Carlos does go in for a little bit after his run.

I finally muster up the energy to go see the views on the other side of the lake. I am glad I did, they were amazing.

Carlos mentioned a great waterfall view that he saw while running. Still sore from the day before I decide against it. We really must come back to this area, especially when I am in better physical shape. So much nature and fun!

Time to get some dinner and head back toward the city. Somehow we end up at Tuthilltown Distillery and Restaurant and ordering a local whiskey flight.

The distillery and restaurant are a nice little area to throw a wedding or a party.

Due to the visit to the restaurant being on the other side of park we took a different route back home. We started going further and further uphill. Are we going back into the mountains? We come across this stellar view and must stop and look.

The rest of the trip back was uneventful until the cluster that is called the George Washington Bridge. Our plan to come back later to avoid traffic was flawed and we sat there forever. We eventually made it home though.
After my recovery I starting dreaming of future trips upstate. I might be hooked on nature. Can’t wait to go back!

Hiking in Mohonk (Day 1)

My husband and I have been talking forever about taking a drive to upstate NY and doing some hiking and camping. For the first time in a long time our schedules aligned and we decided to go up to near “Ellentown”, since he heard from friends it was very nice there.
After searching for campsites we found Sam Pryor Shawangunk Gateway Campground which is near the “Gunks”, the mountain area at the Shawangunks that is popular with rock climbers. We aren’t rock climbers but it appears that there are trails nearby in walking distance. We book it quickly worried that the sites will book up since it is one of the last weekends of summer.

View of gunks from campground

To check in to your campsite you must arrive between 8-10 am or after 2pm. We made a mad rush to get there before 10 am and we just made it in time.
The sites are semi private. They say you can put two tents on your site but we don’t think we could have put more than one on ours. They are kind of small and you have to pitch within the wood designated area.

After check in it didn’t take us too long to set up our tent. They provide a bear proof locker for your food and toiletries. There are composting toilets and a sink not too far from us but if you want a shower it is a hike and cost $3 in quarters.

We put our sunscreen and bug spray on and head off to whatever hike is ahead of us.
Following advice of the campsite we follow the connector trail that takes us up to the Mohonk Preserve office.

We stop in the vistors center, there is a line. We don’t feel like waiting and still really don’t know where we are going so just follow signs for a trail. Outside the trail there is a nice man who is collecting money for the Preserve. Hikers need to pay $15 for a day pass to hike the trails. You get a wristband to designate that you paid. He gives us some advice on what trails to try. We pay and start on the East Trapps Connector Trail. It is a stone path that connects you to the rock climbing cliffs and the other trails. We soon learn why the guy at the campsite called it the StairMaster.

Soon we get to a flat trail. Upon the advice of the gentleman at the trailhead we go right.

Well I go right, my husband goes up further to walk along the climbers. I feel like I will just get in the way so I continue to flat trail below, hoping we meet back up with each other at some point.

Up to the rock climbers

I walk alone for a little bit. I take in the view of the valley.

At some point the trail begins to curve and I get worried since still no Carlos. Send him a message that the trail is changing direction. I look back occasionally but still no sign. Eventually he meets up with me and we soon come to a cross roads. We must decide which direction we want to go. We decide to go toward the private resort to get a view of the lake on property. The resort shares trails with Mohonk reserve. Hikers can use the trails but are not allowed to use the resort specific amenities such as the water and resort porch (we did use their bathroom though!).
As we walk toward the resort we get a very nice view of the lake.

Map of the resort area and Mohonk Lake

We walk a little farther and we get a spectacular view of this resort in the sky.

We sit on a bench overlooking the lake to fuel up on some snacks. I enjoy this much needed break. We dream of splurging at some point and getting a room at the resort. We later find the cheapest room is $600 a night.
After our snacks we try to find the trail again to circle us around the resort. We aren’t sure we are going the correct way but eventually end up at the Copes Lookout Road and at Cope’s lookout where we enjoyed spectacular views for a few minutes.

We had the lookout to ourselves the whole entire time there. I wish we would have brought a lunch to share on the ledge. Truly spectacular views.
At this point we were turning back toward the way we came. There were a number of paths in the direction we needed to go but we stumbled upon this wooded path called Giants path. Many of the paths we were on were nicely manicured flat trails. Giants path was not. It was down hill with lots of large boulders, following the blue marks. I started to regret this path, even more so when we came these larger than life boulders and a seemingly dead end.

They couldn’t possibly expect us to traverse down this crevice? We evaluated the situation for a little while and Carlos attempted the path, talking to me as he descended. He was confused on how to move on and took each step with hesitation. While he journeyed on I looked for some sort of information on the internet (thank goodness for cell phone towers). I found a video where a mother and maybe a ten year old boy complete the obstacle. I am still extremely intimidated by it so I wander around and look for another way down. I can’t find any other path down. I see markers for a red trail but red is bad right? Why don’t they have a bypass route? Carlos gets to the bottom. He seems pretty far down there. I am still not ready. I watch the video once more. Carlos decides to come up to get me, maybe we will go back up the boulders to the safer trail? At that moment I decide to just do it. I move forward and start following the blue markers. I move swiftly until I get to a point where it is sort of a steep drop. I guess my choice is to slide down? That is what I do; but in the process hurt my knee and twist my good ankle (the other side has a long term running injury). I am injured but not dead. I keep going. I reach Carlos. He is surprised how quickly I made it to that point. I didn’t waste time making decisions, I blindly followed the blue. The area I meet up with him is sort of an open area off to the right seems to be another secret pathway. Already pushing my luck with this path I decide to stay away. However it looks like the kind of place where bats or vampires sleep for the night. We continue on out. Carlos warns me about bumping my head since he did so on his first attempt out. My hat blocks my view so I bump my head on the same spot as him. Now I have a sore knee, ankle and head, but I am out. I feel so accomplished. So proud of myself for conquering my fear.

A video journey of the Giant’s Workshop (what it is called).

I am beaten down so we walk back.

We decide to take the path back advised by the ranger “Overcliff Road”. He said was supposed to have great views. While it had at least one viewing area, it was mostly boring path that went on forever and ever. I was tired and felt like this path was wasting my time and energy stores.

Finally as we turn back toward the vistor’s center do we come across some action. We see pretty boulders and we get to watch the rock climbers in action.

We have to head back the way we came, except going up the stair master, I stumble down the stairmaster. My legs want to stop but there is an older man with his little dog coming down behind me. I MUST NOT LET THEM BEAT ME. The treat of being overtaken gets me down the hard part. After our campsite connector, we are back. I exchange some dollars for quarters in the campsite office, thinking a shower is even possible at this point. Once I get back to the site, shower is not happening.

The only thing that is happening is sandwiches, sleeping, and this wine.

We retired semi early since once it is dark, there isn’t much to do if you don’t have a burner. Fires not allowed on sites. The campsite has a fire pit but there is no way I am walking back that way.
Time to sleep….zzzzz

July 4th on a mountain and in the spa

The next morning we decided to visit some nature and do a hike since that was a main reason for visiting this region. After doing some research we narrowed it down to taking a trail at the edge of town or going up the local mountain Merkur Mountain. We chose Merkur mountain because I wanted to ride the funicular.
First breakfast in our cute breakfast room at the hotel.

We found a bus that took us to the bottom of the mountain where the funicular starts. For some reason I was able to convince my husband to take the funicular up and hike down. He must have felt guilty for the long hike a couple of days prior.
At the bottom of the funicular there is shop to buy snacks, gifts and I guess booze for the mountain.

We took a couple minutes to look at another less than useful trail map, and then we got our tickets and went up.

Hey look at this water fountain first –

After we entered the funicular, a guy hurried on with a huge pack of stuff. Was he a backpacker? Was he going to camp on the mountain? We came to find out that he is a paraglider and the top of the mountain is a popular paraglider launch location.

So we got some drinks at the cafe and watched the hangliders for about an hour. Hike=delayed.

It was also at this point that we realized we accidently booked too many nights in Baden-Baden. We were supposed to leave for Munich the next day. We were too late to fully cancel so we had to pay a fee to get out of the last night. I am usually much more prepared for traveling than this. I guess it got confusing because my husband booked some hotels and I booked the other. I guess we had a miscommunication. I was looking forward to leaving the next day to go to Munich. Our stay in Baden-Baden wasn’t terrible but I wish we would have picked another black forest town.

Back to the hike…..

We finished our drinks and started the journey down the mountain. We of course did not stay on the main road since it was boring. I made sure to keep my husband in check so we didn’t get too much off the beaten path and get lost…or end up miles away from where we needed to be at the end.

Some growing that looked like yummy dim sum

We crossed the path of the funicular a couple of times on the way down.

The walk down was relatively pleasant with the exception of discovering the bastard bugs of Germany. They aren’t quite mosquitoes but they bite like a MFr and fly off pretty quickly. Not quite a horsefly but painful bites that welt up afterwards. They only attacked me somewhat on this mountain but they really got me later in the trip. Should have worn more bug spray!!

At the very bottom of the trail we found where the para-gliders land.

After we got back into town we decided to eat a late lunch at an outdoor cafe where we once again had terrible service. Not really loving the hospitality of Baden-Baden.
We went back to the hotel and changed into our suits and picked a thermal spa to do some relaxing and swimming at. There were two big ones in town and they were both pretty close to our hotel. One was with no suits and one was with suits. We aren’t prudes but I just wasn’t up to sloshing around a bunch of nude people. We ended up attending the Caracalla Spa . See Rick Steves colorful explanation of the spa below.

You pay for admission at the front and then get a wrist band that controls a locker and allows you to purchase things at the cafe if you wish. I saw people bringing in food and drinks. I wish I would have brought water to drink. No water fountains that I could see and the swimming and sweating got me thirsty. Once we changed we locked our things in a locker and grabbed our rented towels (I will guard these with my life, well sort of kidding).
The way the spa is layed out there is a large indoor area with heated pools with jets at different places, hot dip pool (short visits only), cold dip pool, saunas, and an aroma therapy sauna room. Outdoors is two major pools. One has a lazy river of sorts with some massage jets. The other pool has a number of jets and waterfalls. Upstairs is the nude only sauna, which we never visited.
Since it was still pretty light out (early evening) we decided to start outside. I tried the lazy river pool and let the current pull me along for a while. That got pretty boring quickly so I moved over to the waterfall pool and found a jet to massage some sore body parts. Basically the jets will run for a while in an area and turn off, then they start running in a different area. So it is a game of where to move to next. All in all I got a pretty good water massage on my back neck, thighs, feet and calves.
Next I tried the indoors and decided to try a personal sauna room. A couple minutes in there I got slightly claustophobic since I am not a big sauna fan. I decided then to try the aroma therapy room. It was a good sized room and people seemed to feel very comfortable hanging out in there. I got hot and had a hard time breathing. In addition I was afraid the smells would cause a migraine as sometimes strong scents do to me. I hit the shower and tried the indoor pool. I got some more neck and leg massages while I was there and also hit the hot and cold pools. After a while I was done and tried going back outside. To my surprise there was an instructor teaching a water zumba class. I joined in and tried to do my best Despacito moves in the water. After a while thirst took over and it was time for me to go. Fortunately my husband was done too and we changed and went back to the hotel to clean up for dinner.
So many bad experiences eating at Baden-Baden I had little hope for our dinner choices. We decided to go to the tourist looking outdoor cafe around the corner from our hotel, Prager Stuben. It was a quite cafe with very attentive service. I enjoyed the Czech inspired dish I ordered: Pork in Sauce with a side of dumplings. Very good. So happy this ended our stay in Baden-baden. Now off to bed for traveling the next day.

Only good dinning experience in Baden-Baden

The rhine vineyard hike

The Rhine Vineyard Hike

Or what I like to call it, “when Carlos tricked me into hiking 13 kilometers (8 miles), mostly uphill.”
More on that later.
The Rhine Valley is beautiful and known for its romantic boat cruises.
The Rhine river was an important transportation river for trade and whatnot. Seeing the opportunity, many set up castles and villages along the river to “tax” the boats that would pass by. It all seemed a little robber-baron/extortion like; but with out that happening, none of these cute little villages would have been formed around the castles.
Also prominent in the area is vineyards on steep hills. The grapes are used to make the village wines. We decided to dedicate some time to hiking through the vineyards. The forecast for the day was overcast and rainy. We decided to grab our ponchos and go for it.
Preparing for the hike was kind of hard. The maps we saw at the city center weren’t too helpful.

Map example

Most pick a town and do the circular trails from the town. But we wanted to take a trail from town to town and no maps really mapped that out clearly. We decided to google map it out before we left and determine that the next closest village was 4 km away and determined it was a good distance for me. We also dipped into the tourist office before we left to get some not so helpful maps. Finally we stopped at the grocery store for snacks and water. Due to the expected rain I decided to leave my DSLR back at the hotel.

Not really helpful

We had a hard time finding the start of the trail because there was construction going on around the trail head and an odd donkey path sign. We finally found what we were looking for and started up the stone stairs. We ended up going down the path of the trail that is basically part of the town loop to get to where we wanted to go. We could have started left, the slow glide uphill or right, stairs after stairs after stairs. We started right of course. Not on purpose, at least on my part. At least it gave us a great view of the town from this lookout point.

4 km into the hike, close to the next town, we realized the town we were heading to was not on the train route. If we walked to this town then we would have no idea how we would get back to ours (other than walking back the way we came).

At some point we decided the only way was forward to the next town on the train route – 8 more km away. All while following the handy red wine trail signs and random chicken signs. I also thought I heard dub-step off in the distance. Skip the hike for mid day dance party? I never did really determine where the music was coming from so we just moved on.

It was lonely since not many others took this trail. And we did have some rain. But the light mist was welcome since it wasn’t enough to make things muddy and kept us cool along the way.

The views were beautiful

Pretty steep vineyards. I later find out they have a machine to help with this.

At some point my bladder wasn’t waiting anymore. There wasn’t much area to go “in the bushes” but no one else is around so I went to some brush. The only time we saw some serious hikers (only 3) it was only minutes after I had my bathroom visit. Whew close call!

So basically the up and down and pure distance of it all was more challenging than I was prepared for. I took many breaks and pushed through but times like in the picture below made me upset that we had to keep going down the mountain just to climb back up. The views were really amazing and I am sure I would have been singing a different tune if I was in better shape.

See that road across the way, we just went down it

Just when I thought I could go no more we reached the road that went down into the town Oberwesel. We walked by a couple where the woman was having a meltdown. Did her husband take her on a 12 km hike and her legs gave out? Who knows, I am just surprised it wasn’t me. I am known to have a meltdown or two when I am exhausted. This time I was good, tired, but good. We almost got tricked to hiking longer when we saw trail signs pointing uphill toward a castle. I send my husband to check it out and indeed it was trickery, the trail took us away from the town we were heading.

When in town we wandered around a bit aimlessly looking for a place to get a meal since we couldn’t handle any more walking around for a little while. After some back and forth we settled on a nice meal at the highly rated Historische Weinwirtschaft. It is located in the oldest half-timbered house of Oberwesel. The decor was very old world romantic. I definitely recommend it for a nicer meal if you are in town.

Fried blood sausage and apple slice on mashed potatoes

Pork loin in chanterelle cream sauce and spaetzle

After our meal (and wine) we stumbled back to the train station and took the short train ride back to our town. One would have thought we would just go back to the room and call it a day but it was still totally daylight out. The long days of Germany (5 am sun rise and 10 pm sunset) definitely threw us off. We decided to have a beer at the local Brauhaus. Kleines Brauhaus is a beer garden in an old carousel. We had just enough energy to try one or two of their beers then go back to the hotel to pass out.