End of the Road at Turoa. Bonus Falls.

We had a packed day at Tongariro National Park in New Zealand a few weeks ago. We continued on despite the cloudy, rainy weather. After bailing out of Waitonga Falls and finding a bonus falls, then enjoying a short hike Mangawhero Falls, we decided to explore up the park road. We figured maybe the morning clouds would burn off and we could go back and hike Waitonga Falls.

As we drove higher and higher up toward the 9,177' summit of Tongariro's Mt. Ruapehu, the clouds didn't burn off... but we did rise above them. Well, not all the clouds, but the main layer that was dropping rain lower down. Up at Turoa ski area, at the end of the road, the sky was almost clear!



Well, the part right around Mt. Ruapehu wasn't clear. The clouds kept shifting but never quite giving us a clear view of the mountain's distinctive triple peak. But we enjoyed the views we were able to get.

Oh, and it was cold up here. While temperatures were in the mid 50s down in Ohakune where we started the morning, it was only a bit above freezing up here. Temperature drops like that are typical for higher elevation.

BTW, yes, what you see in the mid-ground of the photo above is a ski area. It's just that it's out of season right now.



As we explored around the vacant, out-of-season ski area, bundled up in multiple layers of clothing to ward off the cold, we spotted a waterfall. Yes, up here near the top of the mountain there's a fairly sizable waterfall! This is almost certainly a seasonal waterfall that only appears (a) during snowmelt and (b) right after rain. The rocky terrain up here means water drains fast.

Visit ALL the States - Alaska Trip Booked!

For years now I've had a bucket list goal of visiting all the states in the US. After notching Alabama, number 49 out of 51 in 2016, I remained stuck at 49/51 for several years. (I'm using 51 because I'm counting Washington, D.C. in addition to the well-known fact of 50 states in the US.) Last year I reached 50/51 by visiting Louisiana. That left only "The Last Frontier" of the US— no, not outer space; that's the final frontier— Alaska. And now I've got plans laid in to visit Alaska in June.

We'll visit Alaska for a 5 day trip in June. We'll fly to Anchorage; it's a 5 hour flight non-stop from San Francisco. Once in Anchorage we'll rent a car and drive out to Seward, AK.

Why Seward? There's nothing to recommend that podunk little town except that it's right outside Kenai Fjords National Park. So this trip will serve two bucket list items: getting me to 51/51 states and adding another national park on my national park bucket list. It'll be national park number 53 out of 63. We'll spend a few days visiting the park, both on foot— we'll hike to a glacier!— and by boat, where we'll see more glaciers.

One thing that's struck me as we've made our bookings is how expensive everything is in Alaska. Decent hotels in Anchorage start above $300/night and go up from there. (We're staying one night in Anchorage after a late evening flight.) Rental cars are $200/day. And no, these are not last-minute prices; I was booking 7 weeks ahead. I tried dates in July and August to sanity-check if we'd just chosen the wrong time to visit, but no, Alaska's always expensive.

"What's our alternative?" I asked myself rhetorically multiple times as I choked on the prices. "The only alternative is we don't go." So we'll pay the price to complete our all-the-states bucket list. And notch one more national park.

Packed for Los Cabos and Phoenix

Los Cabos Travelog #0
At home - Fri, 4 May 2024, 10:00pm

This evening Hawk and I have been packing for our next adventure trip. I know, I'm not even done posting blogs from our New Zealand trip— I've got probably 15 journal entries still to go!— and here were are getting ready to head out again. And no, it's not Alaska. Though I wrote earlier today about planning an Alaska trip, that's not 'til June. It's not even the next trip. It's, like, four trips away in the future. Tomorrow morning we're leaving for a nine days in Los Cabos, Mexico and Phoenix, Arizona.

The Los Cabos part of the trip is the President's Club trip I won at work. Well, part of it is club. The club trip is 4 days and starts Monday. We chose to extend the trip, at our own cost, for an extra two days, flying down there Saturday morning. We'll be off on our own at a beautiful resort (more on that soon!) before joining the company group after two days at a different hotel.

Club is over on Thursday. Instead of flying home or extending another three days in Los Cabos (the five we've planned are plenty) we'll fly to Phoenix, Arizona. We'll be there for three days at a nice hotel with a waterpark. Splashing around in pools at a hotel in the US is kind of more our speed than visiting an overly commercialized, "foreign lite"  resort. And my in-laws are flying out from Pennsylvania to join us for those 3 days in Phoenix. That Sunday we'll fly home... and they'll fly with us, to visit us in California for a few days.

Anyway, it's late Friday night here. Our flight leaves in about 10 hours. We're pretty much all packed. And we're packed fairly lightly. This trip is all leisure, no work. No work clothes, no work computer. Just shorts, light shirts, two pair of sandals, two swim trunks, and a few bottles of suntan lotion.