Renting a Car in the Midnight Sun

This weekend I clicked into the place the final piece of our travel arrangements for visiting Alaska next month. I booked a rental car. I slept on doing this for a few weeks because prices with all the conventional car rental agencies (Avis, Hertz, et. al.) were absurd. Like, $1,000 for a 5-day rental absurd. Instead I booked with Turo, a C2C car rental arranger. Turo is like AirBnB for car rental.

I slept on booking with Turo for two weeks because I had doubts about how well it works. For example, our flight to Anchorage arrives at 11pm. We'd want to pick up the car around 11:30. But would a private owner be able to complete a business transaction at that hour? Ultimately the price difference was compelling— it's less than half the (huge) cost of a conventional rental, though for an older/smaller car— so I took the plunge and clicked "Buy".

The service suggested as my next step I install the app on my phone and message the car owner. "Hmm, good idea," I thought. I messaged the owner about the 11:30pm thing, explaining that if the late-night hour didn't work I could pick up the car early the next morning as we'd be staying in Anchorage that night.

"No problem with 11:30," she explained. The car would parked on a public street and have some kind of lock-box for me to get the key. "And the sun doesn't really set, so at 11:30pm you'll still be able to take pictures of the car."

Oookay, I wasn't expecting that, but it makes sense. Now I'm really looking forward to this trip into the land of the midnight sun!

Taranaki Falls, part 2. Backcountry Photography.

Our hike out to Taranaki Falls in Tongariro National Park, New Zealand, felt long. I don't know that it was actually long but it sure felt long subjectively, in that way that some things seem to take forever when you're going to them. Then on the way back you're like, "Oh, that wasn't far." Well, we hadn't made our way back yet so we were still in the mode of, "Wow, we've hiked such a long way to get out here!"

Having hiked all that distance— objectively or subjectively— I wanted to stay put for a bit to rest and, more importantly, to enjoy the view I worked so hard for.



Fortunately the view was one I could just keep drinking in. I had fun photographing the falls from various angles and with various effects. There was a pro, or pro-looking, photographer working the falls at the same time. I stayed out of his way partly in case he was trying to earn a living... though he was constantly in my way. That's one thing I've found is typical of pros doing outdoor photography. They step in front of people with zero hesitation but scream loudly when anyone steps in front of them.

The other part of why I stayed out of the pro's (or wannabe-pro's) way is that he was taking all his pics from much closer to the falls, where the spray would've been covering his lenses in a matter of seconds. And he was taking no steps to protect or clean his lenses between shots. That's one reason why I suggest that maybe he was pro-looking..... He was clearly carrying an expensive set of camera of gear, easily $15k (US) original purchase price, but his technique raised major red flags in my mind that he was almost certainly failing to capture photos with critical detail and sharpness. If so it would hardly be the first time I saw someone with a small car worth of camera gear making total noob mistakes.

My gear? I'm still making pictures with my now 5-year old camera and a few good, but not overwhelmingly expensive, lenses. ...Okay, my workhorse is a $1,000 super wide-angle lens. (And do I baby such an investment? No. I drop it off mountains. And glaciers.)

And do I carry a big bag of gear? Heavens, no! The same part of me that doesn't want to drop 15 grand on a camera rig doesn't want to drag 30 lbs. of it all over tarnation. I'm not even carrying a tripod on this trip. Instead I'm snapping these long-exposure shots balancing my camera on the monopod my hiking staff serves dual purpose as.



And shots with my iPhone? I'm free-handing those.

Soon enough it was time to head back to the start of the track. Remember what I wrote above about how far it seemed? I wasn't looking forward to hoofing it back. I also wasn't looking forward to starting the return trek with a climb up the switchbacks up that cliff. Trail signs showed that we could keep walking in the same direction, though, and catch a trail that looped back to almost the same trailhead. I pressed to go that way.



Hiking the loop was a plus because we got to see more than the same, frankly boring, trail across rolling hills of grass we hiked out. Instead we hiked down the stream canyon and saw a few more waterfalls. None were as grand as Taranaki but they were enjoyable.

The loop trail worried me, though. We were hiking down. Down a lot. Down, down down. And you know that when hiking a loop, what goes down must go up. I was really not looking forward to having to ascend hundreds of feet, probably even 1,000 feet, back up the mountain to return to our car.



Then, at what seemed like the low point of the trail, we saw a trail sign. It promised it was just 20 minutes of walking back to Whakapapa. Even if 20 minutes was an estimate for someone in great shape there's no way it means multiple miles and many hundreds of feet of ascent. And indeed it wasn't. After less than 200' feet of ascent, climbing out of the stream canyon, the end was in sight:



The trailhead is by that large, yellow-roofed building on the left. BTW, the large building on the right is a vintage hotel currently not in service.

We completed the loop appropriately tired but not completely spent. ...Which was good because we still had at least one more hike to do that day! Stay tuned.