Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

On our last full day in New Zealand was a busy one as we drove out west and north Auckland to hike some waterfalls and visit some beaches. It was one of those days where we didn't get to do everything we wanted to do. But it was also one where we enjoyed some things we hadn't planned. That's why I've remarked so many times in my travel blogs about "calling an audible": maintaining enough flexibility to shift plans in real time when something's not working as planned.

We did that a few days earlier at Tongariru National Park when we bailed out of hiking Waitonga Falls due to rain. The value in being good at the flexibility around calling an audible is that we made what might have been a negative experience of "Oh, we missed doing this hike because of rain" into a positive experience of having more time to enjoy other planned hikes like Taranaki Falls plus adding some unplanned sightseeing with those summit views and surprise waterfalls at Turoa and Whakapapa.

On our day outside of Auckland it wasn't weather that forced us to call an audible. The weather wasn't great, though ultimately it's not what stopped us. It was closures. One of our planned hikes that day was Kitekite Falls, and it turned out the road to it was closed because of construction. So what did we do? Two things. First, we spent that time trekking the black sands of Piha Beach. Second, we allowed ourselves more time to spend at our final planned stop of the day, Omeru and Waitangi Falls. And it's good we did because there were more waterfalls there than we expected!



The trail at Omeru Scenic Preserve drops down a steep hill from the parking area then crosses a bridge to a split in the track. To the left, it loops around to Waitangi Falls. To the right, it leads a short distance to a small picnic area overlooking this falls. One might think this is Omeru Falls, the namesake of the park, especially as a nicely graded track leads right to it. But it's not. Omeru Falls is actually not on any trail. It's off to the side, through the woods.



Names? We don't need no steenkin' names! We enjoyed spending time at Not-Omeru Falls, whatever its real name is.

And you know how I said Omeru Falls is off to the side, though the woods? Do you know how I know that? Uh-huh. Because we went there, because we're not afraid of a little bushwhacking. Pics of the hidden, real Omeru Falls plus Waitangi Falls coming next in this series....

New Zealand Travelog #10
Papatowai, NZ - Wed, 10 Apr 2024, 2:30pm

This morning we called an audible on our plans. The weather was looking to be crummy again for the whole day, clouds all day and rain starting soon, so it wasn't a great day for hiking in the mountains around Queenstown. Yeah, we made the best of it yesterday, but we weren't up for a second day of it. And today we didn't even get to start off with a beautiful sunrise over Lake Wakatipu. At dawn today the sky basically just transitioned from dark gray to medium gray. Instead of fighting it out to see if we could even see the mountains through the clouds we decided to pull the plug on Queenstown and do a roadtrip visiting waterfalls in The Catlins.

Re-planning the day's activity wasn't too hard. Hawk had already built a list of waterfalls we might like to see in the Catlins, the coastal mountains on the southeastern corner of New Zealand's South Island. When we were planning the trip we thought we might spend a day or so out in this region, but then we scrapped it because we were crunched for time with so many other worthy things we wanted to see and do. Well, when one of those worthier things (mountains around Queenstown) turns less worthy (due to rain), something else (the Catlins) moves up the list.

I'm jotting down these thoughts right now as we're halfway through our trip. We're in the small town of Papatowai eating lunch. It's a very small town. There's, like, one gas station here, and it's also a restaurant and general store.

So far it's been a good day. We've visited a few waterfalls already. The weather's not great; it's still cloudy and raining lightly. But while that's crummy weather for seeing mountains it's actually halfway decent weather for seeing waterfalls. We'll visit a few more after lunch and then complete our drive on to Te'Anau, where we're staying for the next two days.

Update: Here are journal entries I posted later with photos and details of the 4 waterfall hikes:

• Purakaunui Falls
• Matai Falls— and bonus Horseshoe Falls
• McLean Falls
• Koropuku Falls

Oregon 2023 Travelog #8
Back home. Tue, 4 Jul 2023, 3:45pm

We're home now from our holiday weekend trip to Oregon. Although we bailed out early today we still managed to see and do so much the past 3 days. Here are a few thoughts:

Always have a Plan B (and C, and D)

Bailing out of hiking today was a hard choice but the right one. We then switched to a Plan B, which fell through, as did Plan C. We quickly figured out a Plan D of going home early and having a cook-out dinner with friends. As far as fourth choices go, I"m looking forward to it!

Oh, and we had more time than expected to unpack from this flight and get ready to have friends over for dinner... because our Southwest flight actually arrived early. Imagine that!

What I forgot this trip

I've joked many times before that every trip I forget one thing. The one thing I forgot this time was a doozy... almost. I forgot the charger for my computer! The moment I realized the mistake I started thinking about how to ration my computer's battery charge for 4 days. Then I remembered that my MacBook Air can charge via MagSafe adapter or USB-C. Hawk had a USB-C power brick, so I was good borrowing hers twice. Not that I really had a lot of time to use my computer on this trip; we were too busy hiking, driving, and doing other fun stuff.

Blogging backlog

As usual with these trips I'm behind on blogging. I did manage to keep the pace with our epic, 8-waterfall hike on Saturday by combining short video clips I made at seven of the falls into a nice video montage. Posting just one video from so many amazing sights seems anticlimactic, though. And anyway I didn't record as much video at the 7 or 8 waterfalls we hiked Monday, nor the three we hiked Saturday. Oh, and then there's the raptor center we also visited on Saturday. I'll be posting photos from those great trips for... oh, about the next week, I figure.

San Antonio Travelog #7
Back home - Mon, 28 May 2023, 8pm

Sunday night we called an audible on our trip to San Antonio. We decided to leave earlier today, rebooking to a flight departing at 12:10pm instead of our originally planned 7:10pm. That meant no more sightseeing today... but that was okay with us because we'd really maximized our time Saturday and Sunday. Basically we already saw & did almost everything we wanted to see & do in San Antonio. Leaving early would cost us little in terms of opportunity while making it a lot easier to transition to the work-week.

The extra time at home on Sunday really made a difference. The new flights got us home 7.5 hours earlier. We got home in the middle of the afternoon, unpacked our bags, had a mid-afternoon snack (lunch had been early because of the 2 hour timezone change), then sat down to watch a movie together. After that we made a small dinner at home and took it easy for the rest of the evening. Update: I even got to bed early so that I began the work-week on Tuesday (short week because of Memorial Day) with a full night's sleep— instead of starting the week feeling run ragged after getting home from yet-another trip at almost midnight.

Remember how we seriously considered canceling our Phoenix trip less than a week before going? Well, we're at it again. 😣 This time it's our 10-day trip to New Orleans and Pensacola Beach on Florida's Gulf Coast, with a little bit of Mississippi thrown in the the middle. The trip starts Friday— maybe. 😰

This is a trip we've been planning since December so making changes now, even feeling like we have to consider making changes now, hurts. OTOH, calling an audible when conditions change is important to how I enjoy travel.

As with considering whether to cancel Phoenix, weather is a concern here. The forecast for late next week when we'd be at the beach in Florida shows high temperatures in the low 70s (around 22° C). That just doesn't seem warm enough for enjoying time on the beach. We looked at weather averages months ago and expected it to be 10 degrees warmer there in late April.

Weather's not the only concern here. There's also President's Club. It's the free trip I won as a form of employee recognition for outstanding performance. I won the award in February. It was only this week that the company finalized the destination: Grand Cayman in May. It'll be several days on the beach on a tropical island. With that on the books, Pensacola seemed like a pale cousin. It's less luxe and the weather's off. And even if it were comparable, two trips of lazing at a beach hotel, a few weeks apart, is repetitive.

Hawk and I discussed it yesterday and agreed to cancel the Pensacola part of next week's trip. The next challenge is, does the rest of the trip hold together? 😰 More to come.

Keep reading: Whole Vacation Now in Question!

I checked out of my hotel in Orlando, Florida late this morning, getting out ahead of Hurricane Ian after my company canceled our big annual conference this week. As I described previously, I was unable to find a reasonably priced flight out of Orlando until Wednesday but I was able to find a good one out of Jacksonville Tuesday morning. So... after taking a Lyft to MCO airport I rented a car and drove to JAX airport.

As drives go it was a fairly easy one. 170 miles, pretty much all highway. The driving time was about 2:40. I added a lunch stop making it about 3:30 door-to-door.

Some of my colleagues who heard about the planes-trains-and-automobiles thing I was doing expressed sympathy for the craziness I had to endure. Enh. I know for some people such a drive is not easy, though for me it's close to trivial. And the planning and re-planning with reservations is kind of "All in a day's work". I've been a road warrior for a lot of years. This isn't my first rodeo. (How's that for mixed metaphor?)

Well, the hotel I'm at this evening is nowhere near as nice as the one I left. I'm at the airport Doubletree. It's pretty meh. Instead of a balcony overlooking a massive pool deck I have a small window— that doesn't open— overlooking a dull pool. The resort in Orlando was unusual for a business trip. This is par for the course.

Tomorrow morning my flight out of JAX leaves at 8:36am. If it's on time. I was watching local news over dinner downstairs in the hotel restaurant. Hurricane Ian is strengthening in the Gulf of Mexico. I'm definitely glad I'm further north now. Still, even if the center is a few hundred miles away tomorrow morning, the hurricane could produce enough winds and rains that flights are delayed or canceled.

Keep reading: Jacksonville was far enough north that I got out safely Tuesday morning.

Florida Trip Travelog #3
MDW Airport - Wed, 21 Sep 2022, 1am

Well, our trip to Florida to relax at the beach for 5 days is off to a disastrous start. We were supposed to connect in Chicago en route to Ft. Meyers, but a weather diversion sent us to Indianapolis instead of Chicago. Long story short— and I'm leaving out a lot of trial and tribulation here, longer version below— we got to Chicago 4 hours later than scheduled. We missed our connection. We're rebooked on a 7:50 departure to Tampa in the morning. We're staying overnight at the airport tonight because it's not worth going to a hotel.

Longer version, gory details:

1) Timeout! We had to disembark from the aircraft at IND because the captain and first officer "timed out". They'd been working longer than the FAA safety time limit and were not permitted to commence another takeoff. We exited the plane to wait in the terminal for another flight crew to be shifted over to our aircraft to fly us to Chicago. This wait added hours to our delay.

2) Rebooking, re-rebooking, all a mess. In the terminal at IND I got busy rebooking things— though ultimately the plans turned to shit anyway. First we rebooked to a two-hop flight on Wednesday that would get us in to Ft. Myers after 4pm. "Is there a nonstop flight to a nearby airport? I asked. We had to book a new rental car, anyway, and I was happy to drive 90 minutes to save 4 hours of connection. Next an agent booked me on a nonstop to Tampa... but in the time it took her to move my booking, someone else took the last seat, so there was no seat available for Hawk. The agent struggled with trying to get Hawk a spot for seriously at least 45 minutes, calling multiple supervisors to help. The flight reboarded while she was on hold with Chicago. She told me to board the plane and she'd keep waiting on hold for me. "How will I know if you're successful?" I asked. "Check your reservation when you land," she said. I was the last person through the door into the aircraft.

3) A second chance? It was just after 10pm as we approached MDW for landing. I still had a status screen open in one of my apps for our original connecting flight. It was delayed until 10:42. And it was departing from the gate right next to the one we'd land at. Maybe, just maaaybe, we could get back on that flight!! Of course, we'd need an agent to help undo the broken changes we'd made in Indy. I started kicking myself for all the scraping and clawing to rebook earlier. If I'd just waited maybe we would have been fine! Maybe.

4) So close and yet so far. On the ground at Indy we had an agonizing wait to disembark. First we had to wait for a tow the last 30' to the gate, then we had to wait for a jet bridge driver to connect us. Together these took 20 minutes. We'd already traveled 2,000 miles from home, and the last 30' took 20 minutes. I dashed off the aircraft as quickly as I could, made a beeline for the customer service desk— and my heart sank when I saw a line 20 people deep. The flight I wanted was parked right outside! I asked the gate agent, who wasn't busy, "Is there any way we could get on that aircraft?" Alas there wasn't. The cabin door had already been sealed, the flight manifests finalized. I joined the 20 person deep line— now more like 23 people deep— and waited to talk to an agent. I also called Southwest while waiting, since sometimes the phone agents can fix problems faster than the onsite agents. Especially when there's a long line.

5) Overnighting at the airport. The phone agent was able to get us fixed up for tomorrow. Hawk and I are both on the same flight now. It only took, like, 20 more minutes. We finished just as I was, like, #2 in line. We'll be going to Tampa, a 60-90 minute drive from Fort Meyers, as the only flight available to the latter arrives 4 hours later. For tonight we're just going to sleep at the airport. It's not worth getting a hotel because a) we'll have to pay last-minute rates, b) we'll only have time for maybe 4 hours of sleep if we're lucky, and c) we'll have to spend an hour or more getting back to the hotel and clearing security tomorrow. It's just not worth it. Of course, I might feel differently after a night of getting virtually no sleep sitting in an uncomfortable airport chair.

Update: BONUS suckage: Bag likely MIA. Yes, there's a bonus suck in addition to everything else that sucks. The bag we checked is likely to go to... well, nobody knows for sure. An agent cautioned that its routing has been deleted from the system. It's tagged with a physical tag that says RSW (Ft. Myers, Florida), though, so when someone deep in the bowels of the airport sees it tomorrow morning they're likely— in theory— to create a new system entry and route it to Ft. Myers. Or maybe it just sits there in a "Not My Problem" penalty box for 5 days. 🤷‍♂️ The agent suggested we call Ft. Myers when we land at Tampa.

Update 2: BONUS suck #2: Oh, I forgot to mention that we are paying for the privilege of sleeping on hard chairs in the airport tonight. We're paying for a hotel room in Ft. Myers that we can't get to. It was too late to cancel it. (Cancel window closed 48 hours ahead.)

Pacific Northwest September Travelog #6
Cougar, WA - Sat, 3 Sep 2022, 5:30pm

I lamented in my previous blog that our epic waterfall day in Washington that got off to a strong start had started to fizzle, with waterfalls hard to find or dried up for the season. "Waterfall Lost & Found" I dubbed it, as we extemporized with new plans when one fell through.

The need to adjust on the fly continued into the next leg of our trip, when we couldn't find the trailhead for Big Creek Falls. It was probably in a construction zone we passed, behind some "Area Closed" signs. Update: It definitely was in that area, as some online hiking guides reflect that it's been left in a state of growing disrepair for several years.

But, like I said, we extemporized. We're good at finding a Plan B when Plan A doesn't work right. In this case Plan B was the better-than-expected Lower Falls on the Lewis River.



A short trail leads from the parking area down to viewing areas on the edge of a cliff. The Lewis River pours left, right, and center over a ledge in the riverbed. There are so many waterfalls here it's almost hard to count.



The trail along the cliff provides view from a number of different angles. To one side, the trail goes upstream, where there are several more falls in this area. They're not breathtaking like this one, though. To the other side, the trail goes downstream and provides access to the water level... sorta.

I say sorta because the paths down to the water are all treacherous. I used one that had a knotted rope anchored around a tree to help with a near-vertical descent (and later, climb) the bottom 5 meters. I was glad I had my hiking boots and climbing gloves for that. Other hikers looked at what I did and turned around. I think that was wise.

While the climb down to the river (and back up) was an adventure it wasn't a great photographic spot. Maybe if I'd waded upstream closer to the falls there would've been great photos... but while I had climbing gloves in my pack I did not bring wading gear on this trek.



I met back up with Hawk at the first viewpoint. She had gone exploring upstream while I tried the challenge of getting down to the water and back. Ultimately the best views were at the viewpoint, so I made more photos (like the one above) there.

We still had 2 more waterfalls left on our original itinerary. Lower Falls on the Lewis River was so unexpectedly nice, though, that we decided to visit at least one other falls in the area— knowing that it would jeopardize us being able to see the final falls on our list before dusk. Thumbing through one of our printed guides (our smartphone apps had all long since gone into "I know nothing, no-thing!" mode) we decided Upper Falls would be the next best falls and drove a few miles to the trailhead.



When I mentioned used a printed guide I meant... yes, Dr. Smedley Q. Boredom's Very Dull Book of Waterfalls, aka That Dratted Book. 😨 Smedley once again gave us a bum steer with bad directions to Upper Falls. Instead his instructions took us to Taitnapum Falls, pictured in the photo above. Which... hey, Taitnapum Falls is pretty nice. I don't regret being led astray there. But given that he also provides directions— different directions— to Taitnapum Falls, I wonder where we would've gone if we'd followed those!

In beauty I walk... even if it's not where I planned to walk. That's the idea.

Colorado Travelog #23
Ridgway, CO - Tuesday, 5 Jul 2022, 11pm

So. Earlier today I told Hawk about my bucket list item from 30+ years ago to visit Maroon Lake in Colorado, suggesting we plan another trip like this one to see it... and she said, basically, "Why not now?" Since that moment we've been reworking our plans for this trip to get there.

I started changing hotel reservations plans from my mobile phone while parked on the side of a street. I made more reservations and changes from my computer at a restaurant. And I've spend another few hours online after getting back to our vacation condo this evening completing the plans. Here's how we'll spend the rest of the week:

• Tomorrow (Wednesday) we'll hike in Telluride then drive north to Montrose to stay for the night. This is more-or-less our original plan for tomorrow, though while things were up in the air I canceled our hotel stay for tomorrow night and later rebooked it. It's a points stay, and the price went up from 23k points to 24k.


• Thursday we'll visit Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. That's also within the parameters of our original plan (we allowed some flexibility on whether to hike there or Great Sand Dunes) though instead of driving to Alamosa, near Great Sand Dunes, we'll drive back to Glenwood Springs for the night.


• Friday we'll hike Hanging Lake in Glenwood Canyon. Yes, I got a hiking reservation for it! Friday night we'll stay through in Glenwood Springs. Hawk got us 2 nights at the Marriott Residence Inn with a cert and points.


• Saturday we'll visit Maroon Lake above the ski resort town of Aspen. Maroon Lake also has a permit-based system, and Saturday morning is what I could get a slot for. It's about an hour drive from Glenwood Springs to Aspen. We're not staying in Aspen because hotels are, like, $500/night on up there.


• We'll do more than just visit Maroon Lake; we'll hike from Maroon Lake up to Crater Lake, a round trip of about 4 miles at high elevation. Saturday evening we'll drive back to Denver and crash at a hotel near the airport. Hawk booked that on points, too.


• We'll fly home Sunday morning. That's different from our previous plan of flying home Saturday evening. Yay, no change fees. But boo, paying higher prices for last-minute fares. It cost about $180 more to book Sunday at the last moment, but it's worth it to make this all possible.

Also a tradeoff is that we will not visit Great Sand Dunes National Park or Garden of the Gods on this trip. But since we've visited both before— and have been to GotG, like, three times— that's okay. Swapping in a trip to Maroon Lake is worth it.

Colorado Travelog #10
Colorado National Monument, CO - Sunday, 3 Jul 2022, 3:30pm

We're visiting Colorado National Monument this afternoon. It's a relatively compact park, and it's possible to see most of the highlights from the main road that runs about 25 miles through the park. We're not ones to simply car-tour a park, though. We've hopped out to hike several times!



That said, just car touring is nice... because even the road is amazing. The photo above shows a bird's eye view of the road climbing up through a canyon at the north entrance. And this was our fourth hop-out stop to walk a bit and take pictures.

Next we stopped at the Visitors Center. Even though we'd chosen and mapped out a few easy-to-moderate trails to hike (two or three at 1/2 mile to 1 mile each, and one at about 2 miles) in advance we always like stopping by the Visitors Center to check conditions, grab a printed map and any printed trail descriptions they have, and... shop. We call it "liberating birds". If they have any hawk toys we don't already own a copy of (or have already chosen not to buy) we buy one. This time, as is usually the case, there were no compelling stuffed hawks we don't already own. But there was a sheep. A bighorn ram. And not a stuffed sheep— actually, there were a bunch of stuffed sheep, but of two models we already own examples of— but a Lego sheep.

We decided, "Enh, we don't need a Lego bighorn ram."

I think we're going to regret that when we never see it again.

Update: We did regret it, starting only a few hours later. 😞

Update 2: But we got a second chance 4 days later when we saw the ram at another park— and a hawk, too! 😄🐏🦅

Anyway, back to hiking....



There's plenty for low-effort tourists to see here. But with even a little effort put into hiking there's so much more.



There were so many fun places to hop out and hike a short distance to see amazing views. We ended up going off our original plan with more stops and more hikes than anticipated. But hey, no problem; we can call an audible on this one easily. We'll put off the longer, moderately strenuous hike until tomorrow morning. We planned a bit of flexibility in our schedule exactly for situations such as this.