My bday in Food

July 4th, 2010

Many say I’m spoiled. I must agree. A nine-day bday celebration drenched in homemade food and best friends.

Grand Gulch, Utah

June 20th, 2010

The Trip.  Collins Spring to Kane Gulch.  38 miles turned 50-some.  5 days. 1500 feet gain/loss.  100 degree heat.  Allergy histamine failure of epic proportions. Cost to paying clients for this experience: $1225.   Cost to my Seattle trail companions and myself:  a bakers dozen of blisters, calf welts and sanity.  What was left of it after this school term anyway.

Would I do it again?  You’ll have to read on to find out.

Here are some of the things that transpired in this sandstone wonderland formerly carved out hundreds of years ago by the Anasazi and Fremont Indians…

Day 1 Collins Spring to Bannister
It took mere hours to realize that this was the heaviest pack I would ever carry.  And we were in the desert.   My Pacific NW pack isn’t this heavy.  We had to carry water.  A lot of it.  Springs were far and few between on this trek.  This was the tail end of the first season in the canyon before it gets too scorchingly hot to handle.  We were chasing shade the entire way.  Almost immediately we got off on the wrong path and headed south downriver.  A small lesson in ‘never underestimate the power of a GPS.’  T knew in her gut it was wrong.  Kudos to Dude for packing the navigation unit. Backpedal back to the Narrows and get going upwash toward Bannister Spring to pump and set up camp.   Ended up being a 12 mile day and put us short of our goal, however, we were on track now.   Meal of the evening was chicken fajitas with black beans, fresh vegetables and avocado. Dude gets more props for hauling in a full size boxed vino tint for our swilling pleasures.   An excellent nightcap before crawling in under the red rock star show.  Highlights of the day include:  little scurrying multicolored lizards, birdsongs galore, doves, hawks, wildflowers, cactus blooms, and the scent of juniper and sage inhabiting my nose.

Day 2 Bannister To Polly’s Island
Eight to nine mile days feels like twenty out here.   We started out with big ambitions to cover some lost ground.   We quickly conceded that there were no rules – only guidelines.   Nature has more pull than we’d like to think.   Plans can be made, goals set, but in the heat of the moment and the apex of the day…it can all change.   Listening to your body and mind is key.  Stay hydrated and don’t forget to lube up to prevent skin fry-age.  The scenery grew even more impressive today.  There were lots of snaky switchbacks thru the canyons, thru the wash.  Thank god for the land X’ings, as heinous as they could be, which cut off some of the mileage.  There was a fair amount of desert shwack to dodge.   Our legs were getting chewed up and spit out, blisters were taking shape nicely and the shoulders ached oh-so-good from the silly heavy pack straps.   Mental note: there is a big difference between school stress and pack stress in your shoulders.   How I prefer the later.   We took lunch in the shade of another wash-cut rock crop.   Onward a little further to the spring to refill.   Tadpoles galore the spring.  They were huge…on the very verge of froginess…and cute!  We finagled a siesta in the shade of a tree whose waxy leaves glittered in the breeze and sun.   We came to an amazing ruin about .5 mi before Polly’s.   Just prior to this we saw some pictographs on a canyon wall.  People and animals, many snakes with curly-que tails.  Way cool stuff.    We hiked up to the ruin – a multi tiered, multi room impressive colony setting.   This one seemed well preserved.  You could see actual thumbprints in the mortar.  Tiny cut-out windows that perhaps once served as a binocular view to hone in on intruders.  Some rooms you enter from the front/side and others from the top (the kivas – a community ceremonial area).  Maize was stored in the granary.  We tried to imagine what it would have been like, living this way, up in the rock wall, with just a few family clan members.  Ask yourself – what ten people would you want with you under such circumstances?  Choose wisely.    Back then, there was a greater supply of water, which meant more varied crops.  There is speculation that this is one of the things that could have driven the Anasazi out.  Water, intruders, disease – don’t know for certain.  Not sure how much could exist, or subsist now in this hot death trap.   We set up camp at Polly’s, an exquisite site up from the wash and in the presence of this knurly old tree whose roots and stems dove thru the site.   Poured some wine for our pesto pasta with kalamata olives, Trader Joe’s merlot salami and ciabatta.   A crescent moon appeared, bats darted and an absolutely awful bird sang in the background.  I washed and laid down, wishing 22 were close at hand and not freshly nor inconveniently 2500 miles away.  Headlamp click off.

Day 3 Polly’s to Totem

Complaints are not synonymous with the backcountry, however, I’m not sure what hurt worse today.  My right shoulder, my left foot arch, the thorn that inadvertently got stuck in me arse somewhere along the way, the blister on my thumb from my poles or my wicked scratched up calves.   As we got going, I made a list in my head of things my pack could do without:  20 lbs, the two longs sleeves, three extra pairs of socks, 10 lbs less food, the sleeping bag (my cocoon sheet would have sufficed), the wacky water weight and the magazine that I had already read at home.  Lunch along the wash in the shade of a canyon wall.  It’s amazing how much and how high the flood debris reached.   We pumped before we set off.  I pulled out my old Sweetwater Guardian, which is horribly inappropriate as a water filter in the desert.  Even with a coffee filter double, the thing clogged before I even got a quart out.  Drips from there.  Cloggy McCloggerson.  Today was a tough day.  Midday, we found the shack after a wrong decision on one of the many undefined forks in the road.   We headed into Step Canyon (the halfway point of our journey)  This SHOULD have been fine as many who need water venture in there to get it.  Just how anyone got in and out of there cleanly, is a total mystery.   It was thick, scratchy, tight and no visible route or trail.  This set us off course on time (but remember* there is no time in the canyon)  We still had 2-3 miles to get to our next camp and spring.   The cottonwoods sent my allergies into overdrive, with sneeze attacks that left me reeling.  Singular wasn’t touching it.  About now I wondered vaguely were the helicopter was to air flight me out, or at least the hired mules to carry our crap.  I was at 2% capacity when we hit party camp, with vacancy!   Of course there’s vacancy, there’s not another soul out there as crazy, I mean, as hardcore as us.  We were just beyond Totem Pole at Green Canyon spring.  T and Dude went to pump while I erected the tents, got dinner prepared and performed some general housecampkeeping.  Fajitas again, followed by a slamming of wine, water and chocolate before crawling in.  I do believe it was about 9 pm.  Despite the utter exhaustion, I couldn’t sleep because I could not breathe.  I dreamt and fantasized about the ruins we saw earlier in the day, yellow man pictographs, hands and chickens.  We saw tons of artifacts, tools and pottery scraps at these under conditioned ruins. There was one phat double decker townhouse ruin complete with wood deco.  We couldn’t identify that one.
Day 4  Totem to Split Level Ruin via Bullet Canyon
Off to a better start.  A machete would have come in handy to get us out of this portion of the path.   There’s a staggering amount of green in these parks yet – like desert meets jungle.  Because we like to begin hiking in the crack heat of the day, we got on the trail around eleven.  We typically killed it  until we hit some sort of landscape setback.  They are not kidding when they call this place primitive.   Trail maintenance is non existent when you’re deep.  Then I started to be thankful for that and really relish in our solitude.  Many don’t dare come this deep…and they will never get to see what we’ve seen.   We tramped past more ruins, seen from afar until we hit Bullet Canyon, the fork in which we head north another 18 miles to Kane.   We’re averaging 8-9 miles a day with stout breaks in the shade and serious hydration.  Some folks from Indiana strolled up during our siesta and tipped us off to a cool canyon just back with more stunning pictographs, including Green Man, which we’d read about.  Dude opted in, T and I stayed.   Backpedaling into canyons at this point didn’t seem like a grand idea.   We kicked back in a nice spot with a very phallic rock formation right in our line of sight.  Nothing else to do but try and climb it.   Love dry grippy sandstone.  I conducted a lizard hurt, but seems the heat was too much for even them right now.   Maybe they just rather feign snake-i-ness while I’m hiking to try and make me scream like a girl.   We have another 4 miles today and I have ice cold beer on the brain.   Don’t care if it’s pissy week UT beer either.  Just cold.   We got going with the sun at our backs now, not so much in our eyes.   Tip:  going this direction on the path at this time of day makes for ideal hiking conditions.    Our packs didn’t seem to be getting any lighter, but that didn’t faze us as we continued.   The other civilization in this canyon spiked camp before Split Level.  As we hiked on, they tried to inform us that we’d already passed the ruin.   T – with her undoubtedly mad navigational skills and keen sense – wasn’t convinced.  She blew off our would be friends and we plodded another 200 feet, where we came to none other than… Split Level Ruin and one of the major houses of the canyon.    Dude felt it necessary to backpedal and let them know that they were, in fact, spiked just underneath the ruin.  Turn 180 and OH, there it is.   We dropped pack and hiked up.  Elaborate and beautiful it is, kiva and granary easily found.  A big chimney in the kiva and burned black.  I can see why this is an archeologists dream.   So many anthropomorphs, petrified knife tips, tools, shards of painted pottery.  We took in every aspect we could from behind the protective chain link.    We found a spot a few hundred feet from the ruin to set up for the night.   Another gorgeous, starry clean night to rival our blue bird days.  After Indian sustenance and apple pie, our sleeping pads called.   I’d close my eyes for a little bit in the dark, and then open them to the Big Dipper directly above me.   I could see the shadows and feel the the 500 foot tall cliffs around me, leaving me feeling like a small fish in a very big bowl.  The walls gave way to the sky and all the constellations.   I swear I could feel the earth moving.

**would have liked further exploration down Bullet Canyon to see Jailhouse Ruin and Perfect Kivas for their distinction.
*** look around while you walk.  look carefully and focus on the rock.  These walls are filled with treasures.   I don’t even know how many we may have missed along the way.

Day 5  Split Level to Kane Gulch Ranger Station

One big 9 .5 mile push out today.   We never know just how the day will go until it goes.  A short bout of energy at the initiation, but exhaustion set in earlier than usual.  Body laughed at the Motrin.  Definitely felt like 100 temperature today.   Carrying so much water all the time was a buzzkill!  Every spring lured me to submerge my body, but it wasn’t an option.  Lunch came sooner than expected, I think because we more wanted to drop our packs.  Misappropriately timed, we finished the last of our heavy foodstuffs.  Another salami bites the dust.  The next ruin was Turkey Pen, named for the wooden staked turkey pen that marked the top.  Pets for the Anasazi children?  Probably not.   I think they just had Thanksgiving all the time.  With tubers and sum funky berry to mash that substituted cranberry.  Maybe juniper berry.   We saw our first petroglyph here.  Not to be confused with pictograph.   I honestly didn’t know the difference.  Pictographs are the colored paintings from various medium on the walls.   Petroglyphs are more reductive, the people use rock to scrape and carve out the image.   Remarkably preserved, it neat to get a close eye on the the construction and the care.  Another ruin, Junction, just ahead and then we began the four mile trek up and out.  Fascinating to watch the scenery change as you get higher and leave this once populated world behind.   We came up some sizable boulders that left us wondering how they were just suspended in mid air.  Just when I thought the trail was at the end and we would see the trusty Toyota waiting idly, there was more trail to endure. Repeated twisting, winding, elevation.   I sank deeper under the weight of my pack, bearing down.  A sense of foraging, desperation and longing to stay in just as much to get out.  When the feeling was too strong to stand, I saw the solar panel top of the Kane Gulch Ranger Station in the distance.
So… despite some unforeseen setbacks, would I do it again?

In a heartbeat.

Many thanks to my trails companions for a hasty introduction to this extraordinarily wild place.  I’ll hike anywhere, anytime with you.

Escape to solitude

June 19th, 2010

Oh-Ten?

January 25th, 2010

Happy New Year!

2009 was an absolute unexpected adventure – a roller coaster ride of epic proportions, pulling G’s on me around every turn.  Alaska gave me the motivation, time and reflection for a much needed self assessment.   There is no other place adequate enough to get more honest with yourself.  I wouldn’t trade a single second of 2009.   Who knows what 2010 will bring?  Current mission:  return to school and get a trade.  Marketing, promotions, journalism, PR>>all that I’ve done so far>> are not trades.  Many may beg to differ and then agree with me in the next breath.  I always said, “I will never return to school.”   It wasn’t all that enjoyable the first time.   Well, NEVER say never.   Eat those words, I will, if only they were deep fried.  I’ve been lightning struck with the urge to do something entirely different with my life, something meaningful.  Something to help people.  Something that will allow me to continue leading the flexible, thrill-a-minute, travel-the-world lifestyle I crave.   So,  short term vacations are on hold.  I’m on a new road trip where the destination is becoming a physical therapist.  Hello late night cram sessions, flash cards and pressure-raising test taking.

If I can get out from underneath the  45 lb stack of Anatomy books and come up for air, I swear I’ll try and hammer out some Jodester.com updates.   No guarantees.  If I can’t, I’ll see you in 2015.   “Paging, Dr. Turmell…”

Wind down, round out

December 20th, 2009
Coati

Coati

Yet another wild goose chase of a day in effort to find the ‘wildlife sanctuary.’  We were promised kitties – jags, ocelots and caucels to play with.   Our trek today led us to a sloth farm that wanted a good bit of money to show us sloths in the wild, from a distance.   We’d already seen a crapton of 2 and 3-toed sloths up close and personal in the wild so we opted out.   Whoever ran the gato sanctuary didn’t want to be found by conventional means, we told ourselves.  Not without a booty map and a secret handshake, anyway.  We tossed in the towel and got some boogie boards and play in the ocean at Playa Negra.   A relaxing tapas dinner and some cocktails to wind out our last night in Bungalow 2.  We had to be up and out early for our white water rafting trip. We had a lovely trip on the Rio Pacuare (between Limon and San Jose) thru Exploradores Rafting Co.  We did see toucans flying in the distance, floated Class 3’s and 4’s with Able as our El Capitan (aka, Brad Pitt)  We had a great group of people, a huge burrito lunch, floated and swam in the limestone shale windy waters, tho we were bitten repeatedly by wasps and swollen.  Deeply carved canyons thru the Highland innundated the lush rainforest.  Different Indian tribes live in the hills in these canyons and spoke to Able in their own tongue, which was neat to hear.  They got us back to San Jose to the Costa Rica Backpackers where we rounded out our trip.

Some quick pics of our last days…

Colorful San Jose building

Colorful San Jose building

Spider monkey

Spider monkey

Root house

Root house

Parque Nacional Cahuita

December 17th, 2009
Yellow eyelash viper

Yellow eyelash viper

In 1960, Costa Rica presidente Mario Echandi Jimenez bought the piece tiny 10.7 km land that is known as Paque Nacional Cahuita for 500 colones. This may seem like alot then, but it was in fact, one measley dollar.  It managed to preserve and protect this absolutely fabulous stretch of humid, mangrove and mammal filled rainforest.  Thank goddess for presidents who realize the importance of these lands.

Alonzo came to be our unofficial guide for the first 2 miles of the trek and was instrumental in pointing out things we wouldn’t have otherwise identified due to lack of identification books and sheer laziness.   Things like the Nonee plant which is a natural digestive and ylang ylang tree, the key ingredient in Coco Chanel No. 5.   Crazy spiders, bats and capuchin monkeys.  Or cappuchino monkeys, as Alonzo says.  Our exploratory hike today was 8.4 km out to Punta Chiquita via Playa Chiquita and Playa Vargas.  It started out with a bang.  A boa constrictor right at the entrance.  Which leads me to a note for that I have no logical explanation.  Although the snakes here are venomous, toxinous and in some cases deadly, my powerful – if not biblical – fear of them is less here.   By the end of the day today, dare I say I was actually looking for them?!  The only thing I can deduce is that they are little, pretty and contain themselves in a a small ball up in the trees, rarely moving or coming down.   So, it all comes down the the ground slithering thing, I think.  They’re snake-i-ness.  Entounces.   The boa was teeny like my fist.   I got to watch it not move from a safe 9 meter distance.  I did get rudely interrupted by a leaf cutter soldier ant biting my ankle and I was positively certain that it was a venomous spider and I caused a bit of a scene trying to get it off.   We moved onto other things.   Bats, spiders sloths, monos… then we left Alonzo and continued on our self guided walk.  Did some shell seeking at Playa Vargas.  After our leftover casado lunch at the volunteer house, I proudly spotted a bright yellow eyelash viper.  Score!   So cool, I stood back while 22 snapped away.   A wonderful hike overall. Still no toucans, tho.

Best sign ever

Best sign ever

Boa Constrictor

Boa Constrictor

Iguana Infiltration

December 16th, 2009
Cabina pool

Cabina pool

Took our breakfast poolside.  Blue tile like fine polish pottery.  Blue that relaxes, invites, makes you happy.  A neat day.  A day of nothing.  And everything.  22 didn’t leave home and I barely did.  It seems like the best, and most, nature is found when you just sit for awhile.  Patience and quiet.  NOT while you’re running around, paying guides good money to help you look for it.  Just sit.  Do your thing.  It practically comes to you.  Now here.  I will tell you that 22 is an animal whisperer.   As long as I’ve known him, he has the sense.  An appreciation.  A skill.  And therefore, the knack.  Some people never do.  Never will.  Some people try and learn it.   Then, there’s the birders.  Like in Alaska.  I won’t even go there.  I write by the pool.  He swims.  We listen to the soundscape.  Before you know it, critters are coming out of the greenwork.  Finally, a miniscule frog like you see on the postcards.   There they are magnified, blown up and photoshopped.  Really tho, these brilliantly colored amphibs are no bigger than the size of your thumbnail, at best.  This one is neon Green and Black Dart Frog.  Highly poisonous.  If you touch it and then touch your mouth specifically, chances are, you’ll die.  As we sat, I began to realize that Cabinas Iguanas is called this for a reason.  Imagine that!

Black and green dart frog

Black and green dart frog

Verde Iguana

Verde Iguana

Bright green iguanas hoisted their way across and over palm trees and branches and though limbs.  Though rather ungraceful while crossing high and horizontal, they moved steadily down the trunk or front of whatever they exited to reach ground.  Skimming over rock mosaic sidewalks, slowly make a brief and curious stop then moving along up the net foliage.   So cool they are.  Some with a good meter or so tail.  Then squirrels and cools birds.  A flash of a toucan was gone before we got a good eye on him.  A brown and yellow-headed woodpecker that I can’t seem to identify. Morphos fluttering by.  A Basilisk lizard and several Whiptails.  Rustlings and sitings every 5 minutes.  More frogs.  Hummingbirds, raccoons, orioles.  These tropical rainforest areas produce crazy critters.  22 stood in the pool watching the trees for activity and then “J, bring the binocs.  Stat.”  He has managed to spot the kimodo dragon of iguanas.   The Head Honch.   The Grand Daddy mother of them all.

Iguana Daddy Mac

Iguana Daddy Mac

He was up in a tree, a peculiar shade of rusty orange, arms the size of mine, with a 1.5 meter orange and black striped tail. He must’ve been 2-3 meters total.  Hard to tell from ground level.   He laid, catching sunlight, moving slow and infrequent.   Large white underbelly.   A force to be reckoned with.   His “spikes” all along his head and back, fearsome enough to shut down predators.  He moved a little, leaving us speechless.   We could only watch.   Before we knew it, he was gone.   Maybe infiltrating our cabin.   Who knows?

It’s ironic.  I was making fun earlier of the oceanic pictures in our cabina.  The kind that show all the critters you could possible want and hope to see all together in a nicely laminated 11×13 photo.  “You’d NEVER see that.”  I heckled.   But now I get it.  In the scenescape I saw today, I came damn close to seeing just that.

We got in the ocean by our cabinas for the first time. It was less intimidating than we thought.  In fact, it had the nicest, cleanest, sandiest bottom yet.   We walked down Playa Negra to where the reefs began like gigantic limestone platforms in layers down the coast.   22 slaved over our own homemade casados.  Plates of cabbage salad with fresh mango dressing, black bean, rice and seasoned pollo.   Spoiled!

Homeade casada

Homeade casada

Manzanillo and the Phantom Animal Refuge

December 15th, 2009

Caught the early bus to Manzanillo to visit Refugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Gandoca-Manzanillo, much anticipated and eventually to our chagrin.  We thought we were headed somewhere else today – an animal sanctuary we’d heard of from friends and locals where they take in injured animals and you can interact with them.  Baby jaguars and other kitties.  Since we’ve heard about it, we were fired up to get there.  Soloueno (s’all good.) tho.   Not much in Manzanillo village itself.  22 was almost rendered unconscious by a freefalling coconut, much to the locals humor.

Manzanillo point

Manzanillo point

We walked 1 km down the beach and fjorded a river to begin a self guided hike down a 5 km trail.  We didn’t get to far as the deep mud slowed us down and we hit one spot on the coast edge where we realized that the incoming tide would not let us back thru for a bit if we were to cross.  Waves were sharp and hard on the reef.  One is supposed to see frogs and birds here.  We have yet to see a toucan.  We beachcombed our way back, bussed from Viejo to Cahuita and cruiser biked back to our cabina.   Only now typing it do I fully realize what an adventure and escapade it was.   Never a dull moment.  What fun to be so fully engaged in life.  22 and I had a hot date at Miss Ediths, a well known and loved Caribe resti.  I sucked on spiny lobster tail and 22 on jerk shrimp.  Buttery , coconutty, spicy awesome-ness all the way around.

Miss Ediths dinner

Miss Ediths dinner

Spiny coconut lobster

Spiny coconut lobster

A Glimpse of Cabinas Iguanas

December 14th, 2009
Breakfast at the Cabina

Breakfast at the Cabina

Homemade breakfast with bacon and lush fruits, washed down by 1820 java.  To paint a picture:  There are bananas hanging right outside our door, ready for consumption at any given moment.  Sweet like candy, devourable bananas, far tastier than any banana I’ve ever, and I do mean ever, eaten. Wandering the grounds we find avacados, starfruit and grapefruits growing wildly all around our cabina. Fan palms, spray palms, tropical flowers of purple, white, hot pink and coral.  Trees are alives and branches chattering with resident geckos, inside and out.  They click for you when you can’t see them.  Geck-Geck-Geck.  So lucky we are.  We got cruiser bikes and set out in the drizzle to see where  our quiet road leads.  The potholed-filled, puddled trek winds along Playa Negra where there is not much more than isolated heaves of tropical green, only a few cabinas spurratically placed and deep off the gravel road.  I feel as tho we’ve meshed with our travel karma and I am overcome to be situated in this secluded sanctuary for a week.

Cruisin' in Cahuita

Cruisin' in Cahuita

After the groceries are got, we fix fresh pico de gallo and guacamole with tostaditos, plus tequila starfruit cocktails.  We just our rusty cruisers into town and catch the nightly movie at this Italian joint, taking a front row seat with our pinas.  A jaunty ride back in the dark, and pulling the mosquito mesh net around our bed, the oh-so-dark wood of the cabina covers us in sleep.  The darkest, and the quietest, it’s been for a long time.

Hammock ponderings

Hammock ponderings

When the sun hits the Caribe waters, you see crazy cross sections of sallow aqua waters.  Beaches are more rugged here, harsher waves crash, strong rips.  More intimidating and wilder than the Pacific side.  Colder too, at least now while we’re just coming off the low season.  In full swing in the high season, this will look much different.  A portion of the afternoon was spent swaying in the hammock out front of our cabina, revelling in the soundscape.  I wanted 22 to take a recording that we could loop and repeat and play all night long because it was far better than any store bought naturalist sound CD I’ve heard.  The sound of frogs was all over the distance.  You couldn’t see them but boy could you hear them.   At least 6-10 different birds talking.  Squirrels gossiping, monkeys howling, geckos clicking.   I don’t know if there would be a way to wholly identify everything.  Looking at the dangling bunch of bananas twirling before me, I wondered just when our illusive monkey came by.  Like clockwork, every morning there were 3 freshly eaten banana peels left on our cabinas doorstep.  That little thief!

Puerto Viejo del Talamanca

December 13th, 2009
Bread and Chocolate Restaurant

Bread and Chocolate Restaurant

An extraordinarily yummy breakfast at Bread N Chocolate, complete with chocolate gnosh cake striped with sliced almonds.  It’s always a nice surprise to see town in the daylight when arriving somewhere at night.  We shopped every single artisan craft booth and did some decent negotiating with the locals.  Then we hit LuluBerlu where 22 bought me the ubiquitous morpho dress that we reluctantly left behind in Mal Pais.  “If you love something, set it free…”  The owner displays incredible works by French mosaic artist Natacha Nokin aka Lu Lu Berlu in this colorful store front.   I would have walked out with all things broken tile transformed into just fantastical pieces if I could.  And I’m bummed that I can’t seem to find anything on the nets that showcase her works.

Another mosaic entryway

Another mosaic entryway

We got on the bus 3 km north to our new home of Cahuita and got settled in at Cabinas Iguanas Bungalow #2.  How nice it is to unpack and organize our things into the cabin.  Home Sweet Home.