Justin and Hazel Around the World

On Wednesday my mom flew down from Seattle to spend some time with us before we leave.  Since she’s always wanted to see Yosemite, I hatched a plan for us to go out there for a night.  We had an awesome time hiking and seeing the sights, and now I have some actual travel to blog about.  It was very special for me to go back to Yosemite, because almost exactly a year ago Justin proposed to me there.

She got into the San Jose airport (after a minor delay) in the middle of the day and we headed straight to the park.  The drive was fairly uneventful, although there was some crazy smoke/smog/fog around Merced.  It was like driving with really dirty windows.  It disappeared once we got into the mountains though and we managed to make it to the park just after sunset.

Half Dome at Sunset as we Arrived

We stayed in a heated tent cabin in the Curry Village Campground and even though it got down to about 27 degrees Fahrenheit we were fairly warm and comfy all night.

Mom at the Pizza Place for Dinner

Me Excited with the Map

Inside our Cosy Tent Cabin

Reviews online were pretty mixed about this campground – apparently, it can be noisy, spiders have been sighted, and the blankets are wool so they are itchy.  We really liked it.  It’s right next to Half Dome, has hot water, heaters, and the beds were pretty comfortable.  It also has a handy bear locker right outside your tent so you can keep all your food from being stolen by a bear.  Apparently bears are a pretty huge problem as they break into cars and tents to get at the people food.  We didn’t see one though.

Our Cute Cabin

We were up with the sun at about 6 a.m. and started out on a hike right away.  The first stop was Mirror Lake and we got some sweet views along the way.  You can click on any of these pictures for a bigger version.

Yosemite Falls at Sunrise

Frozen Meadow with Fall Colors

Exploring the Trails

It was very, very cold, but very, very beautiful.  This was my first chance to check out how my trip clothes would perform in really cold weather and I’m glad to say, it went very well.  I brought an extra scarf and mittens, but aside from that I got by just with layering things from my backpack.  Good to know that I can be ok hiking at those kinds of temperatures with the clothes I’m planning on bringing!

Reflections in Mirror Lake

Around 10 a.m. we were starving so we splurged and had the all-you-can-eat breakfast buffet at the Ahwahnee Hotel.  So yummy and I definitely ate too much.  But after several cups of coffee and at least 5 pieces of bacon I was ready to hike again!

We checked out the gift shop:

Dancing bear?!

And the Visitors’ Center (this had some really good exhibits):

Cute!

And then headed to the waterfalls.

Upper and Lower Yosemite Falls

According to the Visitors’ Center these are the highest falls in the U.S.  and are usually dried up at this time of year.  We were lucky to have awesome views of them and I spent a lot of time taking pictures.  In fact, most of the rest of the day was spent hiking around this area and snapping photos of the incredible views.  It’s really hard to decide which ones to post since I got a lot of good shots.  Hopefully in a day or two we will have worked out how to get photo galleries up and then I can post them all and not clutter up my blog posts as much.  But, because I like them, here are a few more of my Yosemite shots:

Upper Yosemite Falls

Beautiful Fall Leaves

Squirrel!

Half Dome

El Capitan

I’ll try to put the rest up in a gallery soon.  Today is a frantic getasmuchworkdoneonthehouseaspossible day, so I’d better get to it.

We’ve been busy getting details worked out for the first stop on our trip – New Zealand!

So far we have booked a hostel for our first night in Auckland.  We’ll head there and crash the first night and then the next day we will pick up our sleepervan which will be our home for the next 6.5 weeks.  We will be cruising around in the “ferns” van which we can park at campgrounds and sleep and cook in.  There’s lots of great hiking, beaches, and scenery, so I don’t think we’ll be getting bored!  We’re also going to use our driving time to listen to tons of Spanish language tapes to get prepared for our next couple of stops.

We’ll have about a week on the North Island and then take the ferry over to the South Island.  The plan is to spend Christmas in Christchurch and this is the one place we’ve made camping reservations ahead of time.  There’s a place to camp just a few blocks from the Cathedral in downtown Christchurch, so we figured we’d give it a go.  This location also provides computer access, so we know for sure we can get some blog posts up at that point.

After a month on the South Island we’ll head back up north for another week and a half before we go back to Auckland for our flight to South America.  Pretty flexible all in all, but it’s nice to know that we have all of the important details set now.

Hopefully over the next week or so anyone visiting this space will notice some updates to what we have going on.  Our main goal for this blog is to keep friends and family up-to-date with our travels and to have an opportunity to record what we get up to.  We’re working on a map that will show the details of our trip and hopefully be a way to organize our posts as well.  We’re also hoping to do a spiffing up of the looks of the blog and to find a way to share more of our photos with you.

It’s really exciting to see this page take shape as well as to share our plans as they come together.  We’re down to 20 days left in the country and are getting more excited every day!

Packing for this trip has been a daunting task.  Not only is it difficult to predict what kinds of weather conditions you’ll run into all over the world for a whole year, but we made the decision to travel light.  This does not come naturally to me.  By nature I’m a worrier and I can think of 800 situations in which I will need more stuff.  So one of the smartest moves we made was to start out by buying the backpack first – thereby providing a clear limit to the amount of stuff I’m capable of packing.

In case you’re curious, here’s a video showing off my backpack, the Deuter Futura ZeroSL

I’ve been extremely happy with this pack so far and it holds a surprising amount of gear.

Most of the space in the backpack will be taken up by clothing.  Here is what I’ve ultimately decided to take with me.

1 – 2 long-sleeved shirts (gray with hood and blue)

2 – 1 short-sleeved shirt (gray)

Trip Clothes

3 – Hat

4 – 3 tank tops (black, brown, and gray)

5 – bathing suit (blue)

6 – cotton shorts (gray)

7 – bandanna treated with insect repellent (yellow)

8 – fleece jacket (black)

9 – rain coat (green)

10 – long cotton skirt (black with pretty pattern)

11 – 2 pairs hiking trousers (black and olive green)

12 – 4 sports bras

Trip Shoes

13 – little black (sun)dress

14 – hiking sneakers

15 – hiking sandals

Not pictured – 4 pairs socks, 4 undies

I’m clearly not going to be winning any fashion awards here, but ultimately every item I’ve packed is functional, easy to wash, easy to dry, and able to be layered to keep me warm.  This can last me a year, right?  Right!?

On a Hike

One of the hardest parts about taking off for a whole year is leaving this sweet face behind.  I found Daisy in the Tacoma, WA pound 5 years ago and she’s been a major part of my life since then.  She’s moved with me from Puyallup, WA to Davis, CA, back to Seattle, WA and now here to the Bay Area.  She’s gone fishing, camping, whale watching, rafting, hiking, was the ring bearer in our wedding and even goes to work with Justin every day.  It’s going to be pretty difficult leaving her behind!

Luckily for us, our close friends have volunteered to take her for the year we are gone.  Daisy already loves hanging out and playing ball with them and will be totally happy to spend a year with them and their two kitties.  And even more luckily for us, they’ve promised to give her back once we are back from our travels.  We couldn’t ask for a more ideal situation.

Fetch in the Park

We’ll miss Daisy, but it’s much easier leaving knowing that she’ll be in such good hands!

Whale Watching off Monterey

This weekend we headed out to this place: The San Jose Flea Market to sell some of our stuff in preparation for the trip.  It was an awesome experience and a great way to pass on some of the things we needed to get rid of but didn’t want to take the time to post online or make a fuss about selling.

We chose to go to the Flea Market on one of their free selling days – the website said to just show up, so that’s what we did.  Since we wanted to get a good spot we were up at 3:45 a.m. and waiting in line at the market at 5:15 a.m!  This strategy worked out well and after getting lost only once we got our spot.

Early morning

Once we were set up it was pretty relaxing to watch the people go by and do a little haggling over prices for our stuff.  There was lots of cheap food available and the Mexican hot chocolate was a lifesaver in the cold early morning.  This is a very easy alternative to a yard sale and I’d highly recommend checking it out.  We hung out until about 5 p.m. and managed to get rid of a lot of our stuff.  Kitchen items, yarn, picture frames and shoes were top sellers with books being the hardest to pass on.

Justin relaxing at the Flea Market

Today we booked the first leg of our trip.  We’re starting out with a one way ticket to here:

NEW ZEALAND!!!

From there we will begin our Around-the-World Ticket and travel east for the rest of our trip.  So, just to get the excitement flowing about our first stop I’ll post a few more photos from my brother’s trip to New Zealand a few years ago.

All photos in this post by my brother, Thomas Ball – very inspiring!

I can’t believe how quickly time is going and how close we are to heading out on this trip.  One month from now we’ll be heading off around the world!!!

This afternoon we’re heading back to the travel clinic for yet another vaccination – Japanese Encephalitis.  This is actually fairly last minute as we need to have a booster shot 28 days after this first shot.  So we’ll have to go back to the travel clinic right before we head out on the trip.

This year for Halloween we went as obnoxious tourists.  Hopefully this means we know what NOT to do while we’re traveling!