Moving to Maui

I live in Maui now. Sound too good to be true? Well, technically it is.
I suppose I don't actually "live" in Maui. I am here for 183 days* on vacation to spend time living closer than 6000 km from my man.It's great. Instead of the 6000 km commute, I have only to make a 5 minute walk in the morning to reach his door from mine. The difference is quite noticeable.


I spent 3 months in Maui beginning in October 2008. I met a lovely gent and crazily we kept in touch. Being the kind of gal who always claimed (if not alound then definitely to myself) that "I'd never fall in love on a vacation" and that "I'd NEVER want to date an American and deal with the immigration issues" I was surprised when I fell in love with an American while vacationing in Maui. But I often say things that I later have to take back. Like when I said "I'd NEVER EVER have a blog."


Anyway, it was great to see my man upon arrival and spend some quality time helping each other clean/organise our various residences I got down to the business of living in Maui. First week we made sure to go to one of my top 5 favourite places on the island. During the 2008 trip to Maui, I went on the Bamboo Forest hike with some friends. There is another more well known Bamboo Forest hike past Hana that all the tourists know about. It leads to a really high waterfall and is certainly worth the hike. But this little place is more of a locals hike. Tourists will drive by the entrance to this hike and have no idea why all the cars are stopped. The curious may venture over the fence and follow one of the various paths through the bamboo to a couple "nice" little pools. But the pool below requires a bit of a hike, some rock climbing** and knowing that when you reach the end of the path, you have to jump in the water and swim to the next part.


This is the next part.When I swam through the little channel on the far right side of this picture, I remember being speechless and feeling very reverant of this beautiful place. Dead centre in this picture, there was water falling in steady drips from the lip of the little cave and if you looked up, you would be surrounded on all sides by dark lava rock covered with lush greenery going up 50 or 60 feet. It was amazing and exactly what I'd always imagined the non-beach parts of Hawaii to look like. I'm glad that not a lot of people know about this secret part of the hike. The best part is that once you swim through this pool, you climb up a little waterfall and get to another pool with a bigger waterfall. It's heavenly.


In between play, there has been lots of work to be done. I've been getting used to the heat. It is a lot hotter than it was on my last trip here. And with no AC*** we often find the inside of my boyfriend's place reaches 96. I don't know what that translates to in Celsius (and I don't want to know so please don't tell me) but it's hot for being inside. Anyway, lots of work and heat get rewarded with fun hikes and swimming excursions!


Here I am jumping off the rocks at Twin Falls.Twin Falls is one of the stops toward the beginning of the infamous Road to Hana. Again, the beginning of the little walk/hike is full of tourists and locals enjoying the scenic setting. There's a pool with a rope swing (which I have yet to try) and another with some beautiful falls. But, those who know to cross the water and hike upward will eventually reach a much less crowded waterfall with a perfect jumping rock. Jumping from heights into water is tied with climbing trees as my boyfriend's favourite pastime (imagine his euphoria when he gets to combine the two - pictures to come of our trip to Kauai). So this day we decided to work on my jumping technique. I have to learn how to do it without plugging my nose as it seems to be throwing off my landing angle. I had very little success this day but I will keep working on it.


All charged up from jumping as we re-unite in the water.


A few days later we went on a hike with some other friends upcountry**** in Poli Poli. We left early in the morning and planned for a 2 or 3 hour hike. I found out later that with this particular hiking group, we will usually get lost at least once on each hike and take much longer than expected. That will make planning schedules around hikes much easier. Don't plan!

Just after parking to start our hike, we saw some para-gliders taking off. Looks like fun. I could see this being addicting. It would be like a much extended version of a skydive without the free fall but with more time to play.I think I want to try it.


We've all seen the warning signs for falling rocks, but how about trees? I think it is because a forest fire went through the area 4 or 5 years ago. It's a lot more re-grown than when I was here 18 months ago.


This was a special spot for Huey and me the first time I came to Maui. We sat and talked on Christmas Eve 2008 about things I can't remember anymore. But I remember the good day feeling that this place brings back.


Some of our hiking crew! If you'll notice, I look a bit tense. That is because for my 6'7" boyfriend, this was but a little hop to get on. And he is very coordinated and comfortable with heights (there's quite a drop to our left). For me there was pulling up top and pushing from below involved to get me here. And since a forest fire went through here several years ago...


...the trees are still covered with charcoal. Worth it for the picture though. I was politely told to "watch where you sit after the hike." I won't bore you with that picture though.


When we reached the far end of our hike, we had one of the rare days clear enough to see the Big Island. If you look very carefully you may be able to make out three of the highest peaks.

Mauna Kea is the world's tallest mountain from base to summit. Yes you read that right. Mount Everest is the tallest above sea level, but Mauna Kea is about 100 feet taller if counted from it's base 5000 metres underwater. Mauna Kea is the mountain on the left. I believe the one in the middle is Mauna Loa and is mostly covered by clouds. I think that might be Kilauea on the left. Anyway, pretty view and apparently quite a treat.


Pretty dusty right now. Look a the dust his feet are throwing up.


Dirty feet = good hike




*183 days is how long my travel insurance company would provide me with coverage.
**Since being here in 2008, they have added a ladder to the hardest part of the hike so non-rock climbers can make it a little easier. I admit, I was relieved to see it as I always struggled with that portion of the hike. However, it takes away a bit of the challenge and makes it slightly less rewarding to get to the end. But only slightly.
***There actually is AC at his place but because of the cost of power, many people try not to use it. I am saving my AC requests for later in the summer on days we work all day at the house.
****Maui is made up of the Haleakala crater in the southeast and the West mountains in the northwest and a lovely valley in the middle. Several communities, hiking trails, parks and farms around the 3000 foot elevation mark (and higher) on Haleakala are considered "upcountry".




The next post will show pictures of our hiking trip to Kauai.

It almost makes me want to try it

I just can't stop watching this video. I saw it at the Banff Mountain Film Festival (which is totally awesome! If you are east of Saskatoon, you should check when it comes to your city and go! Although each venue picks the movies they show so this one might not be there). It was my favourite of the 10 movies they showed. I've never been a mountain biking fan but seriously, this is like art mixed with insane extremeness.

Watch it. (Warning, one curse word during their introductions - but nothing after that)



Can you believe these boys are only 17!? They built this. Amazing artistic talent. It's like a beautiful dance.

My car is paid off and I'm learning to cook

Three years ago this month I bought a brand new Mazda. I had a car to trade in and a bit of money saved up but I still had to get a sizable loan to cover the remaining costs. Back then I was working at a job that paid me well when I had to drive my own car and I made the odd extra payment when I had some saved up. Today I called to check up on how that 5 year loan was progressing and was pleasantly surprised to find out that I was only 1 and a half payments away from having that car paid off so I authorized a final lump sum to be done with it!

What a lovely feeling.

I really like my car and I think it was a realitively wise decision to buy it considering my situation at the time. But I hated making payments, even though they were reasonable, each month and I think in the future I will try if possible to keep my car debt very low or non existant. Especially since two years after I bought that car I quit my job and went on an adventure. Being bogged down with payments seriuosly hampers one's ability to do that.

Aside from paying off my car 2 years early, I have been learning to cook. It's never been something that I was good at or enjoyed. And my tastes in food aren't sophisticated enough that I had the motivation, but recently something has changed. It started out with muffins from scratch. One day I just felt like having muffins that weren't a ready made just-add-water and eggs mix. It progressed to making a few dinners requiring more than one step and 10 minutes. Then I tried to make my favourite things to eat (like chili) that I'd never actually attempted before. I began throwing in the odd dessert and even tried my hand at bread and buiscuits (both sad attempts but I'll get better). It's gotten to the point where I'm usually making something substantial about twice a week. It's been great. Some days I still don't feel like going through the effort (like today - although I still managed to throw together some enchiladas) - those are days I'm thankful if I have leftovers - but I kind of like feeling like I can prepare food for people that they might actually enjoy. So far my biggest success is Indian naan bread. Trust me, if I invite you over for it, don't turn me down. Unless you can't have gluten or hate Indian food.

So that's my latest journey. The world of cooking. It's kind of a scary place but armed with a couple of good cookbooks and a mom only a phone call away I hope to do a lot more exploring.

The next thing on my list is to make a Jamaician Jerk roast. Probably not till next week though. This week was a lemon/cranberry loaf and enchiladas. I'm busy so I think it will be a couple nights of spaghetti and Ceasar salad. Maybe I'll try making my own crutons! So yummy!

Hiking the Olympic Peninsula

When I was younger I was on a long day hike with my dad in Waterton. We saw a girl and two guys with big packs finishing a multi-day backpacking trip. I knew then that I'd love it if I ever got the opportunity to go on one myself. I've done a few now and I'm so hooked. If anyone wants to go hiking, just let me know.

Toward the end of July I went on a super cool backpacking trip in Olympic National Park in Washington state! Just took me a bit of time to post it. But here you go!



I chose to go to Seattle during the hottest week they've ever had. That's right, I was there on the day they had the hottest temperature "ever recorded." At least that's what all the Seattle-ites told me. But after boarding the ferry for the Peninsula we could literally feel the temperature falling.

My boyfriend's mom agreed to drive us from her place where we were staying, to the end of our hike to drop my car, to the beginning of the hike to start.

We left my car at the trailhead near Oil City. We were a bit nervous to leave it for so long so we tried to be sneaky. The front of the car looked completely empty. We'd put everything in the trunk (and even hid our most valuable possessions in the spare tire cubby in case someone broke in) and left a couple of empty pop cans in the back and a subway wrapper on the floor so it didn't "look" like we'd cleaned out the entire car. We thought we were clever.

We were driven to the Ozette trailhead and dropped off to begin our adventure. A five day 40 mile hike along the Olympic Peninsula Coast. Ooooo. I was so excited.

All packed and ready to go.



Once crossing this bridge, we were officially off on our hike!



Oh crap. My shoulders are sore already. But who cares!



Not him. He's super excited about our adventure. Can you tell?

The first three miles of the hike were on this boardwalk. It was the fastest three miles we hiked the entire time. We had gotten a late start so by the time we hit the beach it was already getting dark. So no pictures from that first evening. We were lucky enough (or blessed enough) to run into a guy on the beach who could direct us to the camp sites. I don't know that we would have found them in the dark on our own.



Here was that first campsite south of Sand Point. It was back in the trees a bit and very beautiful.



Here's the type of beach we hiked on for the first while of our second day. This might have been Yellow Banks, or shortly after Yellow Banks. We didn't really follow our map much that day. Which, by the way, was a mistake. In several places we had to be concious of the tide height and could only cross when it was below a certain level.



This shows a little bit how much the tide goes in and out. I'd say this is at mid-tide.



This beach was a ways before the Norwegian Memorial and was even rockier but we found a fantastic lunch spot. It is soooo nice to take a break from the hiking boots.



These rocky beaches were a hard hike. We had two 3 mile sections and I would say they were the hardest sections.



To get a break from the rocks we walked across driftwood for a couple of miles. At first I was scared but it ended up being super fun. He loved it of course. He's got great balance, even with a 50 pound pack on his back. I did okay, but only if I relied heavily on my hiking poles.



We loved camping at Cedar Creek. We were on a site raised up from the beach and we had our first camp fire. It was lovely.



Seals! We also saw otters while we were filtering our water one evening. They hung out with us for like 20 minutes and chilled out on the same log we were sitting on. They were cool.



The rocks were kind of cool. Some led to some interesting beach nicknames. My dad had heard about one of them and knew this was it when he saw the picture.



This was Cape Johnson. I loved these rocks. They were flat and super easy to walk on. Plus there were all sorts of tide pools with cool seaweed and starfish and sea urchins and all kinds of neat stuff. This was our third day and we had to get across this headland before the tide hit 4 feet. It meant an early wake up and quick camp exit but we made it!



Cool rocks that we had to walk through. That calls for a picture!



This is Hole-In-The-Wall. One of our funniest moments occurred about 1.5 minutes following the taking of this picture. There are no pictures taken for about 8 hours following the taking of this picture. Here's the story:

We had to do a really easy bit of rock climbing to get around the other side. There were tons of people (without packs I will point out) doing it with no problem. This was close enough to La Push that tourists could easily do a short day hike here and back without having to carry a pack and tent and stuff. Anyway, I knew I could do it, but I was nervous about doing it with my pack. I don't have the best of balance on a good day. So I asked my boyfriend to put my camera into the waterproof dry sack I had along so if I fell into the ocean my camera wouldn't get wet. He lovlingly agreed (although I wouldn't be surprised if he rolled his eyes behind my back) and somehow as he was stuffing it in the dry sack, it slipped out and fell directly into the water (oh the irony). Oops! He jumped down with his pack on and grabbed it out of the water in about 10 seconds. The water was just started to soak through the nylon case and we weren't sure how wet it had gotten so we put it away in the dry sack and buried it in my pack and didn't take it out for a couple of hours. That's why there's no pictures of Rialto beach or La Push or our hitch hiking adventure to get around the river (too big to swim) to the Third Beach trailhead.

Then, being lazy and not shortening them, I got him to fasten my hiking poles to my pack so I'd have my hands free. Except they got stuck on an overhang and popped off my pack and they took a swim in the ocean. Back into the water he went to rescue my hiking poles. I seriously owe the guy for saving all my stuff that day.

What should have taken us 2 minutes had now taken twenty so finally I took off my pack, crossed the section, held onto his pack while he went back for mine. The people that later ended up giving us a ride while we were hitching had passed us while this whole drama was going on. So embarrassing.

We did make it to the Third Beach trailhead though.



Look at the roots on that baby.

We hiked the 1.5 miles from the trailhead to Third Beach. It was packed and for the first time we slept right on the beach with everyone else. He was super excited to make a big camp fire again.



On our fourth day we covered 14 miles. It was our longest day. This was early on at Strawberry Point. Someday I'd like to go back and stretch our 4th day into 3 days because of how pretty it was and how much exploring we could have done. Apparently there are sea caves out there to explore. This was the closest to them that we got though.



We saw an eagle at Toleak Point!!! See it on top of this rock? We wondered from quite a way off whether it was a rock or an eagle. But it was definitely an eagle.



See. Here's the proof.



Some beaches were nicer than others. This was beautiful but there was a lot of seaweed all over the beach and there were these bugs that lived in it. And they were cool in that they ran away from us instead of toward us (unlike any bug I've ever met here in Saskatchewan) but they are still bugs and I wouldn't want to sleep on this beach!



Anytime the headland was too dangerous to cross (regardless of tide level) there were overland trails to take. Most of the overland trails were quite steep. If you look real close, you can see me climbing the ladder.



If you didn't look real closely, here's another shot.



Filtering water was a thrice daily chore. We tried to plan to hit major streams when we wanted to take a break anyway. This was about half way on the overland trail past Toleak Point beach. We were planning quite a long day for ourselves and we should have had lunch while we filtered water here. However, I was being stubborn and wanted our major break to be on the beach.

Would have been great except that we got lost trying to follow the instructions of some hikers we'd met earlier in the day. They told us to take the "barely visible path to the left once we could hear the ocean" to avoid a landslide. Probelm: There were A LOT of barely visible paths to the left once we could hear the ocean. After we had been lost long enough for me to start to break down (there may have been a misting of the eyes) He saved the day, found the CORRECT "barely visible path to the left" and we went down some more ladders to a beautiful beautiful beach and had a nice long lunch break. We were on the north end of the Mosquite Creek beach.



The beach by Mosquito Creek. No mosquitos that we could see. Just 2.2 miles of moody-weathered beauty. I would have liked to spend a day here. I really think I will try to do that someday.



A quick diversion to scare all the birds just before we had to leave the beach.



We had to watch for these markers which designated the overland trails. Sometimes they were super hard to find and we would both be squinting in the distance while we walked worried we'd missed the trailhead. But we always found it eventually.

We started on this trail after already having hiked our longest day of the trip. It was 3.5 miles long and we had no idea what to expect. We'd heard differing reports on it's difficulty. A friend of mine from work who'd hiked it in the past said it would take 2.5 hours. A ranger that we talked to when picking up our permits said it took him 4 hours. This worried us greatly and was the reason we decided to tack it on to our 4th day instead of saving it for the 5th day. There was a section the next day that we could only cross between 5:30 and 7:30 in the morning because of the tide. Some days, the tide doesn't even go low enough to cross but we knew it would that day. If we missed it, we would have to wait until the following morning and be set back an entire day.

Since we had no way of knowing how long the overland trail would take us (I mean if it took a ranger 4 hours, it could take us 6!) we would have had to get up at 3 in the morning and hike it in the dark to make sure we'd get to Jefferson Cove by 7:30 at the latest. So, we decide to hike the trail that night. Thankfully, because it had been a "warm, dry" year, we managed it in around 3 hours. Maybe a bit less.

We arrived on the beach before Jefferson Cove around 9pm. The tide was almost at its height and the entire sandy part of the beach was covered with water. We couldn't set up any sleeping arrangments and had to perch ourselves up on some driftwood until the tide started to go down at around 12:30am. My wonderful wonderful guy made us a driftwood table so we could spread out a blanket and unpack our bags to get our food and warm clothes.



This is his beautiful driftwood table. I think eating dinner on that in the dark and the mist was one of my favourite meals. We'd accomoplished so much in the past four days and even though we were uncomfortable, cold, wet and tired, we were so content.



The point you see in the distance is the headland of Jefferson Cover that we had to hike around before the tide rose above 2 feet in the morning or risk being stuck for a day. Not that that seemed like such a bad when the beach looks like this... Problem is that pesky tide would rise again and we'd be back on our driftwood table in a couple of hours.



Headland completed! That was the final edge of it and you can see that the water is already starting to creep up.



A last picture of the gorgeous beach before we had to head inland for a half hour walk to the car.



Always glad to see my little blue car! We were very thankful that it had not been vandalised in the several days it sat waiting. Guess we didn't need to hide anything in the spare tire cubby after all.



Here is a final picture of the beautiful Washington coast.

Next summer is the West Coast Trail! My dad's even agreed to come along. How exciting!

Making an honest woman of myself

I went on a super fun hiking trip this weekend. It's a 40km hike in Prince Albert National Park near Waskesiu to Grey Owl's Cabin. It was time to do this seeing as I work at a backpacking store and have never done the most popular backpacking trip within easy driving distance of the city I live in. I feel so much more legitimate now. A friend that isn't really that into hiking totally made my day when she agreed to go with me!!! Even for me, sleeping by myself 17km down a trail is a bit much. I maybe would have hiked it alone, but not slept out there.

So with my equipment, some borrowed equipment, and our happy-go-lucky attitudes (seriously, we were so cheerful you would have been annoyed to be with us) we were off!

We were armed with our bear spray and glad to have it when we saw this sign.

The path was easy to follow and so pretty. It was excessively pleasant. This bridge was a bit sketchy though. There was extra lumber beside it as if they are planning to rebuild it but haven't had a chance yet. You can't really tell, but there are a couple planks missing and it's pretty bowed.

Taking a break!

After 20 km of walking, we finally reached the cabin!! The first word's out of my mouth were, "Wouldn't it be awesome to live here!" At that particular moment, after a long day, both of us having sore feet and backs, my hiking partner did't agree wholeheartedly that she'd like to live there. And maybe I wouldn't either, but it would be nice to have it as a vacation cottage maybe.

We had to walk 3.3 km back to our campsite where we'd already set up our tent. I wish I'd taken a picture of the bear caches. The backcountry campsites on this hike were awesome! They had platforms built to store your food and toiletries with ladders. So much easier than having to tie your food up in a tree.

This was my first time using my new tent and new sleeping bag. I was very excited about it! It was a bit of a chilly night though.

I love moss. And there was so much of it on this hike. I felt like gasping with delight when we came around a corner and saw this.

We were so glad to get those boots off. Even though I enjoyed the hike immensley, that satisfying feeling of getting those dang boots off your feet is unlike any other.