Road Trip USA

Well, we've been slacking on the posts, we admit. The primary reason is a true lack of reliable wi-fi over the last two+ weeks...in addition to a slight blogging burnout. ANYways --

 

I think if you click the above link you can see where we've spent each night, marked by numbers. Way back when we decided that this road trip would have two themes: exploring the natural beauty of our own country, and spending time with people we love. So far, we're doing splendidly. We've had a great combination of car camping, backcountry camping, motels, and homes of friends and family. We've run the risk of packing too much into too little (both literally, i.e. Daisy is at her full capacity; and figuratively, i.e. "Louisville is only ten hours away without stopping, let's go!"), but we're having a fantastic time. We've had a good balance of highway and back roads, which has allowed us to take advantage of 75, or 80, mph speed limits, while also seeing smaller towns and communities.

Here's a summary play-by-play --

Boston, MA: found a summer sublet (here we come Harvard and Tufts!) and dined with amigos
New York, NY: more dining with amigos, plus a slumber party. And GREAT bagels.
Philadelphia, PA: lunch with cousin Julia!
Eastern Kentucky via West Virginia: WV is full of gorgeous, green, empty, rolling hills. We slept at a beautiful state park after crossing the border (fun fact: Lexington, KY has amazing bagels too).

On our way to Louisville, we drove through horse country, where many derby horses are bred, and saw some amazing properties. We spent the night with Geena (who has a gorgeous apartment with awesome balconies) and her mom (activities included watching G's slow pitch team kick ass).

Beautiful horse farm.

Mike is more interested in weather than softball apparently

A short drive the next day brought us to St. Louis, where we spent the weekend with Anna and Robert. Highlights included sitting in on Anna's seventh grade honors class and watching them read their essays, getting a personal tour of Schlafly's Brewery courtesy of Robert, some great homemade meals, and the City Musuem (a crazy weird jungle gym for adults).

City Museum. Gotta protect those knees.

I didn't have any other pictures of our hosts...Robert found red lentils!

The purdy arch

The Arch Museum...

A late night drive landed us in another pretty state park in southern Missouri. I should mention here that an amazing memory foam pad for the tent has revolutionized car camping for me. In the morning we stopped at another state park (State Parks are amazing! They are clean, beautiful, and empty) in Oklahoma where Mike promptly lost his sneakers aka left them on the roof.

I had this childhood memory of loving to pick up turtles that were crossing the road in order to "rescue" them. It's not quite as fun as I remembered...they just kinda sit there and looked pissed at you.

The next few days were spent in Oklahoma City at Mike's mom's house. Highlights here included relaxation, golfing, and an unbelievable trip with Marie Elise and Ross to the OKC Thunder vs LA Clippers playoff game 5. In our XXL t-shirts, we screamed until we couldn't hear anymore while the Thunder came back and won.

We are DIRECTLY to the left in this picture. He told us to quiet down and then sat there, unable to watch Westbrook's epic foul shots, in the background. We're working on getting him his wedding invite. 

YAY!!!!!!

Finally, we headed out the panhandle of Oklahoma into one of the most rural, and conservative, parts of the country. Mike was concerned that Oklahoma had too many trees (in the east) to be true Great Plains. The panhandle reassured us. It's really flat. And dry. We saw few people, two pronghorns, and an extremely informative roadside exhibit.

Flat. Dry. Pronghorns.

Now we know!

We also visited picture canyon in the National Grasslands, which was underwhelming, but sort of cool.

This drawing from probably a few hundred years ago would have been much cooler had there not been graffiti literally everywhere. Really too bad. Kind of ashamed of our country here.

What's next?? Mike will pick up from here. Check out the map above for a spoiler :)

Huaraz and the Cordillera Blanca

After leaving the jungle (reluctantly...did you see those monkeys?!?), we had just over five more days to fill with Peruvian adventures before heading home. We decided to head north to the Cordillera Blanca for one last backpacking trek. A winding overnight bus from Lima landed us in Huaraz, a small town at 10,000 feet surrounded by astonishing white peaks. It's known as a trekker and alpine climber's paradise, but the tourist presence was pretty minimal.

We settled on the Santa Cruz Circuit, a ~47 km loop that includes a 15,584 foot pass. Much of the hike was through huge u-shaped valleys with massive glaciated mountains above us.

Now, just as Torres had mice problems, Santa Cruz had cow problems. Throughout the entire hike, there were cows, horses, and donkeys everywhere, riddling the ground with their poop and muddy hoofprints. The cows were very curious/hungry and would come within feet of our tent!

We went 4 for 4 for rainy nights, including one night of sleet. Luckily, we were mega-prepared (minus a leaky rental tent). The first morning, however, was sunny and beautiful. We even went for a swim in the glacial stream!

We hiked across a massive landslide that may have drained a lake that appeared on our map but did not actually exist.

Hiking uphill at altitude is somewhat hilarious. We shuffled along and took lots of breaks. It's incredibly difficult to catch your breath. The top of the pass was pretty cloudy, but nonetheless satisfying.

Check out those sweet rain pants

Although there are some official camping areas, you could camp anywhere. Mike had the great idea to climb up a little waterfall to a secret lake. When we woke up, we were rewarded with this:

See our little tent??

Later that day we arrived in a small town full of farm animals like this little guy:

They don't care about us at all

We hitched a ride over the last pass on top of a truck full of corn. In the rain. Two hours later the truck broke down at the top. So we walked in the dark down the crazy switchbacks to our final campsite. Phew! 

 On our final day we saw some brilliant blue glacial lakes cowering under Peru's tallest mountain: Huascaran.

Back in Huaraz, we had one last meal, one last Pisco Sour, one last longgggggg bus ride, and our South American adventures were drawn to a close...

But as our chipper French waitress told us last night, "one ending is just another beginning."

The Amazon

After saying goodbye to Luke and Maca in Cusco, Nellie and I took an overnight bus to the small city of Puerto Maldonado in the Peruvian Amazon. We thought of the Amazon as Brazilian, but it actually starts in the lush rainforest of Peru to the east of the Andes. The city of Peurto Maldonado was buzzing with gold miners, but several national parks just outside of the city hold some of the most well-preserved rainforest in the world.

We spent three nights on Lake Sandoval, which is an oxbow lake (i.e. used to be part of a river) with bath-warm water. We were paired with a nice French couple, and had an amazing guide named Freddy who was roughly our age. He had grown up in a small village in the forest, and knew an incredible amount about the plants and animals of the region. And we had a good time playing cards with him in the evenings. Our routine was to canoe around the lake from dawn until mid-morning, then to take a short hike in the forest in the afternoon, and finally to canoe again at dusk.

Was it the classic Amazon rainforest that I had imagined and read about? Mostly yes. It felt less remote than I had imagined, and was sometimes a lighter shade of green. But the wildlife and the forest did not disappoint. We saw raucous troops of monkeys (four species), giant river otters, caimans, and even a tarantula. And I have never seen trees so large. The vines were as big as the trees in our forests. Hopefully the pictures below will do it justice!

PS - after we came out of the jungle we stayed at a lodge with four rehabilitated howler monkeys. They were really cute :)

Lago Sandoval at dawn. Oddly enough, it reminded us of Big Wolf Lake in the Adirondacks (where Nellie's family has a camp).

We saw many Huatzins, which are bizarre, rather ugly birds that are related to the dinasaurs.

We did a lot of paddling around the lake. Note the classic jungle tree towering above the rest of the canopy.

We saw a troop of squirrel monkeys early on our first morning. It was so cool to see monkeys in the wild. They were small (squirrel-sized), but there were probably twenty-five in the troop. They traversed the bushes and trees on the lakeshore furiously searching for food. We saw one stuffing its face with a gushy worm. And they were surprisingly reckless as they lept between branches kamikaze-style.

Later that afternoon we saw a troop of capuchin monkeys. They were substantially larger than the squirrels, and looked strikingly human when they ate. They would use both hands to peel a piece of fruit, take a few bites, and then throw the rest to the ground. The whole troop was really quite loud as they crashed about in the canopy. 

The trees in the forest were HUGE!

Freddy and I climbing vines around the trunk of another enormous tree.

A "Strangler Vine" killing a full-grown palm tree. Freddy said it would take about fifteen years for the vine to kill the palm. Such mean plants! Wild stuff.

The branch to the left is actually a parasite/vine, not a real branch (zoom in to see).  It was the size of a medium-sized maple, and had vines dangling all the way to the ground.

Swinging Tarzan-style.

The lake at sunset. Just like Big Wolf!

We saw Green Parrots and Blue-and-Yellow Macaws. The macaws were bright and beautiful.

A Saddleback Tamarin with its baby clinging to its back (zoom in). The monkey troops were really curious and would come directly above us. It was awesome to see them up close.

A tarantula. Gross.

A Boa Constrictor! (it was a small one)

And a Caiman. So I guess it was a bit different from Big Wolf Lake. After sunset we would paddle around and shine flashlights at the shore, and their eyes would glow red in the light. They were everywhere, and they looked really really evil. And Freddy said that he had seen them gobble up reckless squirrel monkeys that fell into the lake.

Freddy explaining a tree that had been twisted by a vine.

A baby pineapple. I had no idea that this was where they came from!

Monkey Pile at the lodge after we had left the jungle. Baby monkey, teenage monkey, and papa monkey.

A few minutes after this photo was taken the larger monkey and the dog began a prolonged play-fight. It ended with the monkey riding the dog's back, pulling its ears and tormenting it. Monkeys clearly win.

Naptime :)

Machu Picchu...or MaPi, as the locals call it

My mom had a little llama keychain on her pocket knife my whole childhood. She found it in this magical place in Peru called Machu Picchu. For as long as I can remember, I've wanted to go and see it myself.

Unfortunately, Machu Picchu has become the hot South American destination for a lot of people. It remains as utterly stunning and impressive as everyone might imagine, but for me at least, some of the charm is lost in the swarms of tourists and equally stunning price tags. 

The main take-away? The Inca Empire was pretty sweet. I was surprised at how much better MaPi became as I learned the Incan history behind its creation. Their hard work (neuroticism?) and devotion to their gods and mythical creatures seems unparalleled. I want to share all the fun facts we learned about how and why they built stuff, but I guess you can just wiki that. Or ask us later!

We took the train from Cuzco via Ollantaytambo, which is another awesome site, practically in town (people are still living in Inca-built structures). In Aguas Calientes, we soaked in the thermal baths before waking at 4:50 am in order to hike the hour up and "see the sunrise" over MaPi aka "see" Machu Picchu in the mist and rain for two hours. But we did beat the crowds!!

I will admit, however, that I got that I'm-about-to-cry feeling when I finally did see the mist pull away and reveal it all. Well done, Mr. Inca.  

Ollantaytambo. This Inca site is the only to have successfully held back the Spanish (although it was later overtaken).

Luke at 5 am before the hike. We tried to convince him that he didn't need his make-up for the MaPi pics, but he insisted.

Before the crowds got up, we got some alone time with Mr. Llama

The Sun Temple. Perhaps the most impressive architecture at the whole site. That was put together with no mortar 500 years ago, and has survived multiple earthquakes! 

Every single window or shelf space is trapezoidal, to make it stronger.

Out of the mist it comes!!!

:)