This article is the second in a 3-part series. Read about Day 1 here. Starting at the end: I finished day two of our three-day motorbike tour with knees aching, face coated with gritty grime, and butt sore, chafed, and bruised in twin lines tracing the outline of my underwear (!). It took almost 10 hours…
This article is the first in a 3-part series. Read about Day 2 here. What a day! After day one of our much anticipated 3-day motorbike tour from Donh Hoi to Hue, Chris was hinting at buying a bike once we get home. I’m pretty sure he’s kidding. He’d better be - one of us has to be…
Two weeks before our trip to Cambodia and Vietnam I realized I hadn’t learned any Khmer. Yikes! I’d focused solely on Vietnamese, partly because we’d spend four of our five weeks in Vietnam and partly because Duolingo (which I was using for Vietnamese) didn’t have a program for Khmer. In retrospect, I should have searched…
No gain in keeping, no loss in weeding out. So said Pol Pot, speaking of his own people. Pol Pot, leader of the Khmer Rouge and the man responsible for one of the worst genocides of the 20th century. Pol Pot, a name I’d heard, yes, but knew embarrassingly little about. A precious gift of…
My first trip to Southeast Asia has been eye-opening and I even haven’t left home yet! Previous international travel required little in the way of health precautions, but Cambodia and Vietnam are a whole ’nother kettle of fish. Over the past month we’ve had gotchas, close calls, and myths busted. This article offers advice gleaned…
Overview In October 2016, I was lucky enough to spend almost three weeks camping and hiking with my best friend Karen. We met in Reno (having flown from Alaska and Oregon, respectively) and then worked our way from Yosemite down to Mt. Whitney before cutting east to finish up in Death Valley. We packed so…
After two full weeks of hiking the rugged Eastern Sierras, four days in Death Valley felt like a vacation from our vacation. Death Valley is humongous (3.4 million acres!) and we lazily explored the park, driving through its vast stretches accompanied by the Eagles and Jackson Browne. Though nature’s palette is muted here, it’s not limited…
Fair warning: Two of the quotes in this article are…creatively applied. They’re close, mind you, but a little off from their original intent. They came to me on the climb, though, so maybe I can blame it on the altitude? Backing up, a friend and I climbed Mt. Whitney in mid-October and it could not…
When I set out on a 3-week road trip of the Eastern Sierras, I did not expect to climb Mt. Whitney. It never entered my mind, but my hiking partner was most definitely thinking about it. She very cleverly (some might say diabolically) kept mum and quietly planned a series of hikes to gradually acclimate to…
In a span of three days I hiked amongst ancient Bristlecone Pines, toured Manzanar (a former Japanese internment camp), and explored the Alabama Hills. Visiting one right after the other naturally led to comparisons, and I was struck by their common thread: Beauty - and even triumph - in the face of extreme adversity. Great…