trip report: Wyoming – decisions & planning, June 2021

May 26, 2022.Reading time 26 minutes.

With the shots in our arms and more than a year of being mostly at home, we were ready for the hot vax summer of 2021. Our possible destinations were still limited internationally, but there are plenty I wanted to see in the United States, specifically the state of Wyoming. For something new, it was about time that I visited Yellowstone National Park, the first national park established in the United States in 1872. And for something loved, I looked forward to returning to the Wind River Range where we had a grand adventure the first time around. Of course with any good trip, there would be something unplanned and surprising as well.

This is the first entry of our Wyoming trip series covering our pre-trip planning (1). You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted.

trip report: Patagonia – Ruta 40 & driving the Carretera Austral, January 2019

October 30, 2019.Reading time 90 minutes.

My current struggle in life is the constant feel of needing to optimize my time. It’s the feeling that I need to be productive whenever possible, but I don’t think I am actually any more than before in the overall scheme of things. Maybe I started to feel this way because of the combination of how easy I can waste a day and just the never ending to do lists. Whatever the reason, it makes it very difficult to relax as anything nonproductive comes with a feel of regret in the end. This specific struggle carries over into the realm of traveling as well when it comes to unplanned and free form travel. It is hard not to feel the need to do something at every minute. But at the same time, unplanned free form travel is the cure as you don’t have anywhere to be but to relax and immerse yourself in the beauty out there. There is no place better for me to relearn that than the remote regions in Chile on the Carretera Austral.

In the spirit of free form travel, the hikes and activities we throughout the rest of our trip wasn’t really in any organizable order. This is due to a few travel restrictions and situational parameters that are explained in the post. So this part of the trip report will cover our decisions as we went, the specific route that we took, and our driving experiences on the Carretera Austral. Subsequent sections will delve into the different hikes and major activities that I will mention in this overview of our trip.

We pick up this trip report the day after our Huemul Circuit hike (see part 2 of this series). This is part 3 of my Patagonia and Carretera Austral trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below. Read More

trip report: Patagonia – getting in & Huemul Circuit return, January 2019

October 8, 2019.Reading time 59 minutes.

On my first solo extended out of the country trip, I found myself at a pub in Bruge drinking with the a bunch of new friends I didn’t know the day before. A quote that stuck with me from that night was that you travel not to experience everything, but to find all the great things about a place to return to. In the travel atmosphere that is suggestive of the bucket list and country counting attitude, I am all for the counter viewpoint of also returning to a place that once put you in a state of awe. The Huemul Circuit is currently my favorite hike in the world, so a return trip to Patagonia meant I’d head back there.

As I start to write this, I am not sure how this report will go. This is the first time I’m writing up the exact same hike on this page and it didn’t deviate much from my first trip. Secondly, my SD card crapped out during this trip leading me to lose a good portion of my data unbeknown to be until I started going through the pictures post trip. To that end, I’m approaching this write up of the Huemul Circuit as a complement to the my first report with the insight that the trail has gotten much more popular.

This is part 2 of my Patagonia and Carretera Austral trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below. Read More

trip report: Patagonia – planning & research, January 2019

September 22, 2019.Reading time 35 minutes.

Two of my favorite hikes in the world at the moment is in Patagonia, the O-Circuit of Torres Del Paine National Park in Chile and the Huemul Circuit of Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina. I would return to either places in a heartbeat, as our two previous week long trips out there during our spring breaks left us wanting for more. But these two hikes are just a small portion of the vast region of Patagonia with plenty that I’d looked forward to exploring in the future. So when I saw a USD$400 roundtrip flight from the United States to São Paulo, Brazil in business class, that future was much closer than I originally thought. Not to take away from what we had experienced in Brazil, but it was no question we’d be heading back to Patagonia.

This is part 1 of my Patagonia and Carretera Austral trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below. Read More

trip report: John Muir Trail, July 2018 – part 2, getting in & Yosemite National Park warmup

December 8, 2018.Reading time 51 minutes.

Do you remember your first backpacking trip? For me, it was with Jared, Matt, Will, and Arnold in Yosemite National Park during my last Memorial Day weekend in California before graduate school. Of course, we didn’t have permits beforehand or even thought of how busy it would be that weekend nor really knew much about what was really necessary for backpacking. Through that weekend of floods, rain, infinite hot dogs, and plenty of Gentleman Jack, we emerged as Poopanauts, which is a story that will have to wait for another time. The main point is that it is hard to recall the feeling and mindset of getting into the wilderness for the first time. It was something I had to try my best to relate to as I lead my California friends Arnold, Joey, and Miguel and new friends Becky and Doris back to Yosemite National Park. For Becky and Doris, it was their first time into the backcountry. Since these guys were willing to take the time off work to drive me up to Yosemite – where I would start my John Muir Trail (JMT) hike – and spend several days in the backcountry with me, I hoped that I was able to share my enthusiasm of the outdoors with my friends again and for the first time.

This is part 2 of my John Muir Trail (JMT) trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below as they are posted. Read More

trip report: John Muir Trail, July 2018 – part 1, decision & planning

November 28, 2018.Reading time 89 minutes.

Sometimes you submit an application for a permit with a three day start window for one of the most popular trails in the United States Park system on a whim. And sometimes you’ll just win that golden ticket on the first try. That’s the short story of how I took a long unpaid leave in the summer of 2018 and spent it walking through the Sierra Nevada Mountains.

This is part 1 of my John Muir Trail (JMT) trip report series. You can navigate to the other parts in the index below.

trip report: Singapore, June 2018

October 25, 2018.Reading time 22 minutes.

Singapore is well known in the travel blog and travel hack community, though mostly for its award winning airport. That’s how I knew Singapore having spent a couple of nights laying over there a few years back. It wasn’t a place I’d intended to visit, but work brought me there anyways. With the surprisingly popular movie Crazy Rich Asians (imdb) providing a full on commercial account of the city and the world’s longest nonstop flight between Newark and Singapore restarting (thepointsguy), I figure I’d provide my experiences there.

trip report: Wales, May 2018

October 5, 2018.Reading time 66 minutes.

The origin of our trip to Wales was open ended, so much so that we didn’t know Wales was our destination until a couple weeks out. This trip serves as an example of an unplanned road trip that’s a culmination of cheap flights across the pond, an expiring travel voucher, and no time to plan. The end result was cliffs, rocks, castles, and fish and chips.

trip report: Costa Rica, December 2017

July 1, 2018.Reading time 98 minutes.

For the last 3 years, we’ve enjoyed the southwest companion pass. On multiple occasions on this blog, I’ve mentioned that it is currently the best travel hack. The companion pass has provided us the means for direct trips to fly out to Colorado for our road trip, visiting Arcadia National Park for July 4th, visiting family for the holidays, attend the many weddings, and helping us reposition for our international trips. Recently Southwest has also announced that they will be flying to Hawaii as well. One destination I’ve had my eye on when I went for it initially 3 years ago was Southwest’s international destination of Costa Rica.

trip report: New Zealand & Maui, Dec 2016 to Jan 2017 – part 6, final impressions and budget

June 3, 2017.Reading time 8 minutes.

This is part 6, the final post about our trip around the pacific covering New Zealand and Maui adventures over the holiday break from December 2016 to January 2017. In this section, I’ll wrap up our trip by going over our expenses, our impressions, and what I’d change the next time I plan a trip like this. You can navigate to each of the other sections in this blog series in the complete index below (in my long entry fashion, the you may have to click on the link twice for the correct page anchor location since the pictures might take a bit to load).

trip report: New Zealand, December 2016 – part 1, research and planning

February 19, 2017.Reading time 35 minutes.

New Zealand is among the most well-known trekking regions in the world, emphasized by The Lord of the Rings Trilogies. Among the treks, or tramps as the kiwi’s call it, are 10 great walks. However, such notoriety draws tremendous number of visitors and subsequently makes a trip to New Zealand difficult to plan and expensive to undertake. This is especially the case during a major holiday season like the time Christmas and New Years. Housing, either paid or award airline tickets, transportation, and permits for the great walks are many of the obstacles that needs to be planned, and extremely meticulous so in order to keep costs down.

Because of the length and complication of our trip, this trip report is broken up into several entries and taking me a while to write. Learning to work with Lightroom also has made the process a little longer.

trip report: Brazil, March 2016 – Chapada Diamantina, Rio, Ilha Grande, and São Paulo

April 22, 2016.Reading time 99 minutes.

There are places you go to because it’s a place you’ve always dreamed of going. There are places you go because your friend told you about their great experience. There are places you go for the pure aesthetic. There are places you go because buzzfeed made a list. But another major reason for traveling is certainly for travel’s sake. In this case, Brazil was the place we went to because we’ve never been and I wanted to get in on a mistake business class fare. The end result of that business class saga turned out to be a lot of headache and it lead to a lot of planning by the seat of our pants.

16_3_CP_d3_09

This style of traveling is much different that our typical planned out trips. Research helps to save money and time, but it also helps me to get a sense of what I need to prepare for. This is especially true when it comes to backcountry trekking where you are balancing, literally, what you need and what you don’t. During my attempt to research about trekking in brazil proved very difficult, including trying to find any trail maps online. So it was clear this trip would be without a direct plan, however this style of travel has many of its own benefits. There is much more freedom to just go and immerse into the local culture. From that perspective, you see new things, try new things, meet new friends, and drinking a lot of caipirinhas.

16_3_Brazil_intro

travel 2 walk

Tag: travel hacking