Travellin' California Road Show

We arrived back to Southern California to celebrate Mary' sister Terri's 50th with her. It was then back to earth in suburbia for awhile where the kids got into more structured schooling & Mary started packing up Grandma's worldly possessions to furnish her studio unit in the resthome down at San Clemente.I was able to catch up on some paperwork & had a quiet week or so watching the hummingbirds on the feeder in the back porch. We went surfing a couple of times forced by the lifeguards to stay away from the surfers and out with the standup paddle boarders down on the nuclear power station beach.We all spent quality time with Grandma.Just over a week ago we loaded up the van & headed north, visiting friends in north LA and going to the Simon Wiesenthal Center called the Museum of Tolerance on the way.

It was very good, but we didn't have enough time to absorb its message so will have a return visit.We went to a kids talent show featuring our friend's daughter Valentina, which was enjoyable and nice to be back among parents running a community event.Then a leisurely road trip up the PCH (Pacific Coast Highway), bought 20 avocados for $1, checked out the Santa Barbara museum where I hoped to find a Chumash Indian planked seagoing canoe, but didn't. Went to the Patagonia factory & didn't buy anything. Our highlight for the day was stocking up in a wholefoods supermarket in San Luis Obisbo which stocked no junk food.

Be great if other supermarkets had similar standards. Then up to Moro Bay where we camped in the State Park & watched a beautiful sunset. The next day we watched the world championships of skateboard dual slalom in the main street, featuring ramps & jumps & lots of crashes. Then up the road to a sea elephant colony where a volunteer ranger taught us all about this species which has successfully recovered from near extinction. The males are huge & get up to 5000 lbs but the ranger said the southern sea elephant was even bigger.Then we drove along the spectacular rugged coast and moseyed into the Big Sur Jade Festival at Gorda where we went around stalls run by house truck sort of people, listened to a band and had something to eat. I asked a guy at the PTA cake stall if there was somewhere to camp & after chatting for awhile he invited us to camp in his yard. So we had a very enjoyable evening & the next morning with Paul & Lisa, their boys John Cruz & Corey and their sister-in-law & her boys. Its a big step for someone to open their home to 5 scruffy unkept strangers & we really enjoyed a chance to socialize with another family.Often the highlight for me on a trip overseas is being invited into someone's home and learning about their life and this was one such highlight.

Back in the van & on up the road thru stunning coastal scenery, stopping at Monterey, where we watched a colony of sea otters, also recovering from the brink of extinction, outside the famed aquarium. Fantastic to watch these remarkable creatures living in the kelp beds, floating on their backs smashing open shellfish on flat rocks they place on their bellies. The next day we headed inland across the San Jaoquin valley where the kids (and their parents) learned about the range of foods grown in this vast central valley. We stopped at a Mexican taco truck which catered for the agricultural workers & had very delicious "comida de Mexico".

That afternoon we rolled into Yosemite. We all piled into the front seat of the van to oogle at the magnificent Yosemite Valley scenery & were just parking the car when we got stopped by the cops as Lotte was on my knee and had no seatbelt. Mary sweet talked them & we were let off with a warning. We had come to Yosemite to hike to the top of Half Dome & were very disapointed to learn that the handcables up the steep rock were being dismantled the next day & that hike was closed for this season.

So we spent some time talking to the rangers to work out an alternative hike & settled on a hike out to North Dome for the following day.

We headed up the Tioga road to Porcupine Creek & headed out. Our rough plan was to all go to North Dome, Mary & the kids would walk out to Yosemite Valley & I would walk back out the way we came and shuttle the van around to pick up Mary & the kids. But about halfway out to North Dome we met Bob & Linda, a retired lawyer & his wife from Monterey who were going the other way to us, chatted for awhile and they agreed to pick up our van & do our shuttle.

So Mary handed our van keys over to total strangers which meant I could also do the whole hike.

The view from the big granite dome was stunning across to Half Dome & about 4,000 feet above the valley floor. We had a very scenic lunch and then headed out along the trail towards Yosemite falls. Much of the walk was thru big red barked cedar trees with some epic cliff views and we saw no other hikers after lunch.

We completely underestimated the distance and darkness fell as we were partway down the very steep track that descended 3,000 into the valley. The kids were great and we all needed walking sticks to probe our way down the narrow track in the darkness. The part moon helped but when the trail went thru trees it was pitch black. We did this for about three quarters of an hour, when Mary took a flash photo of me & the kids & then Max suggested we use the camera screen as a torch. Doh! So we were saved & about 30 minutes later emerged on the valley floor to find our van waiting at the trailhead. 13 miles hiked in 9 hours.

A big sleepin the next morning for everyone as we all had sore legs. Then a visit to the ranger station for junior ranger badges and seeing a coyote trying to cross a busy road was our wildlife highlight. We had lunch watching the climbing parties scaling the 4,000 foot high El Capitan wall the ascent of which takes 3 to 5 days. Very spectacular & the valley was full of rock climbers. We drove up and over the Tioga road past stunning scenery & went for a short hike up on Tioga pass in snow which had fallen the previous week. The snow gave us a taste of what the Sierras would be like in winter.

We drove down the eastern side of the mountains & even outside the national park the scenery was beautiful.

We were on a bit of a roll & put the bed down in the back of the van for the kids & Mary drove us all the way home to Grandmas via the Owens Valley in one hit arriving at the condo at 3 in the morning.

Today Max turned 14 & we had curry from the local Indian grocery store with Mary's family to celebrate. Max, Otie & their cousin Ross are at Knotts Scary Farm tonight where the amusement park is Halloonweenized for a month or so.

The legendary Nile

Flowing from Lake Victoria in the middle of Africa, the Nile is the longest river on the planet and has long fascinated explorers and travelers alike. Today kayakers travel to this whitewater mecca in Uganda to enjoy big warm water rapids and choice surfing waves situated right on the equator in an endless summer. Max & I jetted in to savour this big water nirvana and in particular to run the first 5 rapids which will be destroyed on the completion of the Bujagali Falls dam early next year, so for us it was now or never to kayak those spectacular rapids and to savour the diverse & prolific wildlife on & around them.

Our adventure began with our journey from Entebbe airport to the river via the chaotic streets of Kampala and busy rural villages teeming with people, which was such a contrast to the staid ordered cityscapes & landscapes of the US & NZ where the automobile is king.We arrived to a warm welcome from our friends Cam & Kate McLeay, their kids Arch, Bella & Zander at their tented rainforest camp situated on a spectacular overlook of Kalagala falls on the Nile. The Mcleays own & operate Adrift a tourism business based in Uganda which offers a range of activities including rafting, bungy & jetboating and they have recently opened Wildwaters lodge, a spectacular luxury tourist eco-resort built by Cam & his brother Chest with a team of 120 workers on a pristine rain forest island in the river accessible only by canoe.

The establishment of the lodge has enabled this island and adjoining islands to be protected as there is great pressure for farmland to feed a growing population leading to deforestation and degradation of much of the surrounding riverbank land. The head chef at the lodge is Wamboga was Cam & Kate's cook in Kampala when we visited them nearly 2 years ago.

Max & I had dinner at the lodge one evening & spent the night in a gorgeous little bungalow at the lodge overlooking Hypoxia rapid & were woken up at dawn by the screeching of hundreds of hadeda storks roosting in a nearby tree.

Over the next 6 days Max & I kayaked around Kalagala discovering surfing waves and rapids, initially with Roberto, an Adrift safety kayaker & raft guide who introduced us to local cuisine and we also did some runs with Cam & his 12 year old son Arch.

Our base was halfway down the whitewater section and we were able to do a circuit by walking upriver around the rapids & paddling up to Bobuga falls, surf at superhole & Mumba waves, then paddle down & portage part of Intunda rapid & then kayak back to camp. The water was warm and there were no other kayakers on the river.

We loved the lower river section downstream of Kalagala thru the big waves in the grade 3 rapids named Vengence, Hair of the Dog & Kulu shaker.

We got our first taste of big surfing on the second wave in a wave train on Hair of the Dog, which was hard to get on but once there gave a big bouncy surf with the surging white foam crashing down over our heads. A magic place with a nearby fish eagle nest and the male fish eagle perching on a nearby branch with a grandstand view every day we surfed there. On the first day there Max did a big bounce & smacked his paddle into his face so the wave was named Fatlip.

The last rapid on the lower section was a big wave train featuring the internationally known wave, the Nile Special, which wasn't so special for us as the river was low. But 3 waves down that rapid was Club which although it surged alot gave us the best rides on the river, and we spent lots of time there. Life at Kalagala was simple, with no electricity or running water. Cam & Kate have a solar panel to charge their phones & computers and there is good cell phone coverage.

We either ate at the camp with local produce or popped into the nearby village of Kangulumira to buy rolex, chapatis made with egg & a firm McLeay family favourite.

Bathing was with hot water heated by staff over a fire and tipped into a cloth bag with a shower nozzle and hoisted up on a rope in a shower tent.

With tent life you get to hear all outside noise and accordingly each night we went to bed to a noisy cocophany of frogs and insects with a very loud cricket sounding like tinkling bells and every morning we woke to a loud morning chorus of bird calls and with more than 1000 bird species in Uganda there was a full spectrum of sounds.

One morning we were treated a pair of black & white casqued hornbills checking out a nestsite in a tree hollow.

Once the nest is selected the female climbs inside, the entrance is sealed up by the male and she then lays & incubates the eggs.

The female only emerges when the chicks are ready to be fed.

The river is not in a gorge and the rapids are at the end of big pools where the river flows down different channels over pink granite rocks between islands cloaked in lush rain forest.

The river environment teems with bird, insect, reptile & fish life. It seems more like an estuary with cormorants, herons & shags everywhere.

There are no seagulls, however the cry of the majestic fish eagle sounds just like a NZ black backed gull.

The locals fish from canoes in the pools with nets & lines, and seem to extract out of the river alot of little fish for drying, also Nile perch & tilapia which forms a significant part of the local diet.

I don't know if the ecology of the river has been properly studied as I imagine there would be a big range of life beneath the water surface. Every couple of days we saw otters, monitor lizards & snakes swimming in the river. One day we saw a group of ring tailed mongoose.

We took Arch out for a few sessions & he was quick & fearless learner because he has a prominent adventure gene, and it was amazing to see him rolling in solid grade 3 rapids even though he had only been receiving kayaking instruction from Paul, one of the local Ugandan Adrift kayakers for 3 weeks.

Part way through that first week Max, myself & Arch stayed the night at the Adrift rafting base in Jinja & were woken up at dawn with a troop of red tailed monkeys running across the roof of our dorm. While Arch went on a raft, Roberto guided Max & I on this top section of the river. The rapids we did in the morning all had straight forward lines but had big crashing waves. The biggest were Bujagali Falls which we ran down the right & Big Brother which runs thru the dam site with most of the river concentrated into one channel.

I reckon the river volume is about 1200 cumecs.

We were both apprehensive above Big Brother but the sight of a fish eagle (looks like a bald eagle) circling us as we approached the rapid soothed my nerves as we blasted down a huge 150 meter long green chute into a confused boiling exploding wave train.

Roberto instructed us on doing a spin manuevour halfway down the tongue so we would be moving left in the maelstrom. I took some very deep breaths heading down the chute just in case I had some down time. I had an amazing view of Roberto & Max in front of me and although I made it thru upright it was a relief to pop out at the end of the rapid safely & to see that Max was also thru fine. We were totally spoilt with a great lunch and with an enjoyable afternoons paddle down the afternoon section of rapids & surfing waves.

The raft trip has a spectacular finale with the rafts negotiating a big hole called "the bad place' at the end of Intunda rapid in which there is a 50/50 chance of capsizing and many swimming rafters get recirculated in the powerfull hole. The line down the rapid is called 50/50. Us kayakers can easily skirt round the bad place but the wider rafts cannot.

Archies raft of course flipped which he loved & was eager to go back for more. Our great day on the river finished with kebabs, chapatis & Nile Special beers.

The link to the Adrift website is http://adrift.ug/ and I suggest you look at the wildlife section in the gallery for images from the river and also click on Wildwaters Lodge to view this beautiful resort created by a couple of farm boys from Rotorua.

Haj to Moab - Mountainbiking Mecca

Our first stop on our fat tire pilgrimage was Fruita which a couple of friends had expressed the view was better than Moab. We picked up trail maps from the local bike shop & headed to Horse Thief canyon doing an easy loop down by the Colorado river with the kids in the late afternoon, which was pleasant and we saw prairie dogs for the first time.We stayed in a local motel without a kitchenette & cooked curry in the van in the carpark. A group of roadworkers were staying at the motel and they were barbequing on the back of a truck. So there were some excellent odours wafting about. The next day we did a long overdue visit to a laundromat & the kids did school work there while our soiled garments were cleansed. Then it was off to 18 Mile road, about half an hours drive out to the distant hills. It was very windy & we didn't intend staying long but a local put us onto sheltered tracks up the hill & back down a dry creek bed which were very good and we did a couple of runs on them. The topography was not steep but the tracks were well laid out and were smooth and flowy. We started using the van as a shuttle having turn about driving. Max had driving lessons in the van to enable him to have a turn as shuttle bunny. Max & Otie headed off, with a map, on their own on a much longer trail about 6 kms long called zippidy do da, when the wind dropped, while Lotte & Mary did the shorter easier trail. At the bottom I was getting worried about the boys because big black clouds were rolling in fast & I didn't know anything about their trail. Mary arrived & dropped me back at the top & I headed off in pursuit of the boys who were about 45 minutes ahead. What a great trail, flowing thru the juniper trees, running along a knife edge ridge with very steep run offs in compacted smooth sand. About three quarters of the way around, the rain & wind hit me in sharp needles and about 2 minutes later the track turned to sticky clay which stopped my wheels from turning and gave me high heels as I started carrying my bike whose weight had doubled with wet clay stuck to it. The conditions were unpleasant & it took me about half an hour to make my way to the end of the track. I was relieved to see the boys back at the van who had arrived just as the rain started. But 18 Mile road is well worth a visit bike fans! Back on the road & out of Colorado & into Utah. We took a back road south & there were lots of little frogs on the road after the rain. We camped down by the Colorado putting up the tent in a lightning & rain storm and had dinner in cramped damp conditions in the van.

We woke up to a beautiful day surrounded by red canyon walls and a peacock outside our tent. Then it was down the road beside the river flowing red from the rain past great scenery & into Moab. After a stop at a book shop we got directions from the visitors center & headed up to the Slickrock trail head & set up our camp. Then straight into it, with Mary & the boys heading out on the 16 km slickrock trail with Lotte & I tackling the 3 km practice loop. This place is something else. The Slickrock is petrified sand dunes, with the dunes 1000's of feet deep laid down hundreds of millions of years ago, then being overlain with millions of years of sediments which compacted the dunes & leached in minerals turning it to rock or Navajo sandstone. The overlying layers were eroded away during the last 10 million years as the Colorado plateau uplifted. So today the trail goes over this layer of smooth rock which is elevated about 200 meters above the Moab valley & part of it is on the canyon river overlooking the Colorado.

The Arches national park is on the other side of the river. The rock has a slightly gritty surface texture giving perfect tyre grip on steep up & down hills.

The trail is marked with a dotted line and there are no flat sections so at all times you are either climbing or descending. It is hot and dry out there and Mary & the boys were out for 3 1/2 hours coming back hot & tired.

Max grabbed an open can of Doctor Pepper, took a swig with a wasp in it which stung him in his mouth. Ouch, but no ill effects though. We headed over to Arches and watched the sun set over spectacular red rock formations. It was a full moon & we went for a moonlit ride on the first part of the Slickrock trail until Lotte crashed when it was time for bed.

The next day we were joined by our buddy Yeller Belly & his daughter Haley who were on our Salmon trip & who drove down from Jackson Hole for a weekend of biking & socializing. YB & I headed out on the Slickrock trail and it was the best biking I've ever had. At last biking as good as we have in Alexandra. Rolling hills of rock with magnificent views, challenging climbs & fun smooth twisting steep descents.

I broke my chain but that was quickly fixed & we got back to camp after a 2 1/2 hours ride.

Mary had gone out with the kids on the practise loop & they had gone off trail exploring out on their own. That afternoon we went back out to Arches hiking out thru the Fiery Furnace area to landscape arch & then we hiked out to delicate arch, the Utah state symbol to watch the sunset.

Then back to Moab for a buffalo burger at Milts diner, an old fashioned establishment in the back streets on the way back to our camp who caters for bikers.

Our plan for the following day was to do the big local ride Porcupine Rim, so YB & I headed off early and left his truck at the bottom of the trail. Back to camp where 7 of us & our bikes clambered into the VW & we headed up a gravel road to the start of the trail way back in the mountains. We set off but Max got a gash in his tyre requiring us to return to the van & fix it with duct tape.

Another biker was there & gave us directions to drive up the road another 8 kms to pick up the single track which avoided the uphill which we were about to ride. So all the bikes & bikers clambered back in the van & up into the middle of nowhere down a muddy dirt track with big puddles splashing red mud over the van which bottomed out in one wet hole.

We picked up the UPS & LPS trail which were part of the "whole enchilada" track and part of the Kokapeli track which came all the way from Fruita.

These are famous trails attracting riders from all over the States and oversees. We headed off on a twisty narrow single track right on the edge of a long vertical cliff about 1000 ft high looking out over Castle valley which looked like a western movie backdrop.

Biking close to that cliff edge bought back feelings I used to get in my hang gliding days. We probably biked for 6 kms along that precipice. The kids all did great and we had a delay with a puncture on Oties bike when we had spread out & Mary only had a repair kit with her & no spare tube.

The next part of the trail for about 8 kms was on a disused very rough 4 wheel drive track down which the bike single track was well worn in snaking down thru the rocky terrain.

There were heaps of riders on the trail and it was a great atmosphere but lots of punctures being repaired. The last 6 kms were on single track along a canyon wall with a long drop off in places and out to the Colorado river. Again it was very spectacular. Lotte was a trooper and used her last ounces of energy & patience just as we got to the end of the 5 hour journey. Our only mishap was Haley falling into a prickle bush.

At the end of the trail parked next to YB's truck was an identical VW van to ours, the same year, colour and upholstery which had been restored and was clean and tidy.

I could sense Mary coveting such a renovation job for ours and I sniffed that the sparkly van probably sat in a garage and wouldn't have had anywhere the family adventures that our VW had in its life. Back to camp & the recovery of our tatty but much loved van took until well after dark. The kids all slept outside on the smooth rocks under a full moon.

We did a short ride on the practice loop the next morning and then our buddies headed back to Wyoming.

We headed south, stopping at Newspaper rock to see great native Indian pictographs, had a quick visit into the Needles district of the Canyonlands national park before camping up in a remote side road late at night.

The next morning we went into Natural Bridges National Monument where Max & I did a rebel climb and walked across a natural bridge called Sipapu (remember the passage to the underworld at Mesa Verde), being a prohibited activity. Lotte came also but there was a steep rock climbing section with handholds which were too far spaced for her.

We then drove all day across Utah, stopping for pizza at Mexican Hat, thru Monument Valley and crossing the Glen canyon dam on the Colorado camping near Kayama.

The next day all 5 of us squeezed into the front of the van and drove thru the spectacular road from the east entrance into Zion National Park but didn't stay there long and were unable to do the stunning looking Angels landing hike in Zion canyon. Maybe next time.

We then did a long drive thru Nevada, managing to drive past Los Vegas without breaking down, into California and all the way to Orange County arriving at Grandma's house at 1 in the morning.

Colorado treasures

We drove thru the evening to Mesa Verde national Park tucked in the south-west corner of Colorado where we camped. In the morning we had a herd of mule deer around the campsite & saw another coyote strolling down the road. At park HQ we discovered that cyclists were alowed, for the first time & on that day only, to cycle the 9 mile trail on Wetheril mesa which links a number of archeological sites. So thats where we headed joining other cyclists taking advantage of this opportunity.

The park has UNESCO world heritage status & contains a number of cliff dwellings built & occupied by the ancient Puebloan people until approximately 1000 years ago. There are also excavated sites of houses occupied before the cliff dwellings were built, which illustrate the evolution of these people from hunter gatherers to settled farmers. Only 2 of the cliff sites have unrestricted access for the public to view the remains of these small villages comprising modest stone walled rooms constructed in every avaliable space nestled under large cliff overhangs, the access to which is by steep paths & ladders. Rangers at the sites were a wealth of information on the structures & the way of life for the inhabitants.

We had a long look around the Long House site & it surprised me how much of it we were able to walk over. Then we cycled to a couple of other sites under a hot sun. Then we drove over to Chaplin Mesa where an excellent museum was located and where lotte & Otie had to search out heaps of information from the exhibits as part of the junior ranger program in the quest for

another coveted badge. Thousands of artifacts have been recovered from this area because when the the villages were abandoned the inhabitants could only take what they could carry & many things were left behind to be discovered a millenium later. There has been much study on the causes of the decline of this society but the accepted view is that a prolonged drought and depletion of resources (soil, wood & wildlife) caused the collapse of this small spectacular society of approximately 5000 people. We were unable to go onto the Palace house site, the biggest one with more than 200 rooms because a visit there needed a reservation and tickets which did not fit in with our spontaneous way of life. But we had an enjoyable look around the Spruce Tree house, the best preserved site, including a renovated kiva, a round below ground communal worshippy area with a sipapu, a passageway to the underworld, which luckily we couldn't fit into. We had the site and a couple of rangers almost to ourselves & they showed us how to grind corn, pointed out some ancient handprints on the wall, painting remnants on the wall plaster & the imprint of a corn cob (about 3 inches long but with big kernels) in the mud floor.

It was almost sunset and we only just had enough time to drive to an overlook & watch the sun setting over Palace house. It was a memorable visit because this park was so different to the other parks we visited with its ancient human treasures rather than natural ones.

We toodled off up the road with a view to running the Gunnison river below the Black canyon the next day. On the way there we we stopped at a wee family diner at Stoner & had a very enjoyable time in the company of 4 mature Harley Davidson bikers called Tree, Tank, Junior & one other whose name escapes me. We ended up in a camp ground in the middle of nowhere with our biker mates who had a cabin nearby. The next morning we cancelled our river trip because we would have needed to hire a 4 wheel drive vehicle to get to the put in & it was all too hard & expensive. But the local kayak shop contact gave us the complicated set of directions to the mythical M wave rapid, in the area where we decided to head. Our journey took us back thru part of the San Juan mountains where the autumn colours were glowing brilliantly.

We stopped in Telluride, another very pretty Colorado resort town for lunch at an authentic Mexican taco stand frequented by local builders, saw some grafitti, found a great book shop with awesome coffee & an excellent kayak store where we picked up some end of season discounted gear. Its amazing how much stuff you need when there are 5 kayakers in the family.

Back on the road to the town of Montrose and the M wave search in a lightning storm. A further call to the kayak store for clarification of the directions and we finally got to the wave on an irrigation canal in the back of beyond. But what a wave, very high speed with a 2 meter V crest & Max & I surfed hard until the sun went down. Its the best wave in Colorado at this time of the year but its an accidental kayak surfing wave under a bridge on a corner of the irrigation race built about 100 years ago taking water from the Gunnison river thru a 8 km tunnel bored thru solid rock just upstream of the Black Canyon. I've written the the directions down for anyone heading that way. Its a covert operation because the race owners & adjoining rancher do not encourage its use & will not tolerate any problems. The kayak shop guy warned me that I didn't get the directions from him. Be great if the Hawea waves pump like this baby.

We headed north towards Fruita and decided to camp at the Colorado National Monument. It was a long drive into the park under a bright moon up onto the mesa top & around the edge of 2 very big canyons. The next day we did some walking, junior ranger stuff at the visitors center and retraced our path with me & the kids biking down a long windy senic road thru red rock canyons out and down to the Colorado valley floor where we headed off to Fruita to concentrate on some quality mountain biking.