D and B

We woke up today absolutely drained from our big hike yesterday. After a bit of deliberation, we downsized our day's hike from the Po'omau Canyon Ditch Trail and instead opted for the ~4 miles of the Canyon Trail. The grey clouds in the morning kept the drive in Rod, our trusty Wrangler, a bit breezy, but the sky cleared up as we entered Waimea Canyon. As expected, a handful of the island's finest roosters were at the trail head to send us off. It's nice to have little alarm clocks walking around, going off at all times of day. The hike itself was not overly challenging, and the views were nice. The trail winds around some cliffs out over the canyon, so we got some fantastic views of the contrasting greenery and red dirt. Coming around ... read more

After a late night arrival last night, today is our first full day (and daylight hours) in Kauai. We started the day off with a helicopter ride. We chose the 60 minute Jack Harter doors-off tour. Oddly enough, Danika didn't panic too much when she saw the doors off. Perhaps because she drew the middle seat up front. While we had been hoping for the back seats, the front seats turned out to be a blessing in disguise. The entire front from 12:00 (overhead) to about 5:00 (by our feet) was glass, so we had amazing views. Meanwhile, Brad teetered on the edge (or at least he likes to claim). The flight took off from the Lihue helipad, headed west toward the Waimea Canyon, up north toward the Na Pali coast, then around past Princeville, to ... read more

Rise and shine the movers are coming...or are they? Carlos and company, wait I should change that, and partner arrived at 9 am, which was much earlier than I was expecting. They were only 1 man down, since 3 were suppose to come. They were the packers and the movers were suppose to be coming later. He was nervous about being able to get everythin packed, which of course made us feel REAL good. Then asked us if we knew what time the movers were coming. Well since the 2 crews were new to us we were clueless. In all honesty they were great. What got us worrying is that as the clocked ticked...11am not movers. 1 pm no movers. 2pm Carlos asks if we have heard anything. We call my contact who was unaware of ... read more

We've finally reached the final stop, Brad's former home and the only place where we understand nearly all speech. That's right, it's London. We pulled into Waterloo on the Eurostar and hiked across the Waterloo Bridge to meet up with Brad's friend Tim. Tim has been kind enough to shelter us for three nights, and after the dollar continued to drop against the pound, we couldn't be more appreciative. The day itself was beautiful (despite the heavy floods throughout the country), so we hiked over to Tim's place to drop off our bags. However, rather than go outside and enjoy the rare weather, we got off of our feet and finished reading a very popular, widely publicized book about wizards. That evening Tim introduced us to a great little Italian place near Farringdon station, and after ... read more

Ah, we have spent the past two days in Zermatt, and it has been amazing. Our first afternoon we took a small hike up from Zermatt to Sunnegga, around to Tuftern, then back down. The views were beautiful and it was a nice way to warm up for the big hike the following day. We had wandered around the town a little bit during the day, during which time Danika spotted a pretty good Italian place, so we headed back there for dinner. We both ordered the lasagna with meat and eggplant, which was nothing short of delicious. We washed it down with some Swiss beer, then headed back to our very adequate hotel room. Our second day we went on the big hike. We set off at 8:30 with our path picked. We would start ... read more