Japan Countdown

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http://worldgallivant.com

There are only 6 days until we get on an airplane to head over the pacific ocean to Tokyo, Japan for our 49 day trip to all of the major islands: Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido, plus some minor ones. It feels like yesterday that I got mother to agree to travel to Japan with me, that we drove to Barnes and Noble to pick out a good travel book, and that we purchased an overall map of Japan to start learning the locations and geography. I grew up with manga and anime, like many children in the United States, but as I became older I started falling in love with their traditions, history, and contradictions.

I have compiled a lot of research on the different attractions, combining our interest in the Japanese experience and trying to cut costs. We finally came to the conclusion that we would try camping as much as possible and pay to use onsen/ofuro (indoor bath) or rotenburo (outdoor bath) whenever necessary/we really want to be clean. While in the Grand Canyon we tested out our Sierra Madre 3 person tent with 2 vestibules. The tent was fabulous, it didn't weigh too much, was easy to set up, and had plenty of room for us and our possessions. We did have to clear a path and make sure that we found semi-level location, so we opted into performing research on hammocks, but with hammocks you have to have a shelter in case it rains (we are traveling to Japan during their rainy season).

Sierra Madre Nube and Hambunks

After hours, days, and many google searches later Val found a very interesting hammock set. After watching every video and finally deciding to splurge and purchase this amazing package, we finally received the set over the weekend (5.3.14). Val finally had a chance to set it up yesterday, although rather gusty in Eastern Idaho, and came to the conclusion that after some finagling that it would be perfect for all our trips. We really liked that it had a mosquito net, two could sleep under the same shelter, you could roll everything away to cook under the shelter, you can also convert it into a small tent by using hiking poles to prop up the two points, and it all packed down really small. Val and I are extremely pleased to be taking this on the road with us and can not wait to hang it from some beautiful Japanese trees.

We have also received our:

• Japan Rail passes 
• Studio Ghibli Museum tickets
• Reservation for our first ryokan (traditional hotel)
• Printed our Welcome Cards: discount coupons for different locations that are available to foreign visitors to reduce costs
• Written some common words we will want in Kanji, English, and pronunciation
• Copies of all vital documents
• Received two months worth of medication: you can actually receive a vacation waver from your insurance that allows them to pay for more than one months worth of medication if you are going to be gone
• Medicine documentation for entry: for some medications you actually need to supply documentation to the Japanese government for approval before entering the country. We also found that in the case of bringing medications abroad it makes it easier during customs to have:
• On your doctors letterhead, type of medications, generics/other substitutes, what you are taking the medications for, how long your have been seeing the doctor, and contact information
• Duplicates of the prescription(s)

Victoria, BC

This site is no longer going to be updated. I have upgraded my site and the new location is:

http://worldgallivant.com


Oh, Canada, Oh Canada!!!

British Columbia's capitol
Victoria's government building

Testing out our passports. For my 18th birthday we traveled to this amazing city.

Best place that we have traveled to out of the country thus far. We have recently been to Vancouver and we both thought it was the ugly step child compared to this amazing city right across the strait.

Must do and see places:

• Noodle Box: amazing food! They had a great close knit atmosphere where there are only a couple of tables, local art on the walls, and wonderful service. We ate at the Douglas location. 
• Tour of the capitol building: We liking getting some basic history and knowledge about our northern neighbor and also getting to see some architecture. Plus it's free.
• Butchard Gardens: If you can make it during an evening that has fireworks I would absolutely recommend this place, even if you can't get the fireworks. Everyone was very friendly. It's handicap accessible. You can even stay into the evening and view the gardens lite up by lanterns.
• Tree top excursion: At wild play that is north of Victoria, by Nanaimo, you can bungee jump, zip line, do a tree top excursion and more. We did the tree top excursion and the zip line. Out of everything we did in Canada during our three day tip, this was the highlight. If you have a mode of transportation and low a thrill, this is your place. 

As far as places to stay the night, we spent the night in the back of my vehicle at Sooke River Campground. This campground was a little out of the way, but as we weren't planning on spending all of our time in Victoria we took my vehicle to drive to the different attractions, since I live in the Greater Seattle area. We really liked the campground. It was clean, even the bathrooms, quiet after 9, and very peaceful. There were a lot of other tourists there from all around along with some locals that wanted to get out into some forests, even if they are near a town. Located near the campground was a gas station and a small convenience store. 

Grand Canyon - Havasupai Indian Reservation

This site is no longer going to be updated. I have upgraded my site and the new location is:

http://worldgallivant.com

The west canyon rim lighting up at 7 am in March

Many things really surprised me during this hike.

1. How natural it felt having my backpack on the second day.
2. How quickly my body recovered after a really long hike.
3. How amazingly beautiful it was, some I didn't realize until sitting on my couch back home and glancing through the photos. 

I guess I should begin at, well, the beginning. One thing I would really  recommend no matter what: they do NOT have running water at the rim. We could of sworn that we read on the website that they had running water, but they don't. Sadly we had to mooch some off of the fellow hikers and they were very kind, they wouldn't even take the money we offered in exchange. They do have a pretty good sized parking lot at the very top, with a permanent port-a-potty that may or may not have toilet paper and sanitizer. The parking lot also has a couple fenced off sections were they keep the mules during the day, while we were there a couple of groups used that section to camp in. We decided to sleep in the back of our rented vehicle.

http://www.nps.gov/grca/planyourvisit/havasupai.htm

The hike took a lot longer then we anticipated, not arriving into the camp ground until 4 o'clock or so. We would highly recommend bringing water and make sure that you have some kind of map so that you could pace yourself, or at least know how much further. About half way down, we started running into people hiking back out, 9 out of 10 times we asked people how much further or what we should anticipate they all responded "almost there". This being our first real hike, we didn't fully comprehend what their definition of "almost there" was, in this case it meant hours not minutes.

We also found out that taking a helicopter out of the park was cheaper then riding the mules. You just have to show up on a day that they are flying, put your name on a sheet before two and you have a flight out of there. During March riding a mule cost about 93$ per person, plus another mule to carry your packs, where as taking the helicopter was 85$ per person and that included our packs. We decided to take the helicopter flight and boy were we excited to leave. Not saying that we didn't like the Grand Canyon, it was beautiful.

By not under understanding that there was no running water on the rim, we had become dehydrated during the hike and we had a serious lack of confidence in our ability to hike back out of the Canyon. Looking back on the whole experience from the comfort of my couch, I would hike it again but take less food and more water. I would also like to say I would want to hike back out, but again that's coming from me while in the comfort of my home. Also I would recommend taking some compost-able toilet paper as the bathrooms don't always have toilet paper and also some sanitizer as they don't always have that either.