Maui

Sat September 15- The alarm went off at 4am.. Ughhhh.. By 6am we were on our way to Maui (one of the Hawaiian islands) via Seattle and Sacramento. The Alaskan Airlines flights were uneventful and by 9pm we finally landed in Kahului, Maui, Hawaii! We got our rental car and about one hour later we arrived at the Aston Kaanapali Shores in West Maui. We checked into our 'garden/parking-lot-view' room and were about to go check-out the place, when we received a sad message; LB's grandfather Bill Chamberlain had passed away in the morning.. Grandpa Bill had Alzheimer's and he had not been doing well for the last weeks. Even though everybody knew this was coming, it was still a very sad moment. Grandpa was an avid athlete, sports fan, and physical education teacher, a radio operator in the navy during WWII, a loving wife to Grandma Jean for 67 years, and a fun and energetic grandfather who lived right around the corner in Bedford, MA- we will miss him.

Sunset

Sun September 16- Most of our morning was spent on phone calls to Laura Beth's family. We could have taken a plane to Boston, but the whole family, including LB's grandmother, insisted that we should enjoy Hawaii. So we ventured out into the beautiful sunny weather and had brunch at the hotel-restaurant next to the pool and beach. Great location, great views, great weather, but the dry pancakes with canned strawberries were a little disappointing. After breakfast we walked across the street to the supermarket and stocked up on food and drinks. The Kaanapli Shores is a condo-style resort, which means that all rooms have a full kitchen. The afternoon was spent on the beach (in the shade) and in the ocean where we had to be careful not to cut our feet on the coral. Before we had dinner, we talked to PJ at the 'Expedia pleasant activities desk' and we booked a surfing-class for the next day. PJ also bribed us with a promise of $100 in cash if we attend a "no obligations timeshare presentation" with Club Wyndham (later more). After dinner we first tried to go for a local beach-walk, but the path ended at the hotel next door. So we decided to drive to the town of Lahaina and went for a walk there. Very nice touristy town where LB got an aloha-dress.

Jump!

Mon September 17- "Stay low and go - stand tall and fall!" according to the poetry of our surfing-instructor :-) The surfing was great and a ton of fun! LB had never surfed before and was pretty good at it! Maurits was too tall.. By noon we got our certificate and a very cool Maui Wave Rider trucker hat! We decided to buy the expensive pictures (on a cd and on our memory card), but we still have not been able to view them (iPad is not the ideal computer..). Maybe at some point we will be able to post the pics on the blog. In the late afternoon we strolled the Kaanapali Beach Walk, a beautiful stretch of beach with fancy hotels. Back at our resort we saw an excellent sunset from the pool with a cold beer in our hands. Since our plan was to see the sunrise as well, we had dinner and went to bed early.

Doing the surf-thing with our cool hats

Tue September 18- At 315am we were in the car en route to Haleakala National Park. Haleakala is a massive dormant volcano that rises to 10,000 feet (3,000 meters) and basically makes up most of Maui. The drive to the summit took around 2 hours and it was funny and surprising to see so many people show up for sunrise. We drove the last 10 miles of hairpins in a long line of cars and by the time we got to the top, the parking-lot was almost full! A lot of people had brought hotel blankets to stay warm (on the summit it was about 40F/5C), but with our hats, gloves and down-jackets we were pretty comfortable. The sunrise (6:04am), or actually the 30 minutes before sunrise, was amazing! Well worth getting up for! Truly spectacular! As fast as the parking lot filled, by 6:45am it was empty again! But we of course had to go for a hike.. After a brief talk to the ranger we decided to hike from the Haleakala Visitor Center, via the Sliding Sands Trail, to the Halemau'u trail, back to the road (the Halemau'u trail head), about 12 miles. We got in the car, drove 7 miles down the mountain, parked the car at Halemau'a and hitch-hiked back to the visitor center at the summit. It was fun to ride in the back of a pickup truck around the hairpin turns! The trail took us 3,000 feet down into the crater of the volcano. We enjoyed the grand views, saw a lot of very cool "silversword" plants (takes around 50 years to bloom- and once it blooms it dies) and tons of rocks in all shapes and colors. About halfway through our hike the clouds came in rapidly and it even started to drizzle. We lost the views, but this made our 2,000 feet climb out of the crater a lot easier. We got back to the car around 2pm and drove via the town of Paia back to the hotel. We saw the sun set again from the pool and hot-tub with a well deserved cold beer.

LB in the Haleakala sunrise

Wed September 19- Lazy day today. We slept in, went to the beach (little cloudy, but very comfortable) and Maurits got a Hawaiian style shirt in Lahaina. Around 5pm we went to the Hyatt Hotel in Kanaapali (beautiful resort) where we met Laura Beth's distant cousin Danielle and her husband Tal. They were in Maui for Tal's brother's wedding and had invited us to come to the Luau (Hawaiian feast with food and entertainment - some would call it a touristy Hawaiian dinner party) at the Hyatt. As it turned out most of the wedding party and guests were at the Luau as well. The more the merrier! Very nice of Danielle and Tal to invite us! The Luau was a lot of fun, the food was excellent, the hula dancers were great, the host was phenomanal (cheesy, but that fit the show very well!) and it was nice to talk to all the different people at our table (Maurits now understands a little more about string theory).

Danielle and Laura Beth

Thu September 20- We were planning on going snorkeling today, but we got up too late.. we must be getting used to 'resort life..' So instead we sat by the pool, read a book and went for a swim. It rained in the late afternoon; lovely tropical rain that felt warm. After our usual routine of a beer in the pool and/or hot-tub (where we met a character from Revere, MA) we made dinner in our room. We actually made dinner in our room every night (except for the Luau) and we ate lots of poke (raw tuna), shrimp and pineapple. Especially the seafood was delicious! Like most of the nights we utilized the 'free' movie-rental and watched a movie (The Fighter, Mission Impossible 4, Takers, some others..)

On the volcanic trail

Fri September 21- We started the day with our 'free' Hawaiian picture, courtesy of the hotel. We did a short photo-shoot around the resort, pool, beach, etc. and we could either buy all the pictures for $279,- or we could take the free inkjet copy of one of the pictures. We thought that $45 for the surf-pictures was a lot... Most of the afternoon was spent at Club Wyndham where we ended up buying a timeshare. Huh! What?!?!? We did not know anything about timeshares, but the concept sounded pretty good to us. It could definitely make sense for us, especially the points-program that Club Wyndham offers. The sales-women pushed hard for the 'amazing one time deal with an additional 216,000 points only when you join right now', and was super persistent when we at first decided that we did not want to buy. As with most things that we buy we wanted to do some research- but they would not let us walk out. So we bought it, because we could cancel the sale within 7 days (one of the few things that was actually very accurate during their slightly deceiving sales pitch). If anyone is interested, the wiki-page of timeshares explains it pretty well, check the "Timeshare Industry Sales Practices." Of course we are well educated and should know how these sales-pitches go, so a big thumbs up to the sales person for making us sign on! As proud homeowners (about 1/52nd of a Waikiki condo) we left the premises. We had a beer and enjoyed the lovely late afternoon sun. Back at the condo we had dinner, went to the pool, talked about the timeshare, laughed at ourselves, googled some more and decided that this was not for us (right now.)

Silversword plants in the Haleakala crater

View from inside the crater

Sat September 22- We got up, had coffee (Hawaiian coffee is excellent by the way) and breakfast. We drove to the Club Wyndham office and returned the contract and all the brochures. The notary (we did not talk to the sales person or sales manager again) was 'very disappointed' in us. According to him we would never take a vacation again, would get divorced and would work ourselves to death. Little did he know that we were actually on vacation for the entire year! All in all quite the experience! We wanted to be 100% sure that we canceled the contract, so we also send the cancellation in registered mail to the Wyndham HQ as the sales agreement instructed us to do. We went back to our hotel, recieved the $100,- from PJ who congratulated us on buying the timeshare and packed up. Since Grampa Bill's memorial service had taken place earlier today, LB made a phone call to the home-front. Sad that we could not have been there. By noon we drove to the airport, returned the rental car, checked our backpacks (not too many people traveling with big backpacks in Hawaii) and at 230pm we were on the 45 minute Hawaiian Airlines flight to Kauai. In Kauai our rental car turned out be a white Ford Crown Victoria (the ideal police car and taxi) - very funny! Most young couples get either a convertible or a Jeep Wrangler, but we got a car that drives like a battleship. We arrived at Hale O Nanakai B&B in Kalaheo, in the South of Kauai, that we had booked for 3 nights while we were in Maui. At first glance, Kauai looks a little bit greener and more tropical than Maui. Very pretty! We did some groceries, had dinner and made a plan for the coming days.

A picture of our photo-shoot print-out (check out our Hawaiian outfits!)

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Kenai

Thu September 6- We checked out of Motel 6 and packed up our rental Chrysler 200, which was quite the challenge with all our stuff. The next stop was the UPS sore to ship a large package back to Lexington- we of course had to downsize after selling our car. By one o'clock we were on the road to Seward on the Kenai (pronounce "key-nai") peninsula, south of Anchorage. Thirty miles into the drive we got a flat tire!! After driving all the way to Alaska from Massachusetts without a single problem with our car, we get a flat tire in a brand new rental car within the first hour of driving.. Some piece of metal used in road-construction ended up in our tire. As a side-note we passed a lot of road-construction and followed a lot of pilot-cars the last two months. Luckily the Chrysler came with a tire-pressure-warning-system and we were able to park at the Tesoro gas-station in Girdwood. Since our car-insurance was valid in a rental car as well (unheard of in e.g. The Netherlands), we did not buy any extra Dollar rental car insurance. LB, as a triple-A member, called for assistance, but it would take 1.5 hours for them to show up! So while waiting we got the spare wheel out of the trunk, Maurits opened the manual (since there seemed to be no wrench) and two guys from LA offered help. We now know how to change a tire! :) We drove back to Anchorage on the donut, found a tire repair shop, got the tire fixed ($35) and were back on the road to Seward. The 2 hour drive was beautiful! Great scenery! In Seward we went to the campground at Miller's landing- beautiful spot overlooking the sound.

Seward port- fresh snow on the mountains

LB cruisin'

Fri September 7- It rained most of the night and we found our tent in a big puddle of water. Fortunately the inside of our tent stayed dry! After breakfast we checked out Seward and quickly decided to go on a touristy-boat-tour of Kenai Fjords National Park. We had first thought about going on a sea-kayak trip, but it was just too cold. The cruise was a great decision... we absolutely loved it! The weather was cloudy and rainy, as you would expect in coastal Alaska, but the scenery and wildlife were amazing. Apart from the many glaciers, we saw orcas, sea-otters, humpback-whales, sea-lions, seals, bald eagles, puffins (cool looking sea-bird) and more. Especially the orca's were awesome! The cruise departed at 11am and we got back to Seward by 5pm. We had a beer at the local brew-pub and went back to the campsite. It was cold, but not raining, and since it got dark around 9pm (much earlier than a couple of weeks ago) it was very nice to have a camp-fire with marshmallows!

Orcas! (they do not pose well...)

Aialik Glacier (a 'tide-water' glacier)

Sat September 8- It drizzled in the morning, we were cold and damp, but this proved to be the turning point for some great weather ahead! We packed up the tent and moved from Miller's Landing ($25 per night) to the National Parks Campsite at Exit Glacier (free!). Exit Glacier is the most accessible glacier in Kenai Fjords National Park, meaning that you can drive to it. By the afternoon the weather had really cleared and we went for a short, easy and beautiful walk at the base of Exit Glacier. Afterwards we went back to Miller's Landing and walked along the coast of Resurrection Bay to Tonsina Point. Also an easy, but nice walk. Very interesting (and smelly) to see all the dead salmon in one of the creeks. Spawning and dying somehow keeps that species going... We once again had a beer at the local brewery and went back to the campsite for dinner (we wanted to make sure that we ate all the food that we still had). Since it was Saturday it was quite busy at the cooking shelter. Someone had started the campfire and it was fun to hang out with all the different people. If we were to go on a road-trip again we should bring an axe.. So many places have free firewood, but no kindling!

Exit Glacier (spot LB)

Tonsina Point

Sun September 9- After a cold and frosty night we woke to clear skies! We had breakfast, packed lunch and went on a day hike to Harding's Icefield. We hiked to the top of Exit Glacier (on a trail besides the glacier) to a viewpoint of a massive snow/ice-field (named after President Harding, just because he had visited Seward..) The icefield feeds all the glaciers in Kenai Fjords National Park. It was very windy, but we were able to find a sheltered spot for lunch where we had a spectacular vista! On the way back, even though there were a lot of people on the trail, we were able to bump into a black bear. What are the odds.. Back at camp we had a nice dinner in the warm evening sun.

Mountaineer Maurits

Mon September 10- Another very cold night! Brrrrrrrr! We have reached the limit of our camping gear.. But once more a crystal clear day! We were cold during breakfast, but two hours later with the sun shining down we were hiking in our t-shirts to Lost Lake. A scenic day hike north of Seward. Beautiful views of the surrounding mountains with Resurrection Bay and the Gulf of Alaska in the background. Very enjoyable! For the last time in Alaska we went back to camp; we ate our last freeze-dried camping-dinner (spaghetti bolognese), enjoyed a campfire (started by a nice couple from New Zealand) and crawled into the tent.

Maurits on the Harding Icefield

Huge icefield, notice the small people

Tue September 11- Happy 2nd anniversary!! Our last Alaskan tent-night was a cold one. After a warm oatmeal breakfast we packed up the tent and drove to a coffee-shop in Seward. It started to drizzle and it was great to be inside, drink coffee and eat a cinnamon roll. We recieved phone calls from the home-front (very nice), relaxed and did some internet. Around noon we drove North to Girdwood where we checked in to the Hidden Creek B&B (Shelley & Peter's treat for our anniversary - thank you!) After a shower we went out to a great Alaskan sea-food dinner at Jack Sprat (halibut and 'the deadliest catch').

Going down

Wed September 12- A true rest-day today! We had a lovely breakfast in the B&B with excellent french toast and banana-pecan-maple-syrup. Yummmmmmmy! Other than that we relaxed, sat in the hot-tub (rainy day today), had another nice dinner at the 'Muskee' Inn and saw a movie. Great!

Movie of the icefield

Thu September 13- Another excellent breakfast at the Hidden Creek! A great place! The owners Michelle and Ron where very nice and took our left-over camp-fuel, bear-spray and giant cooler that we could not bring to Hawaii. Before driving back to Anchorage we went for a 2 hour hike at the Alyeska Ski-Resort. We hiked up the mountain (nice views, little bit of sun) and took the tram (cable car) down. On the tram-ride down we saw our last bear, a small black bear in a berry-field. We still cannot believe that we saw so many bears! In Anchorage we did some last minute shopping, including a new sleeping bag and pad for Maurits. We stayed at Jewel Lake B&B (fine, reasonable rate) and had dinner (and beer) at the Glacier Brew-Pub.

Lost Lake

Fri September 14- Our last day in Alaska! Final packing and sorting of our gear for the rest of our trip; questions like "Shall I bring 10 or 7 pairs of underwear?" were answered. We shipped two more packages back to Lexington. One package with chairs, pillows, ice-axes and tarp-poles we built with Home Depot ship-wrap and tape; we were pretty proud of ourselves! For the second time we were impressed by the spelling-skills of the UPS-store-employee; chamberline, chamberlaine, chamberlain.. We got some groceries with lunch and snacks for a long domestic flight to Maui, checked into a different hotel (Hilton Garden Inn - cheaper - budget conscious) and drank our last bottle of wine.

Mountains surrounding Lost Lake

 

 

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Denali

Thu August 30- It was great to recover from our Gates of the Arctic trip in a warm and dry hotel room! After we slept in we had an excellent brunch at the Cookie Jar! Exactly what we felt like! After that we did some laundry, got groceries for our Denali trip and relaxed in the hotel room. Movie, wine, cheese, crackers, great!

The usual Mt McKinley view

Fri August 31- Goodbye Fairbanks! After a simple cereal breakfast (great as well!) we drove to Denali National Park (took about 2.5 hours). Our plan was to go on a 4 to 6 day backpacking trip in the backcountry of Denali. Like many other National Parks in Alaska, Denali does not have any established trails. The whole park is deemed "wilderness." We did not really understand the backcountry-permit system (and we still find it a little weird and silly), so we checked in with the Backcountry Information Center first. The park is split into different units- only a certain number of people are allowed in a unit each night, and you can only "reserve" the units you want the day before. After talking to the very helpful ranger we picked a 5 night trip consisting of units 35, 13, 13, 18 & 13 (close to the Eielson visitor center). We wanted to go just to 13 and 18, but since you can only get a permit 24 hours before you are leaving, you are more or less forced to be flexible and stay in another area first. After yet another bear-safety video, we got our camper-bus-tickets to get us into the park (you cannot drive into the park, you have to take a bus). We had forgotten it was Labor Day Weekend and the campsite at the park-entrance was full. Luckily we found a great motel (Rainbow Village) right outside the park that still had one vacancy. Perfect for our needs to get all organized for our trip (it was big, had a kitchen, etc.), since it was raining again...

Breakfast with a view

Sat September 1- We were on the 10am camper-bus into Denali. It was cloudy, rained once in a while, but the fall colors were terrific! New England is known for beautiful foliage, but Alaska is maybe even better.. The bus took forever (stopped too often at random rest-stops and wildlife-viewing-traffic-jams), but we finally got to unit 35 at around 3pm (70 miles in 5 hours). Unit 35 is has a lot of 'scrub'; no easy hiking- just a lot of bush-whacking. It took us some time, and it started to rain hard, but LB found a nice camp-spot right on the tundra (maybe too close to the road, but we had to get back to the road the next morning anyway). We had dinner in the rain, it was windy, it was cold, there was zero visibility, and maybe we were a little bit miserable... Luckily our tent-palace was dry and warm!

On the road waiting for the bus

Sun September 2- We woke to a cold morning and to our very pleasant surprise last night's rain had turned to ice on our tent! The weather had cleared almost completely. Very high level clouds, little bleak sun, and great views of Mount McKinley and the whole mountain range. WOW! What a change! We packed up the tent, had a scenic breakfast and walked back to the road. We took some more pictures, enjoyed the view and flagged down a camper-bus (a bus like we took yesterday) that drove us to unit 13 (about 7 miles back towards the park-entrance). The Denali National Park Service would most likely deny it, but there was a clear "trail-head" at sector 13 (by the way, we did not see Katniss or Peeta). We descended from the road into the wilderness of the Thorofare River where we crossed a knee-deep river and once more ended up with wet boots and wet feet (our boots had actually not even dried yet from the Gates of the Arctic). The views were amazing! Mt McKinley was disappearing in the clouds, but the other mountains were spectacular. And on top of all this we had beautiful fall colors! We followed the valley of Glacier Creek and almost bumped into a Grizzly Bear with cub. The bears were grazing on the other side of the creek and we saw them way too late (probably came within 25 yards of them). We slowly backed-up, "hey bear-ed" and found an alternative route (over the hill-top). A little further up the creek we found a nice camp-site and we setup the tent (it was a little breezy, but fine.. for now..) We explored the area, had dinner, enjoyed the great views. What a great day! And with that feeling we went back into the tent...

Foliage and Mt McKinley

Mon September 3- As we were trying to fall asleep the wind picked up more and more and more. Huge gusts of (as we later found out) up to 60 miles per hour. We did not sleep and it was scary. We were afraid that the tent would rip or a pole would snap. We were trying to hold on to the tent, but there was not much to hold on to. When huge gusts came by we could feel the tent lifting up a bit.. At the crack of dawn the tent was still in one piece and we were still awake. We got up, took down the tent, had breakfast and walked back to the road. The hike back was very windy and it had gotten cloudier. The high peaks were no longer visible and the rain was more or less chasing us. We got back to the road and walked the last 2 miles to the Eielson visitor center (where we would take the bus back to our car). Right as we turned the corner to get to the visitor center, we had another grizzly-encounter. The tour-buses loved it, but we had to wait for the bear to get out of the way. It finally did. The weather forecast at the visitor center showed even more wind for the coming days; happy we left! We bused back to the park-entrance and setup camp at the Riley Creek Campground. We had a shower, beer and diner. It was not that windy as we were camped in the trees and we slept great!

The Thorofare River makes easy walking

Enjoying the view

Tue September 4- It was cloudy when we woke up and after breakfast we decided to go to Anchorage. We had thought about going for a day-hike in Denali National or State Park, but the weather was not good enough. The drive to Anchorage was very pretty, fall colors, clouded mountains, the usual Alaskan scenery. We looked for a campsite in Anchorage and in the end went to Centennial Campground (which was actually closing for the season on Sept 9). We had not seen a weather forecast for Anchorage, but we talked to the campground host about our wind-adventure in Denali. She even mentioned something like "here in Anchorage we get big winds all the time that would get hurricane-news-coverage in the lower 48." At that time it was already a little windy in Anchorage, but we were camping in the trees and did not think too much of it. It was cold and damp at the campsite, so after dinner we went to McDonald's for desert, warmth and internet (we should have checked the weather). We got back to camp and by 10pm we were comfortable in the tent. The wind gets stronger and stronger.. First our tarp gets unhooked and Maurits gets out of the tent to pack it up.. Then more and more huge gusts.. And then finally a big branch hits our tent! Ahhhhh.... We stuffed everything as quickly as possible in the car and left. But first we had to wait an hour, because a huge tree had fallen over the only access-road to the campsite. Luckily it was the same access-road as the local Anchorage utility company and the tree was cut and cleared quickly. By that time almost the whole city was without power and the tree-branches were flying all over the place. The sky was strangely clear, with a nice moon and we could see lightning in every direction caused by power-transformers short-circuiting. It was almost surreal! We put Motel 6 into our GPS, drove through a very dark Anchorage and to our surprise Motel 6 not only had a room for us, but they still had power! It took a while before we were able to fall asleep..

More foliage

Even more foliage

Wed September 5- The day started as a lazy morning in the motel-room, but after posting our Subaru on Craigslist it turned into a mad rush! Within minutes we had recieved 5 phone calls and within 20 minutes Said and Serghei were at the motel for a test-drive. The car was still a disaster! Our hasty departure the previous night had left camping-equipment, clothes, laundry and other stuff all over the place. We were planning on cleaning the car (in&out) and topping up the oil, but that proved unnecessary. We quickly removed most of the gear from the car and Maurits went for a test-drive with the Russians. In the mean-time two other prospective buyers had showed up, but they were too late. Said liked the car and handed over $7,000 in Benjamin Franklins. They would come back at 1pm to pick up the car- we gave them the title in exchange for the cash. Since this all seemed to be going too fast, we took the cash to a local credit union to make sure it was real. It was! Then we went back to the motel and "Hotwired" a rental car for the remainder of our stay in Alaska. We picked up the rental car, drove back to the hotel, screwed off the Subaru's license plates and handed the key to the new owner. Final mileage: 137,080 which means we drove 7,700 miles! We probably could have gotten more money for the car, but we got what we asked for... After breakfast (now 2pm), we went to the post-office to convert the cash into "money orders." For people unfamiliar with the days when the Pony Express still rode, these are the kind of cheques that you buy, make out to someone you know (e.g. Shelley Chamberlain), send in an envelope and the reciever converts the money order back into money and deposits it in a bank-account. And this was necessary since there was no Bank of America in Alaska (or Hawaii). After all this was done we took the left-over money and LB got a pair of new hiking boots! We spent the evening sorting through our room and we put a package together with stuff to send back to Lexington. Somehow we lost a pocket-knife and sleeping-bag-liner in the turmoil.. What a crazy day!

Glacier Creek

Disclaimer: With the exception of the first picture, all these pictures were taken on September 2

 

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