New Zealand Travelog #33
Waiotapu, NZ - Thu, 18 Apr 2024, 11amThis week we're traveling on the North Island of New Zealand. The framework of this leg of the trip is flying into Wellington in the south (we did that this past Monday), driving up to Auckland in the north, and depart for home from Auckland this coming Monday. We filled in plans for ( Read more... )

New Zealand Travelog #32
Rotorua, NZ - Thu, 18 Apr 2024, 8am

Wednesday night we stayed in Rotorua, NZ. It's a resort town on the southern edge of Lake Rotorua. The lake is volcanic, and there are a number of natural hot springs nearby. We can smell them. 🤢 (The air here is sulfurous when the wind blows in from the lake.) That said, we had nice ( Read more... )

New Zealand Travelog #30
Turangi, NZ - Tue, 16 Apr 2024, 10pm

It was a good, long day today hiking in Tongariro National Park. But not too long; we finished in time to get to our next place for the night before sunset. Though maybe that's more a function of not having to drive a few hundred km than anything else ( Read more... )

Sunday after visiting Grover Hot Springs (see previous blog about waterfall hike) we headed home, taking the scenic route. Well, actually all of the routes home from the Eastern Sierra are scenic. We just took a slightly less direct one than the most obvious, going south on Route 89 to US 395 then west on Route 108 over the Sonora Pass (elev. 9,624 ( Read more... )

The reason we headed to tiny Markleeville on Saturday evening to try our luck finding a room there insteading of heading back down the mountain toward home and toward a bigger town- where almost certainly we would have found something better (in terms of creature comforts) than " motel camping"- is that Markleeville is, itself, in the mountains. We ( Read more... )

On the Mexico border - Thursday, 9 Apr 2015, 8pm.How far would you go for a hot bath? In our case, this evening, it was probably too far ( Read more... )

Sunday was check-out day at Harbin Hot Springs resort (see previous journal). We got up semi-early and went for a morning soak. Before long we got itchy feet, though, figuratively speaking. As our friends seemed intent on sleeping in late and getting a slow start to the day we decided to head out on our own. We checked out around 9:30, headed down ( Read more... )

This past weekend we made another trip to Harbin Hot Springs, a meditative retreat in the hills above Napa wine country. We were last there about four months ago (see blog from October). Like last time Merhawk and I met our friend Abditus there (he's been going for several years) on Friday evening, though this time he was with his new girlfriend, L. Friday night ( Read more... )

Sunday morning we left the hot springs retreat before lunchtime, though not before I had another few hours of early morning soak time. The sun was out, clearing away all the rain and clouds the clogged the sky on Saturday. It was a different experience with the sun out, even though the air was still cool. Part of me feels like we short-changed ( Read more... )

As I mentioned in my previous journal we spent the weekend at a hot springs retreat in the hills above wine country. We arrived at the lodge after 10pm on Friday night. We checked in, found our way to our snug room, dropped our stuff, and headed out to the pools. One of the benefits of it being a private club-- and being out in the middle of ( Read more... )