Active holidays at home: Free-diving in the fjord, canoe-picnicking on Storvatnet, hiking in Sweden, camping on Storheia, bouldering in the city.
Hiking on the other side of the fjord
What a tur 🙂
I took the ferry to the other side of the fjord in order to hike one of the hills we can see from our side. A friendly farmer let me park my car in his yard and told me about a little trail leading into that area.
Everything afterwards was just barely visible animal trails (thanks animals, nice trails you trampled there 🙂 ). I even saw a couple of elk in the distance, though too far and quick for a photo! At some point I realised that I would not be able to reach the top I intended to (Munken) and decided to set up camp on another really nice hilltop (slightly north-west of Stegavikdammen). Although this spot was missing the panoramic view across the fjord, it had some funny and very audible sheep in the valley below.
After a nice warm meal of turmat, I went to bed with a glimpse of the city lights on the other side of the fjord and the stars above (the nights are dark enough again). As I had placed the tent behind a little hill, beautiful sunshine only woke me at about 8 in the morning. After a simple breakfast of bread, cheese, and liver paté, I headed back following a slightly different path.
The new backpack I tested on this trip prove really comfortable and practical. It allows you to open the whole front-side similar to a sports bag. This makes organising and accessing the equipment way easier!
The full set of photos can be found in my OwnCloud.
Backpacking Bretagne & Channel Islands
It all started with a report on Arte about the little island of Sark, which made me want to travel there. No cars, just tractors and horse carts sounded lovely. While planning the trip, my girlfriend and I decided to include a bit of the Brittany and the other Channel Islands as well. We ended up backpacking almost three weeks:
We started in Lannion, Brittany with stop-overs in Ploumanach, Abbey Beauport, Brehec, and Dinan. From Saint-Malo we took the ferry to St. Peter Port, Guernsey and stayed in Vaugrat before heading to Sark. After a few days exploring this stormy island with its peculiar people we transferred to Herm, an even smaller island with hardly any permanent inhabitants but beautiful beaches and even plenty of sunshine! As our last stop-over, we visited Jersey where we stayed near Rozel and explored parts of the scenery.
Throughout our journey we experienced rain, storm and beautiful sunshine; usually all within a few hours 😉 With reliable equipment and a good portion of humour, we made the best of it and had a really great time travelling!
Here we go with some impressions of the trip:
Some more panoramas:
California 1/2
As a colleague and I are presenting a paper at an international engineering conference in San Diego (IDETC09), we extended our stay by two weeks.
We arrived one week ahead in San Francisco and we will be leaving the US from Las Vegas a week after the conference.
So far the trip was really interesting. Starting in SF we stayed in a hostel (Green Tortoise), visiting some touristy places like Fishermens Wharf and the Golden Gate Bridge, which we even crossed.
From SF we took a rental car to Sequoia National Park, camping in those beautiful forests and going for a nice hike through the Giant Forest and even climbing the stairs up to Moro Rock. Staying in this amazing nature, we saw plenty of wildlife; birds, squirrels and deer. Just before leaving the park we even saw a black bear!
On our way back towards the pacific coast and San Diego, we went for a refreshing swim in a small river coming from the mountains we just crossed (we went up and down all the time, reaching altitudes as much as 2200m). With a short stopover in Ventura, we even spent a whole afternoon at the beach, watching the surfers ride the rolling waves.
So far for now, I guess I’ll write the next update when I get back home.
Cheers, Tim