Frenchie's Ready to hit the Road!

Yep, our buddy Mr. Mustard, AKA Frenchie, is coming with us to the Grand Canyon! He's all packed up in my backpack pocket and ready for his next adventure. I just hope he doesn't meet a sexy bottle of Heinz ketchup while we're on the road and decide to ditch us!

What goes down must come up

This Friday we're heading to the Grand Canyon to do the famed (infamous?) rim-to-rim hike!

The 24-mile hike from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon to the North Rim should take us about 12 hours.

Most people take 3 or 4 days to do this hike, but we're doing it in one day! Chris and I have both climbed mountains, and are in good shape, so with the necessary provisions, I'm sure we'll be fine. Now, I'm not saying I will enjoy hiking for 24 miles, and climbing a vertical 6,000 feet, but I can and will do it.

The ascent to the North Rim is the killer part of the hike. We'll be gaining more than 6,000 feet in elevation from the canyon floor to the top. Wheee!

Here's our plan: We'll leave our offices early on Friday and head for our hotel near the South Rim. We should get there at around 8 p.m. We'll have a late dinner, and hit the hay early. We'll wake up at 3 a.m. on Saturday and drive to the Bright Angel trail at the South Rim. This route is a little longer than the other trail, South Kaibob, but we can park right at the Bright Angel trail head rather than taking a shuttle from the visitors center to the South Kaibob trail head.

We hope to start our hike at around 4:30 a.m. We want to get down to the bottom of the canyon floor to Phantom Ranch before noon so we can avoid the oppressive heat. I really hope we luck out and don't have to hike through the blazing sun in the middle of the day. I don't deal well with temperatures below 50 degrees or above 75 degrees. I can thank San Diego for that! If all goes well, we'll finish at around 4 or 5 p.m.

The logistics of the hike are a little tricky. Unless you're INSANE and want to hike all the way back to where you started the hike, you have to make sure your car is waiting for you on the other side. Chris's buddy will be hiking the trail north to south and will be driving our car from San Diego and leaving it at the North Rim. My little Beetle will (hopefully) be waiting for us on the north side at the end of the trail and Chris's buddy's car will be waiting for him and his sons on the South Rim. Perfecto!

After our hike, we're heading to Page, AZ where I plan on eating a ridiculous amount of food, and then hanging out until Monday morning doing whatever people do in Page, AZ.

I hope all goes as planned and that we get some amazing pictures!

Oh, and I'd like to thank Chris for booking a hotel room for this trip. After years of refusing to even look at a tent, I've recently started camping. To my surprise, I actually enjoy sleeping in the great outdoors. However, I really don't think that after hiking for 12 hours straight I'm going to want to be one with nature. I'm sure I'll want to be one with a cold beer and some HBO in the hotel room! So, props to Chris for being a good husband and getting his wussy wife a nice room at the Page, AZ Motel 8. :)

Latest update: Apparently you can rent canoes in Page and take a nice, leisurely trip down a peaceful part of the Colorado River. Sounds like a great way to top off our crazy trip!

Hello Again

This blog was originally created to update people on our Africa trip. Well, that didn't go so well, but I'm starting fresh!

We take a lot of cool weekend trips, and I've yet to document any of them. A shame, really. So here goes. I probably *should* start with the trips we took first and then work my way up to the present, but that requires me remembering everything, so for now, I'm starting with our next adventure: Hiking the Grand Canyon South rim to North Rim!

We Made It!

We're home! Sorry we didn't update the blog other than first two posts, but Internet access was really difficult to find. It would have been fun to post everything real time, but not much we could do. :( We have so many stories and pictures to share, we'll start posting stuff soon.

This was a life changing trip. Especially our visit to Rwanda. Rwanda is a very powerful, beautiful country filled with kind, resilient, and welcoming people. I wish we would have had more time to spend there, but we'll be back for a second visit!

A few trip highlights of which we'll tell you about more later include: Chris driving our safari truck, cab rides in Nairobi, comparing banana beers in different countries, swarming bees and ants, cheetah madness in the Serengeti, climbing volcanoes, romping with gorillas, and our ever favorite, stinging nettles! Can't wait to tell you more. For now I think it's time to go to bed.

Black Rhino

No time for a long post ... just a quick update ...
Today we saw two of only 26 black rhinos that live in the Ngorongoro Crater. It was a very rare and special experience. The mother and her baby looked like boulders in a field, but on closer inspection, you could see their big twitching ears and the mothers two horns. We really were very lucky to have seen them. We waited an 1.5 hours for the mother and baby to stand up and it paid off! I wish we could post pics but no time. Trip still continues to blow us away. Final note... had banana beer. 10% alcohol. Yowsa.
Good night.

Asante Sana Tanzania

Day three of our safari and so far we're blown away. We are having a private tour for our entire 10 days in Tanzania. It's very unfortunate for our tour operator but it is an amazing experience for us. We have a private guide, Firoz, for our entire trip.

We just finished a three day safari in Tarangire National Park. It's the second largest national park in Tanzania and is home to the largest population of elephants in the country -- 6,000. The terrain and weather is much different than we expected. It's been cloudy and very cool (probably 60 degrees). The terrain is stark, beautiful. It actually reminds us a lot of Colorado in the autumn. I've been wearing pants and a fleece the entire time. I never thought I'd be cold in East Africa in August.

As I said, we are blown away by our experiences so far. We have seen so much wildlife. Here's a partial list of what we've seen: elephants, lions, giraffe, zebra, wildebeest, cape buffalo, impala, dik dik, deikur, steenbuck, ostrich, lesser kudu, warthog, oryx, eland, bat-eared fox, black-faced monkey, banded mongoose, white mongoose, water buck, hartebeest, dickens gazelle, hyrax, yellow-winged bat, spotted genet, rhebok, baboon, and cheetah.

The people have been wonderful. We really haven't talked to other tourists, we've really enjoyed talking to local people, learning swahili, and getting a feel for what it's like to live in Tanzania.

It's been a very special experience.

We only have five minutes left on the computer, otherwise this would be a much longer post. Stay tuned for more maybe pics too.

One final thing ... we learned that "coffee" in Swahili means, "slap me." Ha! I'm surprised we haven't been slapped considering how often we ask for coffee.

Until next time!
-Joy and Chris

It's finally here!

I can't believe it. After almost two years of planning and preparing we leave tomorrow morning. Chris and I are both excited and a little nervous. It's surreal, really. We'll post on the blog as much as we can.

Tomorrow we leave S.D. at 8:45 a.m. and fly to Detroit, then on to Amsterdam and finally Arusha. I really really hope we make all our flights. I shouldn't even type that 'cause now I'm jinxing us!

Oh, I just took my first malaria pill. I feel kind of weird, but I think that's just psychosematic. hehe.

Anyhow ... hope to post again soon!!!