Sun-Baked Sabbatical

Vang Vieng has a reputation as a party town, and it didn’t disappoint. As soon as we got to our hotel, we could hear from our balcony the chants and yells from a party at the hostels nearby. The town is surrounded by gorgeous karst mountains, caves, and lagoons, so we spent the last two days exploring.

First stop was an overlook just outside of town. The road to get there was full of potholes and muddy in spots, but we made it. Once again, hiking through the Southeast Asian jungle proved to be insanely hot and sweaty, but the view from the top was 360 degrees of mountain ranges, rice paddies, and small villages.

Yesterday we drove out north of town to a cave with a river running through it. You sit in tubes and pull yourself upstream into the cave about half a mile! It was like a spooky subway tunnel, with all sorts of fissures and side chambers to peer into. Eventually we let the current take us back downstream and out of the cave altogether.

Afterwards we rode over to a lagoon fit with a food stall, zip line, and rope swing, and spent the next couple hours trying to do tricks into the pool. We drove home in the afternoon at rush hour – kids were walking home, folks were letting their cattle out to snack, and the road was full of dust from all the traffic. At least the views of the mountains were sublime! We got back, showered, ate a tasty southern Lao sandwich and some Nutella roti for dinner, and played some pool at a bar in town before heading to bed.

This morning we hit our next misadventure of the trip: I went to grab some cash at an ATM, but it ate my card! We walked over to a bank branch nearby, and the clerk said to come back at 2 this afternoon once they’d gotten the card extracted. Unfortunately, our train out of town leaves at 2, so we had to reschedule for later this evening. After we got the card back, we had a couple hours to kill, so we got some massages, had dinner, and played some more pool at a nice hall where the ladies working there rack the balls for you and everything. It turned the day around! Tonight we head to Vientiane, the capital of Laos, and spend the day there tomorrow before heading to China in the evening. We are so excited about this extra unplanned leg of the journey!

It was a long travel day to Luang Prabang. We got picked up at our hotel in a pickup truck and taken to the bus station. There, we waited for a while and got a couple of false starts on the wrong buses, as the guides were figuring out where to put everyone. Eventually, we got on our way and started heading up into the mountains outside of town. What followed was about four hours over dusty mountain passes and through tiny, remote hamlets and villages. All the while, winding curves were taken too fast, potholes were hit too hard, and comically loud Lao music was blasting from the radio. Our butts were numb by the end. At least we had real seats — the woman in front of us arrived last, and they had her sit on a backless stool in the aisle the whole time! Finally, we arrived at the town of Nateuy, where we hopped on the China-Laos railway for the last leg into Luang Prabang.

Rose and I were starving when we got to town, so the first stop was a hand-pulled noodle joint in the night market. Yum! It looks like there’s a lot more Chinese influence in Laos, and this restaurant shows it!

We got a room and relaxed a bit, recovering from the long journey, before going out to the night market again for dessert and to walk around and look at all the stalls.

The next day, I was feeling a little sluggish, so we took a couple more leisurely walks around town, stopped at some cafés, and did some planning for the next leg of our trip. After doing some research, we decided to stop in China on the way from Laos to Vietnam. They allow 10-day, visa-free trips into China if you’re traveling between two other countries. It is tantalizingly close, and flights are cheap and short, so we’re going for it.

There are a lot of logistics to figure out when traveling to China. They have all their own apps for booking hotels and transportation, paying for everything, communicating with locals, and navigation. And unlike Thailand, it is not English-friendly, so planning things out in advance is key. We spent a good chunk of the day working on that, interspersed with some wandering around Luang Prabang for food and massages.

Yesterday, we got up early to volunteer for a couple of hours, playing games with local school kids to help them learn English and other subjects. There didn’t end up being any kids there, but we talked with the director for a while and bought a few books to donate to the kids.

Afterwards, we hiked up Phousi Hill in the middle of town, a forested little knoll topped with a cool temple complex. The views of the Mekong and the town were awesome!

Once we got down, we decided to rent another scooter to get to the popular waterfall outside of town. The drive through the mountains was gorgeous, and it was nice to get a little exercise hiking up and around the falls. There was also a small exhibit for Asiatic black bears and a couple of refreshing swimming holes where we met a family from Australia. Rose even drove the scooter some of the way back to try it out!

When we got back to town, we drove around outside of the old historic area some to check it out and stopped at another night market where we tried ice cream rolls, which are little scrolls of flavored cream frozen and shaped on an anti-griddle. Pretty neat! It was nice to see other parts of town away from the hotel. Laos has a lot less tourist infrastructure than Thailand, and these small towns can feel sort of overrun by backpackers, especially in the commercial areas, so it was fun to check out a quieter part of town.

Today, on the way out of town, we grabbed another batch of hand-pulled noodles, this time with cumin beef, onions, and bell peppers. Imagine the tastiest lo mein you’ve ever had. It was a great way to cap things off in town! Now we head an hour south on the train to Vang Vieng, a small town surrounded by gorgeous mountains and lagoons for swimming in. Here’s hoping for a smoother travel day than last time!

Well, Laos sure has a different vibe than Thailand. We got across the border, and the three people working the money exchange had about a dozen tallboys of Heineken on the table between them, at 3 PM no less! Turns out it was the end of Buddhist Lent, so everyone in town was partying. We got a taxi to our hotel and saw everyone out at their neighbors’ houses listening to music, drinking beer, and eating.

After we got dropped off, Rose and I walked around for a bit and grabbed dinner. The family that runs our hotel was having their own party in the outdoor space of the hotel overlooking the Mekong, so Rose and I decided to buy a case of Beerlao and try to make friends. Sure enough, our offering got us seats at their table, and we spent the rest of the night cheersing, learning some Lao dance moves, making friends with one of the slow boat operators, and singing karaoke. They even offered us some of their party snacks (fried chicken feet and duck blood soup).

It was a raucous night, and Rose and I were really feeling it today. We basically laid in bed all day, but we did manage to get out of the room for a couple of tasty meals. One place didn’t even have a menu; the owner just said, “You want noodle soup? I got noodle soup.” For dinner, we had a nice meal on a sunset cruise on the Mekong, and when we walked back to the hotel, we stopped along the river, where everyone was setting off fireworks, lighting lanterns, floating offerings, and listening to folk music for another day of Buddhist celebration.

After some more reading, we decided not to take the slow boat to the next stop, Luang Prabang, and instead are opting to bus and train there tomorrow. We have an early start, so good thing we’ve pretty much been sleeping all day!

The last few days have been surreal. The evening we got to Chiang Rai, we went to a little restaurant right by our guesthouse that had a ton of authentic northern Thai and Vietnamese dishes, none of which we’d heard of yet, so we got a small feast to try a bunch of new things. Most adventurous was the spicy soup with bite-sized pieces of blood cake. I expected it to have a much stronger flavor, but really, it didn’t taste like much and had the texture of tofu. We also got these little toast slices stuffed with shrimp and pork. The whole meal was great! Afterwards, we walked over to a cat cafe in town, with what must have been 20 cats hanging out together in one room. It was nuts! I am amazed that they all tolerate each other. It was fun to get in some cat-petting time since we’ve been away from Euler for so long.

Saturday, we were picked up at the hotel by a driver for the Elephant Peace Project, a group of Karen people living just outside of Chiang Rai. The Karen have been living with elephants for hundreds of years, and today we got a chance to meet three elephants and their mahouts, caretakers who devote their whole lives to caring for the animals. We basically lived the life of a mahout for a few hours, learning how to chop up banana tree stalks for feed, how to bathe and scrub them, how to communicate with verbal cues, and how to drive them around for short periods in order to bond with them. We got to know the personality of each elephant and talk with the guide about the Karen lifestyle and history. It was magical! Sitting up on an elephant’s neck bareback and “driving” it around with my voice is something I’ll never forget.

Yesterday, we rented another bike and drove north out of the city to do a big loop through the countryside. We had multiple objectives, the first of which was a temple with dozens of macaque monkeys in residence. We brought some bananas that the folks at the elephant sanctuary gave us from their garden… needless to say, the monkeys were ravenous for those bananas. I’m pretty sure we were the only white people at the temple, which was an unusual feeling compared to being in the cities. Off to one side, we saw a wildly ornamental staircase flanked by dragon tails leading steeply up into the woods, so naturally, we wandered over to check it out. After a thigh-burning climb, we reached the mouth of a cave at the base of a cliff and saw a candle burning inside. We were both a little skeeved out but decided to go in anyways. Much to our surprise, the floor inside was nicely tiled, and at the back of the cave was a shrine with candles and incense burning at the base of a Buddha. The cave was empty other than an old man who was selling candles for us to place at the altar.

We wandered around for a bit in the shadows before heading back out to the top of the stairs to a viewpoint out over the vast expanse of valley between us and the next mountain range over. At this point, it was getting scorching hot, so we boogied back to the bike to get on the road to Mae Sai, the town at the northernmost point of Thailand.

We wandered around the market in town for a bit before getting lunch in the AC of a Japanese izakaya restaurant. On the way out, we each got a pair of preposterously inexpensive shoes from the market before driving east.

Our next stop was the Golden Triangle, where the borders of Thailand, Laos, and Myanmar meet along the Mekong River. This area used to be rampant with illicit trading of opium and other drugs, but now it’s a mostly quiet corner of Southeast Asia. We stopped at the Hall of Opium, a museum dedicated to the history of the cultivation of poppies and the creation of opium, the resulting Opium Wars in China, and the impact of the drug trade in this part of Asia. We got there right before closing and had the place to ourselves, which, given the size of the museum’s rooms and all the interactive exhibits and sound effects, was quite eerie.

After the museum, we got dinner at a little restaurant right along the shore of the river: pad thai, catfish tom yum soup, and a big Chang beer to share. After dinner, we drove back to Chiang Rai through the misty, rolling hills and forests of the Thai countryside, passing farms, villages, and family restaurants, just as the sun was setting and the full moon rose. It was a magical time of day.

Once we got back to town, we went out to a bar serving craft beer from Thailand and elsewhere and played a few rounds of pool. We grabbed whipped cream-stuffed waffles for dessert and went back to the hotel exhausted.

This morning, we took the bike to the Blue Temple, one of the multiple colored temples throughout Chiang Rai. It was a spectacular sight, seeing almost every surface of the ornately carved temple coated in a layer of blue.

Just as the rain started falling, we returned the bike and walked back to the hotel to pack up. Today we cross into our next country! From here, we’ll take a bus about 90 minutes to the border, then a shuttle across the river into Laos. From there, we’ll begin the next leg of our journey with a multi-day boat ride on the Mekong into the heart of Laos.

The last three days we’ve been taking it easy around Chiang Mai, mostly (you guessed it) eating and getting massages, seeing more live music, checking out some museums about the Lanna ethnic group in the area, and taking walks around the Ping River on the west side of town. The meditation class with the monk really made an impact on Rose, and she’s also been practicing with her meditation beads every morning. Rose took a massage class and learned how to give a head, neck, and shoulders massage, while I did a yoga class across town.

One food highlight was a Michelin-starred joint serving khao kriab pak moh, which I can only describe as a Thai ravioli made with rice paper, stuffed with pork and topped with a coconut cream sauce, and sakoo sai moo, which are little pork- and tapioca-stuffed rice dough balls. They were both really yummy, and I haven’t had anything like them before.

We also got a couple of slices of cake at a café. The cake was good, but they were filming some TV show or something, so all eyes turned on us when we walked in, like they weren’t sure if they should include the gringos in the shot or something. We ate our cake fast and got out of there ASAP, hah.

At a market near another music venue, we got two types of sausage from northern Thailand, one from Chiang Mai that is spicy and herbaceous, with lots of lemongrass flavor. The other is a fermented sausage from the Isan region, which had a very slight sour flavor and a really crispy skin—sort of like a bratwurst with the sauerkraut built in. Both were AWESOME! For dessert, we had these little slices of bread with a pandan dipping sauce, which sort of had a vanilla taste to it, and homemade coconut ice cream that was bomb.

Besides eating our way through the city, we headed out west to the monk’s trail last night to hike up to a really unique, semi-abandoned temple complex with spectacular views of the city below. It was, uh, sweaty hiking through the jungle, but nice to get some exercise and see another side of the area.

This morning we say goodbye to our hotel’s resident cat and leave Chiang Mai to head further north to Chiang Rai, near the border with Laos. We returned the bike, grabbed some fried chicken at a stall nearby, then got a lift to the bus station for our five-hour trip through the mountains.

This week we decided to stay in Chiang Mai longer. We were originally planning a day rafting down the Nan River with a guide, but the town is 5 hours east by bus, and we’d essentially have to backtrack all the way to Chiang Mai afterwards to keep heading on to Laos. Chiang Mai has been a super fun city, so we were happy to keep exploring.

Today we checked out a few more food spots recommended by our favorite Asian foodie YouTuber, Doobydobap (check her out, Dad, you’ll love her). One was a proper sit-down restaurant named Neng Roasted Pork. They bake pork belly and whole chickens in these thick clay barrels to give them a nice crispy texture and smoky flavor. It was even better than the crispy pork belly from the Sunday market! And they serve it with this minced green chile paste that could totally have come from a shop in New Mexico.

After lunch, we took the bike to the edge of the city, where we walked up to a waterfall. There are lots of trails in the mountains west of town, and this spot was a nice, idyllic area to spend the afternoon in, with cool swimming holes and lots of folks just relaxing by the water.

We headed back to town to another Dooby recommendation, a little local’s nook serving larb, a salad dish from Laos and northern Thailand made from minced meat, chiles, mint, ground toasted rice, and other veggies. A lot of locals eat it with raw meat, but we weren’t feeling that adventurous today, so we stuck with cooked pork.

Afterwards, we headed to the other side of the moat to North Gate Jazz Co-op, a popular venue and distillery with live music every night. Chiang Mai seems to have a big jazz scene, with a consistent community of musicians playing jazz, rock, and funk at lots of venues in town. We got there early because the place fills up quick—lots of people stand out in the street to hear the music even when it’s full—and sat up in the rafters above the band. It was a super cool spot, and the musicians were on fire, especially the bucket-hat-wearing drummer!

Our Sunday was packed! We got a ride over to a temple where we met with a monk to learn a bit about Buddhism and practice some meditation with a handful of other travelers. Both Rose and I had done a little meditation in the past, but this time it made more of an impact, with the monk giving us some tangible and specific things to focus on throughout. Afterwards, the monk mentioned he’d be hiking up a pilgrimage trail to a temple in the mountains west of town on Tuesday or Wednesday. We’ve been wanting to head up there, so we got the monk’s phone number to coordinate.

Afterwards, we rented another bike from a shop nearby, grabbed some dim sum (China’s answer to tapas), and went to the Museum of Broken Relationships, where we saw relics from various people’s past relationships, romantic or otherwise, and read the stories of how those relationships ended up.

It was a chill afternoon. Rose got a facial treatment and I got a head and shoulder massage. Then the masseuse recommended we check out the Sunday night market in the middle of the city, so we zipped over there, where we tried crispy pork belly for the first time. We’ve been seeing it all over Thailand, and it was a religious experience for sure. Imagine a juicy, fatty piece of pork topped with a little pork rind texture!

In a bar off the market, we heard some guys playing Brazilian-style jazz, so we stopped in to listen. We only caught the last couple of songs of their set, but a funk band came on after and crushed it. It was a great way to cap off a full day.

Today we did an all-day cooking class on a farm outside of the city. They picked us up at our hotel and took us to a market in the suburbs, a nice small one compared to the sensory overload of the markets in Bangkok and Ayutthaya we went to. After we picked up some ingredients for the day, we drove out to the farm, selecting five dishes we wanted to make for the day. Once we arrived at the farm, we walked around the property to see where they grow the rice, vegetables, fruits, and herbs we’d be using.

For the afternoon, we learned how to prep the ingredients, make curry paste from scratch, and work the wok. It was a great chance to learn about the Thai-specific ingredients we’ve been eating for a week now: lemongrass, galangal, fingerroot, and of course, bird’s eye chilies. It was a super fun experience; we got a chance to talk to other travelers from around Europe and the US, and we left stuffed to the brim!

When we got back, we rested at the hotel for a few hours. Rose was pretty wiped out, so she stayed in and I walked around the old city for a bit. I found a bar next to the moat with a reggae band playing, so I hung out there for a while, enjoying the relaxing vibe before heading back home.

Chiang Mai is a pretty neat city; we are staying in the Old City, a small square area in the center surrounded by a moat and walls! It is a very touristy area, so after our fun experience in Ayutthaya, we decided to rent another bike today to get outside of the moat and explore some other areas too.

Rose hasn’t been feeling great for the past couple of days, so we took it slow after we picked up the bike. Eventually, we headed out towards a Burmese restaurant recommended by a YouTuber that we like, but it was closed. Luckily, there was a spot next door where Rose got khao soi, a curry from this region of Thailand, and I got mala beef noodles. Mala is a spicy profile from the Sichuan province of China, blending the numbing Sichuan peppercorns with spicy, dried red chiles. It is one of my favorites, and this bowl of noodles was one of the tastiest bites on the whole trip so far!

Afterwards, we went to a very hip coffee shop that could’ve been in the middle of Austin somewhere. Then we drove over to an outdoor museum of traditional houses from the Lanna people of Thailand. This group was around during the same time as the Ayutthaya Empire, starting like 500 years ago. The houses were all built at the end of this period, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, and were relocated from their original locations to this museum to preserve them. It was neat to see how the locals stored their food away from rodents and built the walls of the houses with sliding slats to allow for a breeze during the day but keep the bugs out at night.

After the museum, Rose and I just drove aimlessly around the city, checking out different neighborhoods and enjoying the moped. We stopped at a juice stand before heading back to the hotel and dropping off the bike.

After cooling off in the room for a while, we took a taxi over to the night market, a huge area just outside the moat with tons of souvenirs, bars, and food stands. We tried a bunch of different stuff for dinner, including northern Thai sausage, which has rice in it like boudin, plus lots of lemongrass and galangal flavor. It was awesome. While we were eating, a local guitarist was playing classic rock covers on a stage nearby. It was a great vibe.

After we ate, we played a few games of pool nearby and ended up getting whooped by the owner, who joined in for a few. Clearly, the dude plays a lot! We finished off the night with a very raunchy and funny ladyboy cabaret show. When in Thailand!

We woke up to our first rainy morning. Luckily, the downpour didn’t last too long. The traffic in Ayutthaya is way less crazy than in Bangkok, so we decided to rent a moped this morning so we could get around quicker and get a little bit outside of the main city to the lesser-visited temples. We showed up at the rental place a little after opening, but the owner didn’t show up until a few minutes later because “everyone’s a little lazy this morning because of the rain.” I have to say, I appreciate the lifestyle.

The first temple we went to, we practically had to ourselves! It was very sleepy out in the burbs, with dogs and cats hanging out under the trees, a couple of local vendors setting up food stalls, and monks in their saffron robes walking around.

We spent the better part of the day going from temple to restaurant to temple. Ayutthaya has a rich history, so there was all sorts of stuff to see. Back when it was the capital, it was a major trading port, so there’s influence from all sorts of cultures, including an old Portuguese church from a mission that was established here.

By the end of the day, we’d had enough fun biking around that we decided to rent the scooter for another day, so I swung by the shop to tell the owner. While I was there, he gave us a bunch of recommendations for restaurants that are favorites with the locals. One was a stall at the night market, so we went back there and grabbed some green and Massaman curries, more stir-fried morning glory, and a couple of beers. We mentioned we were renting a bike from Wan in town, and the owner gave us some fresh pineapple on the house as an appetizer!

The next morning, we biked around to a few more wats and to the restaurants Wan had mentioned, including a basil stir-fry place that served frog and wild boar. Alas, because something was lost in translation, we ended up with good old-fashioned pork. Still tasty! We checked out a halal fried chicken and rice place he mentioned as well.

We had been deliberating on how to get from here to our next stop, Chiang Mai, in the north of Thailand. We were going to try an overnight sleeper bus, but it was sold out, so we ended up booking a flight from Bangkok. The flight is only an hour, and there’s a cheap bus back to the airport from here, so this afternoon we packed our bags and headed out.

The traveling was pretty smooth, and we got into the city center of Chiang Mai just in time for dinner at an Indian restaurant near the hotel.

This morning we got a ride over to Khlong Toei, a truly enormous market in town frequented by local restaurant owners picking up their meat and produce. It was a full-on immersion experience for sure. I think we were the only white people there! We got some basil pork on rice with a fried egg and ate it on some little plastic stools behind the guy’s stall, a tasty sesame donut, and a kabob of what may or may not have been pig eyeballs? Honestly, not sure, but it was pretty good! After we had our fill, we went over to an area of fancy shopping malls with food courts and great people-watching.

We took the train over to Wat Arun Ratchawararam, another ancient temple from a different time period, with its own style of incredible tile mosaic work. A quick ferry across the river took us back to the area near the palace, from which we walked back to the hotel to freshen up.

Rose booked us tickets for some Muay Thai fights at the big stadium in town, Rajadamnern. The stadium definitely catered to tourists, but the fights were cool to watch nonetheless! Afterwards, we took a ride over to the Ratchathewi neighborhood, known for its expat bars. We got some Thai folk music at the chill Raintree Pub and watched a friendly, perhaps very drunk, local dancing along. Then we walked over for a few more beers at Saxophone Pub and caught some high-energy jazz music in a packed house. All in all, it was an awesome day full of adventure.

Yesterday was our last day in Bangkok until the end of our trip, when we fly out from here. We headed to the train station in town, stopping at a stand to grab a few different flavors of Thai-style roti, which is sort of somewhere between a crepe and a pancake. We took the train an hour north to Ayutthaya, a small city surrounded by rivers that used to be the capital of Thailand before it was sacked by the Burmese in the 1700s.

We immediately took a liking to the town. With 50,000 residents, it feels much more laid-back than Bangkok. We walked into town, stopping at a pavilion for another bite, and then stopped to get a massage to kill some time before our hotel check-in.

The hotel is pretty neat. It’s an old wooden house, and our room has a huge jacuzzi tub. Only $10 per night!

After we dropped our bags off in our room, you guessed it, we went to get some more food. This time we got boat noodles, a local specialty featuring your choice of noodles in a little broth with some pieces of pork or beef and a couple of small meatballs. This place has had a Michelin star for four years in a row, and we got four bowls of noodles for $2.40!

Afterwards, we figured we should get another massage (I mean, they’re only $7.50 for an hour!), so we walked over to another parlor, and this one was even better than the one before.

For dinner (yes, this is the fourth meal of the day), things got more adventurous. I had raw shrimp and preserved egg salads, both of which were actually quite tasty (and spicy!), followed by stir-fried morning glory and dried fish with a sweet and sour sauce. We walked back through a night market for a couple of small bits of dessert before heading back to the hotel for the night. All in all, an exciting new place and lots of new foods today. I’m sensing a theme with this whole massage-food thing…

Today we got up and grabbed coffee at the shop next to the hotel before heading over to Wat Pho (a Buddhist temple that’s around 400 years old) and the Royal Palace, two major attractions near the river in Bangkok. The architecture was crazy in the wat especially, with thousands of tiny colored mirror squares forming a mosaic all over the building. The temple houses the 150-foot long, gilded reclining Buddha too.

After walking around the area, we headed back by a little shop called Noodles by Mom for a spicy bowl of Tom Yum, a delicious hot and sour soup. Them we zipped across town to a mall in a Muslim part of town featured lots of tasty halal restaurants and a cool Thai musical instrument shop in a weird semi-abandoned part of the mall. We were still feeling the jet lag today, so we went back to the hotel for a “quick nap” that ended up lasting the rest of the night.

Today Rose and I embarked on our big trip to Southeast Asia, which will take up most of the rest of our year off. We drove down to Denver a day early to see our friends Josh and Monika before heading out Thursday evening to the airport for 25 hours of travel over three flights to Bangkok. The trip was long, but we were so excited to finally be starting our long-awaited adventure.

After we landed and figured out customs, currency exchange, and cell service issues, we hopped on the train to head into town. Rose booked us a hotel between Chinatown and the Royal Palace, so we headed that way and grabbed some curry and a beer at a local joint in the neighborhood—our first tasty bite of many to come. We checked in to the hotel and freshened up before our first activity, a street food tour in Chinatown. Turns out we didn’t need to eat lunch beforehand, because we had 15 different dishes from the stalls and shops around the neighborhood. The Vegetarian Festival is going on in Thailand too, so after the tour, we walked alongside a parade heading down the main road through Chinatown on our way back to the hotel. What an explosive way to start the trip!

Today we finally headed back toward home. We picked up a rental car and drove to Albuquerque, and tomorrow we’ll drop the car off in Pueblo and grab the bus to Moffat, just outside of Crestone. We’re both glad we tried the AZT and proud to have done the first half, but I think we’ve learned that we are much more attuned to the slower pace of regular backpacking like we did in the Grand Canyon. We are excited to be home and relaxing for the foreseeable future, and feeling great after all the persevering we managed to do as a (now engaged!) couple to get through the rough road from Old Mexico. We’ve got a few months to help Josh and Monika with their wedding planning, visit mom and dad in Houston, and enjoy summer before our next adventure!

This morning we got back in touch with Krocky to get a ride back to Flagstaff. On the way, we stopped in the San Francisco Peaks for a brief walk through the aspen groves up there. We got to town and wanted to celebrate our engagement and being done with this adventure, so we made a reservation at a nice restaurant in town. The meal was decadent! The highlights were mussels and hominy in a Calabrian chili broth, roasted duck breast with Brussels sprouts, and coffee cake with backed apple ice cream for dessert. Just what we needed after eating so much lukewarm gruel this past month!

We scrambled back out of Slate Canyon and made the short trek over to Boucher Creek, a perennial stream where we recouped for a bit. We have a permit for two more nights in the canyon, with short hiking days between them, but we are both feeling pretty wiped out at this point from everything, and we’re both feeling ready to get home and be done hiking for a while. So we decided to take an alternate route out of the canyon today, up the Boucher Trail, supposedly one of the harder trails on the south side. It took the rest of the day to climb out of the canyon, and luckily the trail wasn’t too bad other than a few scrambles here and there. We got to the top at Hermit’s Rest and took the Park Service shuttle back to the village, and from there got a ride to Tusayan. It was dark at that point, so we decided to just grab dinner and stay in town tonight.

Our destination today took us to Slate Canyon. We hiked there pretty early in the day and decided it’d be fun to camp at the river again. The rangers at the village told us about a route for scrambling to the river from the trail here. It ended up being a little intense, but we managed to get down and worked our way to the bottom of Slate to the infamous Crystal Rapids. We took dips in the freezing water and hung out for most of the day on the little beach there. It would be hard to stop here by boat because the canyon opens up right into the rapids, and the scramble to get here on foot wasn’t for the faint of heart either, so it really felt like a secluded spot to spend the night.

Today our packs were back to being relatively light, thank goodness. We hiked out of Ruby and toward Sapphire, our hopeful destination for the evening. We knew there would be water there. We got there in the early afternoon, and we split up to look for good campsites. Rose is always on the lookout for cool-looking rocks, so I came back with one for her… a sapphire ring! I asked her to marry me, and she said yes! We hung out in the canyon for the rest of the afternoon, letting the exciting news sink in and waiting out the heat of the day. We didn’t find any good campsites down in the side canyon, so in the evening we hiked a mile or so out to the Tonto Platform to camp out there.

Today proved to be an exhausting one. Our route took us back up South Bass Trail to the Tonto Trail, which traverses a major stretch of the Grand Canyon’s length. The Gems Route works its way along the driest portion of this trail, and we didn’t expect to find water for about 20 miles after leaving the river today. Since we planned to go slowly through the canyon, we’d have to dry camp tonight too, so we each carried 7 liters to get through the next two days. Woof! With the 6 days of food we’re carrying, it was by far the heaviest load of the trip.

We worked our way out of the Inner Gorge and met back up with the Tonto Trail before turning east. The views up on the Tonto Platform were striking all day; it really feels like you are suspended on a huge park bench, with towering red walls on one side and the drop to the river off to the other. We made our way past a number of side canyons, each one gorgeous enough to be its own national park and deep enough that the trail has to meander miles just to get into and out of it. We slept at Ruby Canyon, the first “gem” we’d encounter on the trail. Luckily, there were a few small, unexpected potholes of water here, which bodes well for the rest of the route.