M.K.Duke

I finally got through my pictures, don’t know why it took me so long!  I went to Belize with my nursing school buddy Kirsten to celebrate the end of school and the passing of the boards, we had a great time.  We flew into Belize City and caught a bus heading west to San Ignacio in the Cayo District, we spent all of our time in the Cayo District rather than trying to jump around from the coast to the inland and it proved to be quite nice as there is a whole bunch of things to do and see that many beach-going types miss out on (don’t get me wrong I enjoy the beach too and if I had more time there I would have loved to check out the Cayes).  For the first three nights we called San Ignacio home and on our actual first full day of vacation we took a tour across the border to Guatemala to see the famous Mayan Ruin of Tikal.

It was a really cool place, we had to drive for about two hours once we crossed the border to get to the park entrance, then we hiked into the rain forest to find the ruins.  Our second day we took a tour to see Actun Tunichil Muknal, which is a very large cave that has lots of Mayan artifact, one of the coolest I thought was this piece of pottery that had a little picture of a monkey on the side:

Our third day we went to Caracol, which is the biggest Mayan ruin in Belize, the main temple is also the tallest structure in Belize at 141 ft, we did get to climb to the top of it and it offered a great view of the surrounding forest:

Our fourth day we pieced together an itinerary of things to see that we could easily get to without a guide, we started off the day with a walk from our guest house up the hill to see Cahal Pech, a smaller ruin but perhaps one of the oldest sites in Belize.  It was nice and peaceful since we were the only tourists there and one of the groundskeepers gave us a mini tour of the ruin:

We bought along the way and ate our breakfast on top of the king’s palace, afterward we walked back down to the main road and caught a bus to take us a few miles down the road to the free hand-cranked ferry:

The ferry takes you across the Mopan River so that you can get to the road that leads to Xunantunich, another Mayan Ruin:

We lucked out again with a very peaceful tour of the ruins without too many tourists, there was a large group of school children that were there for a field trip but that was nice because we got to listen in on their tour and learn about the history.  On our fifth day we left our home base of San Ignacio and headed a little east to Belmopan, which is now Belize’s capital even though Belize City will always be the historical capital (they moved the government buildings inland to protect them from the constant beatings taken on the coast from the tropical storms and hurricanes).  Once we settled in our new guest house we caught another bus and headed for the Belize Zoo:

The bus system was very easy and cheap to use, you can stand alongside any road and flag one down so long as it is not an express bus, they will pick you up even if there is absolutely no room on it!  The Belize Zoo was more of a sanctuary for animals that had been injured or wrongfully kept as pets, the description of the Zoo in the Lonely Planet book sums it up “…the enclosures of individual animals are relatively porous, this means that the wildlife you’ll see inside enclosures are outnumbered by creatures who’ve come in from the surrounding jungle to hang out, eat or just swap tales with incarcerated brethren.”  The Zoo was founded by Sharon Matoola, a biologist from Baltimore, we actually did get to see her walking around doing cage checks with a hawk perched on her shoulder, but we also got to see some animals too:

Our sixth day we went to the Blue Hole and St. Herman’s National Park, it was another nice day and we enjoyed another peaceful hike through the rain forest sans other tourists.

We only hiked into St. Herman’s cave a little ways, you are able to hike in about 300 yards but since we were the only ones there it was sort of creepy plus we wanted to get to the Blue Hole to go swimming:

Because it was Sunday we had the only long wait for a bus the entire trip, we waited for two hours alongside the road (thankfully there were two local girls there also waiting they reassured us it was coming and we all kept each other company)  Our last day of the trip we stopped at Guanacaste National park (a tiny park of  250,000 square yards) just before catching a bus to Belize City, the park boasts a very large and very old Guanacaste tree, sadly the ranger informed us that not too long ago they had to cut down the branches of the tree because they were worried they would fall on someone, but the huge trunk was still there and the park also had other “smaller” Guanacaste trees for us to check out:

Well that is the quick version of the trip, I didn’t want to bore anyone but if you want more you can check out my pictures here. I quickly added captions to most of them and will be adding more and updating.

Erin and I left Sunday morning heading north to New York’s finger lakes, we didn’t really plan much we just sort of had a general idea about where we wanted to go and from there we just sort of flew by the seat of our pants. Our first stop was Robert H. Treman State Park which is just outside of Ithaca. We went on a really nice hike through the gorge, it was pretty much beautiful, tons of mushrooms tons!! We could barely get five feet without stopping to take pictures of another hatch of fungus. The trail followed along the gorge overlooking countless waterfalls, it was great and we had perfect weather, not too hot. There was an amazing swimming spot we didn’t end up going in but I was literally frothing at the mouth when I saw it Erin was ready to push me in it, words just wouldn’t do it justice.

After our hike we headed into Ithaca in search for some “Ithaca is Gorges” T-shirts, these shirts don’t lie folks, it really is gorgeous in the gorges there. We found that Ithaca suited us quite nicely, quaint earthy town that reminded us of Corvallis, Bend and a touch of San Francisco to boot. We found our T-shirts and had a hard time not buying one in every color and style, they are just so satisfying. Our second night we stayed at Filmore Glen State Park in New York, we thought we were going to make it to Vermont this day but the fingerlakes were holding our attention and we wanted to drive around Skaneateles (pronounced Skinny-Atlas) it took us forever to get that one done, we literally had to stalk the locals with our ears to figure out how to say some of the names in New York and Vermont.

Filmore Glen was a nice campground with a built in gorge hike as well, love the campgrounds that come complete with decent hikes, more waterfalls, mushrooms and beautiful views, we got up early to hike this one so we also had the trail to ourselves which is always nice. After our hike we continued on our drive around Skaneateles and then along highway 20 towards Vermont for most of the day. We arrived in Vermont early evening at one of the most beautiful campgrounds we had ever stayed at, nestled in the woods it was so perfect, our site was very private right next to a big stream. We made dinner and then headed out for an evening hike to the top of Bald Mountain, which was a pretty good climb, the only trouble was that the mosquitoes were bitting like crazy so we literally had to book it up the mountain to keep from getting eaten alive, it was a good workout and by the time we got to the top it was getting dark so it was a good thing we had our headlamps with us so that we could see the splotches of blue paint on the trees marking the trail otherwise I couldn’t totally see how people get lost in the forest on simple trails.

The next morning we woke to a torrential down pour so we quickly packed our things and headed out onto the road to do a little touring of Vermont. Our first stop was the Grafton Cheese Company were we got to catch a little cheese making in action and taste some sharp and yummy Vermont Cheddar.

Next we headed to the Vermont Country Store and spent a good hour in there perusing the knick-knacks, it was here that Erin made one of the best purchases of the trip, a set of eight Gnarly Teeth, these little gems proved to be a campers best friend throughout the trip, anytime things were needing a mood lift simply pop in a pair of these bad boys and it was hard not to crack up. since the weather was sort of foul on this particular day we continued to “hike” Vermont via the car stopping at various country stores and sites trying to make the most of the weather. Luckily that night we were able to get a Lean-to at a state park near Waterbury, this was great considering we needed our tent to dry out and the ground was soaked. The next morning we went on another nature hike and then headed to Ben & Jerry’s for a factory tour. We then headed to a Cider house to get some Cider Doughnuts, Erin had been told by someone that these doughnuts were the best thing they had found in VT, so naturally we had to see for ourselves. It was here that we had a very special encounter, Lucky Leo was a man that struck up conversation with us while we were waiting for our hot doughnuts, he offered to take our picture for us and then proceeded to tell us his whole life story and then some. He was quite the character, Leo and his wife Barb are from New Jersey, he boasted “We don’t smoke or drink, never have” and it showed because when he told us he was 81 we were shocked, “You are not 81 years old” I told him and he replied “You are right, I’m not, I’m going to be 82 next month!”

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