We spent Labor Day Weekend in Duluth, MN. It was fun to see Natalie, Paul, & Kristen, as well as, Grandma & Grandpa. As usual Noah enjoyed riding the Kabota and spending time by the Lake. We also visited the Rose Garden in town and North Shore Park Point Beach.

At the end of August we had several bundles of wood delivered to our house. This winter we will be trying out our new wood stove. Jay and Noah enjoyed cutting the wood. We actually had a toy chainsaw that we gave Noah. It was almost identical to the real one Jay had. Noah enjoyed pretending to cut wood like dad. He is very good at making the chainsaw noise.

In early September Jay took a trip to Chicago for work. Noah and I went with him. We were able to check out Legoland and a local farm. We went to toddler Tuesday at Legoland. Legoland was open a few hours early for Toddlers to play. Noah enjoyed the playground and the car building/racing area the best. They also had a 4D Bob the Builder movie. It was only 10 minutes long, but, it was still hard for Noah to sit still. At the local farm Noah was able to see cows, horses, chickens, and pigs. Inside the main building they had an interactive area where he was able to milk a pretend cow and collect eggs from a pretend chicken coop.

This year we decided to go camping at the Porcupine Mountains in Upper Michigan. We left early Saturday morning and arrived just in time for lunch. Noah quickly found the raspberry and thimble-berry bushes.

After lunch we hiked the Presque Isle River. We saw several beautiful waterfalls. It was a handful to have Indy, Bailey, and Noah to take care of.

After our early afternoon hike we checked in at our campground at Union River. We ended the afternoon with a hike at Lake of the Clouds, one of them most scenic spots in the park.

Later we set-up camp and cooked dinner on the campfire. Saturday evening was rather uneventful due to rain.

Sunday morning we woke up to clear skies. We visited the Visitor Center and then hiked Summit Peak at 1,958 feet. There was a nice observation tower that we could see the park and surrounding area. After that, Noah decided it was time for a nap so we headed back home.

Lastly, here is a picture of Noah with Aunt Emily. She came to visit for a few days. Noah was sad to see her leave. He started crying and had to be pulled away from her. It was great to see Emily and to spend some time with her.

I’m catching up on putting old trip reports up on this site. This is one from Kris and my trip to Isle Royale National Park in August 2008.

This trip first came up for Kris and I about 2 years ago during a trip to boundary waters. Since that trip we’ve done a few other camping trips but have had Isle Royale in mind as our first week-long backpacking trip together. It carries special significance for me because it is where my parents went on their honeymoon almost 33 years ago (they went in Sept of 1976).

Trail selection came up for us, and we decided on the Minong Ridge trail. It is supposed to be the most difficult on the island, with lots of ups and downs onto and off of the ridgeline on the northern side of the island. For portions it is more exposed, and it is marked heavily by cairns vs. trail markers. Occasionally it is difficult to find the trail but it was pretty rare that we required more than a slight pause to point ourselves in the right direction. We decided on spending a week on the island, and going from McCargoe Cove to Windigo along the Minong Ridge trail.

We decided to start our trip out of Grand Portage, MN because my parents have a house in Duluth we could use for a home base, and we booked our trip on the Voyager II to ferry us to the island.

Arriving and loading the ferry was completely uneventful. I wish I would’ve known that I could have brought more food/snacks on the boat with us – I’d assumed all trash we brought would have to be carried all week so we didn’t bring much. The boat has some outside seating and some inside – if you’re an outside type of person (I am) and the weather is nice, try to head immediately outside when you board if it is crowded, the seats fill up and you’ll be either stuck sitting inside or standing for the trip if a seat doesn’t open up. It is nice you can move around the whole time you’re on the boat though so it isn’t too bad. The ferry ride to Isle Royale goes first to Windigo where you visit the ranger station to get your camping permit. This section takes about 2.5hrs or so. Then after permiting we got back on the boat for a trip to McCargoe cove. This took a long time, probably another 2.5hrs which seemed like forever as we were anxious to get onto the island. Here’s a shot of the Voyager II loading up:

Our first day we got into McCargoe in the early afternoon – maybe 2pm or so. We could’ve hiked to Todd Harbor that day but having a week for essentially 4 hiking days we decided to stick around the campsite there. We headed up the hill and got our spot, made lunch, goofed around, made dinner, etc. McCargoe Cove seems to be a good spot to see wildlife, but we didn’t see much. There are shelters here to stay in, but there weren’t any open – not a big deal really since we were prepared for tenting it anyway. Here’s a few pics of McCargoe – the first is tent campsite #3 (#1 looked the best, #2 the worst from what we thought):

So on Day 2 of our trip, our task was to hike from McCargoe Cove to Todd Harbor. It was a 6.7mi hike and we did it in about 3.5hrs. The ridge had a lot of good views and afforded us lots of spots for breaks to check them out. Also on the way from McCargoe to Todd the Windigo mine is off a side trail, and is worth checking out. It was pretty neat to see the remanants of the mine. We stayed at tent site #2 at Todd Harbor – there is only one shelter and it was taken. Later on we found that the group sites are really nice and since there were no groups we should’ve headed over and stayed there, but no biggie.

The afternoon was spent hanging out on the beach, swimming in lake superior, warming up on the big dock, having a fire, doing some mini laundry, and other stuff. Todd Harbor was probably my favorite campsite – very beautiful!

Kris and I by the group campfire ring (you can see the dock way in the back of the pic):

Day 3 of the trip was set up to go from Todd Harbor to Little Todd harbor. This was another 6.7mile day. We finished it in 2.5hrs as there were very few good views to check out, and when we were down in the woods there were enough bugs that breaks we took were very short so we wouldn’t get eaten alive. The forests of birch are really beautiful in this section, and the trail is pretty good although at this time of year it is obsured by brush/grass/weeds in areas so its tough to see what you’re stepping on.

We pulled into camp at 11:15am and stayed at Side #1 in Little Todd Harbor. The campsites here are very remote, and although there was another couple at the site we only saw them briefly when we first arrived. After that we couldnt’ even tell they were there. The beach here was really nice and had nice rock outcroppings to sit on to filter water and stuff, but Kris was annoyed by the number of bugs (there seemed to be a lot of bees and other varieties of annoying bugs for her). She’s allergic to bees and spent a while in the afternoon hanging out in the tent reading/relaxing while I shot photos, gathered firewood, and just goofed around in general. We went to bed as the sun did since the bugs were coming out, and quickly after a storm approached and it rained most of the night (i think, I’m a deep sleeper). I got up and shot some pics of the storm coming in but haven’t downloaded them to the computer yet since they were with Kris’ camera.

Here’s some Little Todd pics (i think this rock pile is the one from dumpryan’s group from isleroyaleforums.com):

Prepping lunch on the shore:

Campsite #1/afternoon campfire:

This is about when we hit the tent:

So Day 4 was sweet. That is all I can say.

It was supposedly the hardest hiking of the trip, and only 5.7 miles total. We took 3.5hrs and not really due to breaks – it just is slower going to be up/down so much.. It is a lot of up/down all day and lots of exposed ridge walking – bring water! The thing is, the views are really awesome and every step was 100% worth it. This was my favorite day by far just for the views. I also like hopping around rocks and stuff and even with the packs it was fun picking our way through rocks on the ridge following cairns and stuff. We ended up at campsite #1 at North Desore Lake. We swam and got a much needed shower/bath, ate, shot pics, watched loons, toyed with the overly friendly squirrels, and did the usual reading/card playing. I’ll get some trail pics up soon, but here are pics from the North Desor campground:

Here’s Kris in our tent – with an uncharacteristic frown:

The mist on teh lake for sunrise was really cool:

OK, Day 5 of the trip was also really sweet. It was a long day, from North Desor Lake campsite to Washington Creek/Windigo. To Washington Creek campsite is 12.6mi, and another .3 to Windigo.

We got up and got an early start on the day knowing it’d be long. We ended up on the trail for about 7hrs, including a few bio breaks and lunch.

Probably the hilight of my entire trip was on this day towards the last third of the trip. I was leading Kris (I usually am first, she likes to follow), and came over a ridge. Coming over the ridge, there was a 2-3′ ledge, and I got there to see a wolf’s head pop up and look at me. She stands up, then a bit to her right, I see another wolves head. This one was a puppy! Both of them very very quickly ran away as I got Kris’ attention and she got a chance to see both of them. They ran off in the woods and we kept sight of the adult for a about a minute, but they were gone fast. I wasn’t quick enough to get the camera, but I will not soon forget about this.

Wolves on IR apparently are very rare to see, and especially a puppy. The rangers later in the trip told us that usually they don’t know if there are puppies or not and only guess by listening to pitch of the wolves howls at night and guess if there is a puppy. These wolves were very likely part of Middle Pack according to the rangers, and we were the stars of camp later in the trip once we’d told everybody about the wolf encounter.

Anyway, back to the day – it was a great, long day of hiking. It was tiring, but had a great variety in the hikes. It had some of the previous day’s ridgeline hiking, and then some of the earlier hiking through the woods. Overall the trail was easier than the rest of the trail and was quicker hiking, but it was still a tiring long day.

At the end of the day, we got a shelter (#13) at Washington Creek, settled in, and got a head start on our relaxing that we’d be able to enjoy for the next day and a half until we got onto the ferry again. We also hit the camp store and got a snickers ice cream bar to reward ourselves for making the trip.

Overall, at this point we were both in pretty good shape – the trail had been hard, but wtih the exception of the last day of hiking the days were short enough to recover pretty easily by the next one.

Here’s pics from that day:
This was our shelter (taken at a later date but you get the idea)

This is where we pooped – every campsite had soemthing similar:

I’ll do the last couple days of the trip all lumped together. We spent the time in Washington Creek/Windigo. On the first night, we saw a moose (our first of the trip) in the creek behind teh campsite. I was super excited to be able to be so close to it and take pictures of it. On the day before we left we were able to hike the nature walk, goof around Windigo, hung out on the big dock, etc.

Hilights of that day were watching groups come to the island via the Voyager II, and a really nice gentleman on a boat called the Chequemagon let us use his inflatable kayaks to paddle around the harbor for a bit. We were (and are) very grateful and it was fun. We attended ranger’s programs both evenings we were in camp, and then another one before we took off from the island. They were about Winter, Mammals, and Moose and were all very good. Hearing history of the island and information on the wolf/moose study was very interesting.

Here’s pics from the last couple days:

Here’s from the ferry as we go away:

Overall comments on the trip-

We had a blast – the Minong Ridge was a tough trail, but the mileage we did was fairly easy for recovery and we’re in pretty good shape. We had no real injuries or soreness that was really bad – I developed a sore left achillies on the last day and my right heel got slammed in teh shelter door which made me a bit of a limper the last day, but it was OK. Kris did great. Id go back in a heartbeat.

We weighed out at teh end of the trip at the ranger’s station, Kris’ pack was 27# with water, mine was 50#. The extra camera gear adds up, but was worth it (i think it was 10-12# total).

This was my first trip with my new MSR water filter. I love it, moreso than my Pur Hiker since it can be cleaned in the field.

Also the first major trip with our MSR Dragonfly stove. We cooked a lot – 10 backpack meals, ramen, oatmeal, hot cocoa, warmed water for washing, and made cobbler for around 11oz of fuel total. Good thing I brought 33oz total.

Mosquitoes weren’t horrendous. I expected very bad, but they are actually worse at the nature preserve at home than they were when we were there. We used 100% deet Repel on our exposed skin and really weren’t too bad – maybe 20bites total for me for the week.

The trail was a bit overgrown in parts, but overall in great shape. I can tell the trail crews work hard, especially on erosion control. Trail markers were knocked down but it wasn’t too hard to find the trail.

Some of the latrines were very buggy, some had huge spiders. One even had as many flies coming out of it as the guy in the movie Green Mile’s mouth in that one part. I prefer the open air thunderboxes in the boundary waters to an enclosed dumper, but thats just me.

We used 15 degree down sleeping bags for the trip. Some nights they were too hot, some nights they were great. I’d hesistate to go much warmer than a 30-40 degree bag for most people even in the summer – it was chilly at night.

Stream crossing-

Storm rolling in to Little Todd Harbor:

Wind was a bit up after the storm:

Here’s Kris on the ridge:

This is a shot of what you’re typically walking on all day:

Break time:

Checkin the map:

Walkin the plank:

There are more pictures from the trip on My Isle Royale Set on Flickr – jay1441. Hopefully you’ve enjoyed the writeup, if you have any questions let me know!

I got a chance to take a quick trip this weekend on the Trans Wisconsin Adventure Trail – it’s a a 500+ish mile route from southwest Wisconsin all the way up to the shores of Lake Superior. I was not planning on going the full distance this weekend, just the southern parts then head back home.

Friday I left home in the morning and headed over to the start of the trail. It was nearly at Dubuque, IA. I started the trail, and finally hit the dirt near Cassville, WI. The roads between there and Prairie Du Chien are pretty fun, with a lot of great scenery near the Mississippi river. I’d ridden these roads in the fall last year, but it was fun to get back on my own. I had mounted up my knobby tires this time so the gravel was quite a bit more fun than last time when I was on my street tires. Here’s a few pictures of the roads and stuff I saw along the way.

The water was still really high from flooding the past few weeks, it was fun to go poke around a bit and see how much further it really was up than normal.

I arrived at my campsite at Wyalising SP early in the afternoon, which surprised me. I had overestimated the amount of time it’d take me to get to the trail, and then also to the campsite. Having gotten there early, it gave me a great chance to go re-ride the roads I’d been having fun on earlier in the day after I set up camp.

I got back to Wyalusing in time for a quick trip to the overlook prior to sunset, then went back to camp and had a nice fire and had a couple of beers.

Day 2 was pretty up in the air – I hadn’t decided exactly where I’d go yet. I decided to take the alternate route into Iowa and did some fun roads there. I haven’t really been to that part of Iowa before and Harpers Ferry, IA does look a very little bit like the Harpers Ferry out east. Here’s a few shots from those roads.

Once I was back in Wisconsin, the roads continued to be really fun to ride, and I even went through some amish country. Extremely beautiful countryside, I will have to go back again someday.

After that, I headed further north, found some sandy roads, enjoyed them, hit some atv trails, enjoyed them, then burned it home rather than camp a 2nd night. I got home after a really long day, but it was fun.

And one last artsy shot:

To start, this trip was one that Kris and I took in 2009. I’d done this writeup but hadn’t ever posted it up here for some reason. I thought I’d share here now. On with the show…

I tried to post links to places internet sites where possible to help anybody who’s looking to do similar stuff. We also used a Moon Peru Guidebook which was helpful once we were there in finding restraunts and deciding which stuff we wanted to see. Here was our general itinerary:

Day 1 – Fly from Chicago to Atlanta to Lima, stay at Hostel
Day 2 – Fly from Lima to Cusco
Day 3-4 – in/around Cusco
Day 4 – Train to Aguas Calientes, hostel
Day 5 – Machu Picchu & Train to Cusco
Day 6/7 – Cusco
Day 8 – Fly to Lima, Lima, then Fly to Chicago via Atlanta

Here’s a thread on a photography forum where I did a lot of the planning:
Machu Pichu – Peru Planning – NSOP Forums

Day 1′s wrap-up will be pretty easy as it was mostly just travel in the US and arriving at the hostel in Lima late at night. Our flight out of Chicago was in the middle of the day, and I was able to get off to a great start by meeting David Cross in the airport. He’s a comedian and actor if you don’t know and was in one of my favorite shows on TV – Arrested Development. I was happy to get this picture with him-

From Chicago, we flew to Atlanta on Delta, then to Lima. The flight to Atl was fine, as was the flight to Lima. Atlanta to Lima is around 6.5 hours, so not really that bad. We ended up landing around 11-11:30pm and just immediately got picked up by our hostel’s taxi and went there. The airport was crazy with all of the companies meeting people and picking them up, but it was pretty easy. We got the first taste of having to say “No, Gracias” 300x a day as there were people offering everything.

The hostel we stayed at the first night was called Pay Purix Backpacker’s Hostel – it was one we found on hostels.com and was fairly decent for a quick, easy place that was about 5min from the airport, clean, and comfortable. It is run by a family and the breakfast was homemade food from the mom/dad. It was what would turn out to be typical Peruvian breakfast (for a hostel at least) of eggs, bread, and fruit salad. The hostel had free internet/computers, tv, lounge, bar, etc.

Here’s the room:

Roosters woke us up in the morning – I have no idea where the heck they were, but they woke us up. Then, we were off to the airport for our flight to Cusco.

All the pictures on my flickr from the trip are in the same set – Jay’s Peru 2009 Flickr Set

So, for day 2 we essentially flew in the morning from Lima to Cusco. A couple general things first. Kris and I were taking this trip just for fun, as a way to relax and enjoy each other. We’ve recently announced that she is pregnant, and she was around 14-15 weeks at the time of the trip. She’s been doing really well when it comes to the usual stuff like morning sickness and general tiredness. We had originally intended to do a 4 day trek on the Inca Trail which is an old trail the Incans used to travel from Cusco to Machu Picchu. Just to stay on the safe side we ended up cancelling the trek and doing more day trips based from a hostel/hotel so in case anything bad happened we’d be able to get help. Cusco is one of the highest cities in the world at 3400m, so we wanted to play it safe.

For gear, each of us carried a medium size pack around 45-50L with our stuff and that was all. We packed light on purpose to avoid having to deal with a bunch of bags, checking luggage, etc and it worked well. There were many, many laundry services around so I would do the same thing again and maybe even bring less clothes for a lighter load. We’re used to backpacking with heavier packs and a lot of gear, so this was very managable. I’d brought my camera which adds weight for me – I brought my 40d, 10-20mm, 17-55mm, and 70-200mm(which i never used once) but I’d guess I was still under 35# total.

So, anyway, the flight to Cusco was pretty short, only about 1.5hrs. Lima is a pretty dismal place most of the year apparently, covered by fog all day long and kind of grimy (more on this later). We were at the hostel about 5min from the airport and although we could’ve walked, the area around the airport seems very run down industrial type area and was not very fun to look at.

The flight flew over the Andes though, and there were some great views:

(more on my flickr – http://www.flickr.com/photos/jay1441/sets/72157622432506047/ )

Once we got to Cusco, we headed straight to our hostel to check in. We stayed at the Amaru I for the first night. It was pretty nice and our room was great with some great views of the city. We soaked it in, took a quick nap, and headed down to the Plaza de Armas to check stuff out. Since we knew it was such high altitude and we were tired we planned on taking it very easy the first day when we got there to see how stuff went.

Here’s the view from our room-

Here we are in front of the cathedral on the square:

In the afternoon some rain rolled in as we were having coffee/tea:

A bit after the rain started, we were walking around and there was a church processional. These guys were carrying St. Francis to the church for some reason and another group carried another saint from another corner of the square. Random, but interesting.

A shot of the fountain and the cathedral in the background:

We ate pizza for dinner at one of the restraunts on teh square, and headed back for bed/rest. I had a pretty bad headache and Kris was just plain tired. I’ll finish this off with a few shots of the room and the city at night out our windows:

The 3rd day of the trip was actually our 2nd day in Cusco. We’d gone to bed with me having a headache and Kris feeling fine. The beds in the room were just twin beds, but Kris wasn’t sleeping well and came over to visit me a couple times in the night. She woke up feeling flu-ish, could’ve been effects of the pregnancy, could’ve been ffects of the altitude, or a bit of both, but she puked once in the morning. She was a trooper though, and by 10am we’d been up, eaten the breakfast from the hostel, and were good to go.

We ended up heading to our other hostel which is a partner with the Amaru, called Hosteria de Anita. Our room there had a queen bed, separate room with a couch/chairs, a small kitchen, and a decent bathroom/shower.

What we ended up doing was heading out on what they call a “City Tour” which was a half day tour. We signed up for the tour about noon and it left about 2 and went until about 7pm. It took us to a few sites – Qorichana (Sun temple), Sachsayhuman, Q’enko, Punka Pukara, and Tambochay. Here’s a few pics and hilights:

Quorichana was a temple for the Incans that was later built over top with a spanish temple. It was really interesting to learn that when there was an earthquake in the 1950′s all of the spanish structures were knocked down and cracked while it uncovered a foundation of incan stonework that had been there for ever that they never knew about.

The next stop was sachsayhuman, which is pronounced “sexywoman” by the people there. I kept cracking up whenever they’d say it but that’s how they say it. Anyway, this place was a place of fortress or ceremonial purpose, they don’t really know for certain. It has some HUGE stones that are simply amazing how they do the work they did to get such great tolerances between the stones with no mortar.

The next stop on the tour was Q’enko I think – the translation is “labyrinth” and there were some cool caves where they buried people and stuff. There is also a cool huge altar type rock.

Pukapukara was the next stop, called “the red fort” or something like that. This was a smallish ruin but pretty neat.

After that we stopped at Tambonachay, which was a fountain that was supposed to give the water of life – eternal life, prosperity, fertility, etc. Some people who apparently don’t mind water-borne illness drank the water, but kris just touched it:

The last stop on the tour was a textile factory – we got to see some dudes making rings and learn a bit about the different types of wool used. Kris got a hat made of baby alpaca wool, I just took pics.

After that, we came back, went to a crappy restraunt for dinner (had some local peruvian food that just wasn’t very good), and went to bed as we were pretty tired from the tour and the altitude.

Here’s a couple of Kris for you that have been reading.

Day 4 of the trip was still based in Cusco for us, but we took a full day tour in the Sacred Valley, this included Pisac (ruins and market), ullayantambo, urambamba, and chinchero as well as a lot of other small sites to look at along the way. Fun stuff.

On the way from Cusco to Pisac, we stopped at a small market for the same stuff that’s at every market. Nothing too outstanding, just a bit of stuff, a few little kiddies around to talk to, and some native ladies weaving and stuff like that.

Pisac was pretty cool, the market was huge, and very great to see, especially on a sunday when the locals come to do their barter/trade with various vegetables, clothes, meat, food, etc. Lots to look at:

The ruins in pisac were pretty cool. This was the first ruin I’d seen with such an impressive terrace structure where they used the levels to farm and such. The irrigation trenches were amazing how they used a natural spring up top on the mountain and then had it go down the terraces to irrigate the crops all the way down. There were also amazing views there of the surrounding area and the mountains and valleys.

This was also the site of another temple, here’s a shot of the ruins:

We stopped for lunch at urambamba at a buffet place that was part of the tour. Nothing special but not bad. Next stop was Ollyantambo which was some sort of ‘lodge’ for the incans. The ruins here were pretty impressive, tall, and probably one of the most impressive was the size of the stones that were brought up to the top of the hill/mountain. Estimated weight was like 30 tons, and they were transported from across the valley as they type of stone was not native to the area. This shot is of a wall made of these stones.

Here’s a typical sight – some old steps that were built into the walls every so often:

If you squint just right you can see the face of an incan in the mountain up at about 10:30 or so (if it was a clock)

Here’s the far side of the ruins there. Not as nicely restored but pretty impressive for the number of terraces and how much work it would’ve taken to build/maintain/grow on:

Last stop of the day was Chinchero, a small village on the way back. This was pretty cool as the main incan temple was turned into a cathedral. Everything was old style and pretty creepy inside with very puppet style statues and such.

The 5th day of the trip was mostly a travel day. We were in Cusco, got up early and took a taxi to the train station in Poroy to head to Aguas Calientes. We weren’t sure about what we’d do once we got there. We’d thought about heading to MP that day in the afternoon and then again the next morning, but found out the tickets weren’t discounted at all for the 2nd day (our guidebook said it was half price the second day). We ended up getting there, getting to the hostel, then took the advice of our host and hiked to the top of a mountain that was across a valley from machu picchu and had a great view. I’d highly recommend the hike, it was great, but hard due to the altitude up top.

The coolest part was the wooden ladders bolted to the cliff faces partway up. It was pretty neat to be out on the hike and have such great views. Heres some pics:

Here’s kris climbing the big set of ladders:

and another set:

Here’s the rewarding view at hte top – you can see MP across there:

This is the incan flag – it was at the top of this mountain.

This is the view down to the village where we’d started – Aguas Calientes:

Day 6 was our day to finally check out machu picchu. We woke up early at hour hostel and headed to the bus station to catch a bus about 5:30-5:45am. We wanted to get there right away in the morning and make the most of it. Our train out of town was at 4pm so we wanted to be able to be upt here for a good amount of time before we had to go.

So when we got there, our first task was to find a guide. Our theory was to go on a guided tour of the main stuff for a fairly reasonably cheap price, then we figured after the tour we’d head around and check out the sites that we wanted to see more or ones they didn’t show us. It worked perfectly. We found an english speaking guide for a group of about 10 people for $5 each. Great deal for a 3 hour tour.

There are so many different things to see at MP, its hard to do it justice by writing about each part. I’m just going to throw up a few pics, but check out the link above and really explore, there are a lot of things to see.

One note, on the train from Cusco, we took the “backpacker” train which is the cheapest option available to tourists. There is a “vistadome” version which looks OK and has some nice windows on the roof so you can see the sights. It was like twice the price so we went cheaper and I don’t think we really missed much. If you’re a baller there are like $500 tickets that have asian girls that give you massages w/happy endings, dinner, and stuff like that but that was way out of our league.

That’s a few from MP, but seriously check out the rest in the set on flickr.

We did two trips that I think most people that visit MP don’t do. We didn’t go to Huyana Picchu which is the big mountain you see in teh pics, after hiking Putucusi the day befor we didn’t think it was worth it. We first hiked to the Inca Bridge, which was a trail that they believed to be for hunting or something liek that. Its pretty cool to see how the trail was built into the side of the cliffs and stuff.

The other side trip was to the Sun Gate, which was about 45min uphill to get to it. It was frickin hot and we didn’t have much water, so the hike sucked. With Kris being on the nest she ended up getting pretty tired up top and i was a bit worried. I was tired too but that was just because I am a wuss.

Good view from up there though – the bus road is in the front but you see all the ruins in the back.

There are some llamas that live at MP too:

So after two days of getting up early with a lot of activity in trains, hikes, ruins, etc we were happy to get back to our hostel in Cusco and have a day or two to just relax and enjoy the city a bit. We’d gotten home about midnight from the train trip back from Aguas Calientes and pretty much went straight to bed. We woke up nice and late, had breakfast at our hostel and then headed out to the city.

With the ‘tourist ticket’ or Boleto Touristico you get entry to a whole bunch of places. We’d gone to the ruins and a few on the city and the sacred valley tour, but there were a few sights around the city that we were going to check out. Most were honestly boring art museums that had some not that exciting art, but some of it was cool stuff. Some were history, regional, etc.

We also spent a lot of time just chilling, drinking a $.25 coke, sitting on benches, and watching people. There are a lot of tourists to watch, but some of the most fun was watching the people that are shining shoes, selling ipaintings, etc. I also got to watch them hoist jesus onto the top of one of the churches on the square. Their work was painstakingly slow.

I think this lady was a hooker:

I gave this little boy some crayons:

We ate dinner at Granja Heidi, which was pretty awesome. My dinner was an approximately 16″ wide banana and chocolate crepe and I had some caramel milk/coffee hot drink which was insanely good.

There’s a bit more the the trip but this is as far as we went. The rest of the pics are on Flickr.