Kayaking on the Morava River

I'd been scheming to go boating on the gentle Morava river in the Czech Republic, but I wasn't sure if it was going to come together.  It did!

First step:  camp in Moravičany so I can get a nice early start.  Some views from near my campsite:

Second step:  Rent a kayak and gear (I rented from Tydra, but there are various companies)

Third step:  Paddle, drift, repeat.  Portage around the weirs.  Paddle, drift, repeat. For 28 river kilometers.  Enjoy the greenery and the wildlife (lots of good birds, some fish, a snake, two fighting hares, and some not-shy nutrias)

Fourth step:  Learn better kayak techniques.  I have more experience with canoes than kayaks, and very little river experience (mostly lakes--and seas), and I didn't have the BEST control of the kayak.  So I exerted more energy than was necessary.  Before my next Morava boating, I'm going to figure out better strategies...or maybe I'll convince a friend to go with me and rent a canoe instead.  :)    

The Adventures of Marshmallow, part 1

Before I left home, one of my students gave me two little cat figurines, because she knew I'd miss my cats, and since I couldn't take my cats with me, I could take these.  I was so touched.  I left one to console my mom and brought the other with me.  Mine's called Marshmallow, and here she is, hunting mice at the Convent of St. Agnes in Prague:

Hanging out at a park with a view of the city:

Enjoying the scenery from the train on the way to ValMez:

More of Marshmallow's adventures later.  

Prague--a Great Welcome Back to Europe

I'm behind on my postings of my return to beautiful Europe, so here are a few pics from my first day in Prague:

Prague Castle from across the Vltava:

My first Czech food--the most delicious halušky I've ever had:

Some nice vaulted ceilings:

  Creepy statues:

And fancy facades:

Plus a guy playing absolutely beautiful music on glasses of water:

And, of course, Charles Bridge at night:

Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals, by Laurie Zaleski

I really enjoyed this.  I sometimes wished it were a little more about the animals and the running of the Funny Farm, but the family history/autobiography was really well written and powerful. 

And now I want to plan an entire trip around visiting the Funny Farm.

I picked this randomly off the library shelf because I love animals, and I'm so glad I did.  I did the same with another book about a bird sanctuary once, and it too was one of my favorite books of the year.   

Rating: 4.5 stars

Vanishing Treasures; a Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures, by Katherine Rundell

 

Very well written, very interesting.  I loved the weaving of biological facts with the myths we've developed around these creatures and the history of our interaction with them.

But…it's also profoundly sad.  I hope it helps change some people's minds about what we're doing to this planet and her inhabitants, and I hope that changing of minds leads to action.  Half the proceeds go toward charities working to push back on climate change and environmental destruction. 

Rating:  4.5 stars

Stranded, by Melinda Braun

 

I enjoyed this.  I'm a sucker for man vs nature and working-together-to-survive books, and this delivered.

I did find a lot of things hard to believe.  [MINOR SPOILER ALERT]  One of the major ones was the issue with directions.  It's like day 8 or something.  They're intelligent, with some outdoorsmanship between them, and they've had several days with at least partial sun, and they're all like "I wish we had a compass to figure out which direction is which."  And I'm thinking, um…look at the sun!  No, it won't give you an exact direction, and a lot depends on the season, latitude, etc., but if all you want is—for example—to head eastward to eventually run into a road or something, the sun will give you a pretty good clue.  But none of them even think about that?  And the solution they eventually come up isn't hugely more accurate, so why on Earth does one character keep asking the makeshift compass holder if they are still going east, when I get the distinct impression the compass holder is actually leading them south?  Can't the others tell, more or less, if they're going generally in the right direction or not?  This was a major plot point, so it really bothered me.  [END SPOILERS]

A lot of other things stretched believability (the cliff thing, the wolves, etc), and the characterization could have been a little deeper, but it was a fun read, a good adventure, with the situation getting worse and worse. The writing was smooth.

[SEMI SPOILER ALERT]  And I liked the way it didn't go all fantasy but stayed grounded.  [END SPOILERS]

Recommended for people who don't mind a bit of unbelievability in their survival stories. 

Oh...and I like the author's name.  :)  

Four Stars

My tribute to the North Rim

I am devastated by the loss of the Grand Canyon Lodge and all the other buildings destroyed at the North Rim by the Dragon Bravo fire.  We don't yet know how the forest itself has fared, but I don't think it looks good.    

I am so, so thankful I was able to backpack Rim to Rim this May for the first time.  See my earlier posts for the first three days:  

Here are a few pictures of the North Rim as it was.

The lodge:  

The hiker campground:

Sunrise and sunset views:

This squirrel:

These fossils:

These caterpillars:

This happy version of me cold, and way too early:  

Backpacking Rim to Rim in the Grand Canyon--Day 3--Cottonwood to North Rim

Day 3:  Cottonwood Campground to North Rim Campground, May 14, 2025 (the day BEFORE the North Rim opened)

The morning view from my campsite:  

Since temperatures were dropping to downright pleasant, I didn't worry about getting up really early, so I didn't get on the trail until about 7:50 AM--10 minutes behind the two older guys who'd arrived latish the night before and camped near me, but who I didn't get a chance to talk to.  I thought, "I'll probably pass them on the trail soon."  Joke was on me.  Stay tuned for the rest of the story.

I also left about five minutes behind the big group I'd met the evening before.  The trip leader was a father travelling with his adult daughter (so cool!) and five other people--his work friends and their partners.  They were all super nice, and we leapfrogged all day, chatting and hanging out for bits and then separating and meeting up again later.  All lovely people.  

But those two older men...where were they?

About a mile north of Cottonwood is a gorgeous little waterfall down from the trail.  I can't believe how beautiful this place is, and how varied.  About there is where we started noticing pines.  At a far lower elevation than I've noticed south of the river.  

At Manzanita rest area, the water was on--but it was the last water we would have (water was still off at Supai Tunnel and North Rim trailhead, and there aren't any accessible streams), so we all hung out, filling up and chatting with three female trailrunners, one of whom was more advanced in age than I would believe for such a feat.  Amazing.   On my map app (the otherwise fantastic mapy.cz), there's a symbol for parking at Manzanita rest area, which always cracks me up.  Because this is no parking lot you can drive your car to.  It's a helicopter pad, mostly for emergencies, but I can just imagine someone less familiar with the canyon thinking it was a parking lot at the end of a road.  Not so.  

There was also a scale, so I weighed my pack.  28 lbs, loaded with over 4 liters of water (but minus my heavyish camera).  Ultralight it's NOT, and I hope to get lighter as I get more experienced, but considering all that water, and the fact that most of my gear is on the budget side, I was pretty happy with that.     

As I hiked, things just kept being so beautiful.  I didn't hike fast.  I just enjoyed the day--and took a million pictures.  A funny thing about the Canyon:  I'm old-fashioned and still generally prefer landscape photos that look best on a TV/laptop as opposed to portrait photos that look best on some social media platforms.  But this is a place where it's hard to get the sky and everything else in the frame unless you go vertical.  

From the North Kaibab Trail, the old Bright Angel Trail across the way looked quite precarious in parts, and I wondered if my trail looked just as precarious from that angle.  There WERE a few parts later that day that made me...wary.  I have a well-developed fear of heights, and I suspect that had I been hiking in deep snow or heavy rain or ice or high winds--like the wind two days ago--I would have been really nervous.    

When Roaring Springs roared into view, I was amazed.  The waterfall is huge for a place this generally arid.  The power of that crashing water carried over the space between us.  Amazing.  I met a guy hiking down and asked him to take my picture.  Turns out he was a North Rim employee, on his day off before the big opening.  We chatted for a bit, swapping interesting stories.  

I took the detour to Roaring Springs (the trail is open to the rest area--which heads away from the waterfall, not toward it, but the restroom is closed).  No one else was down there but me and a whole lot of butterflies and dragonflies.  I had a snack and a break and just watched all the life around me. 

I met a ranger on the trail, headed down to turn the water on at Cottonwood, spend the night at Manzanita, and then hike over to the South Rim.  What a terrible job he has.  :)  

The weather was gorgeous and I felt like my seven trail friends and I had the entire canyon to ourselves.  Well, the eight of us, a few North Rim employees, and a handful of hardy R2R2R trail runners.  Fantastic.

Just above the Redwall Bridge, I overheard one of my trail friends say "We're almost there."  His daughter said, "Your version of 'almost there' is different than mine."  For the rest of THAT story, see my next post (shameless promotion).

The rainbow cliffs above the Supai Tunnel floored me with their beauty.  One of my other trail friends said, "I love an outhouse with a view!" She had worked for years as a hiking guide, taking groups to front-country campgrounds and then leading day-hikes.  She'd been here for work, but only to the South Rim.  This was her first trek down into the canyon, and she loved it.  

The sky had been looking a little threatening for a while, but about twenty minutes above Supai Tunnel, it suddenly started snowing!  It was more like icy blobs than lacy flakes, but still.  SNOW!?  I would have sworn the temperature was lower 60s, maybe upper 50s.  I stopped and just enjoyed the phenomenon.  The snowstorm lasted about four minutes.

When Humphrey's peak appeared in the distance, there was a lot more snow there. 

And when I reached the North Rim, there were still pockets of snow in the shade.  

According to my tracker, 8.2 miles (including detour to Roaring Springs), 4172 feet of climb, 8:17 leisurely hours.  Speed demon.   

When I got to the campground, the two older men who'd left 10 minutes before me were already there, relaxing, their camp all set up at the campsite with the best view.  They'd been there for almost three hours.  :)  They were super friendly and we talked gear and such and they invited me to their bonfire party later.

The campground (and the entire North Rim) was still closed to visitors (except those who had walked or biked there), so it felt like we had the whole place to ourselves.  I chatted with a pair of young women who had also made it before me.  Then I chatted with others as they drifted in--my big group of trail friends and another pair of young women I'd met the night before at Cottonwood.  The guys lit a fire, and we all hung out and watched the sunset.

I was the last one to bed.  At 8:25.  

Wonderful, wonderful day.  

See my posts on Day 1:  South Rim to Cottonwood

And Day 2:  Ribbon Falls

Phoenix, Arizona vs Vsetin, Czech Republic

 I don't think I really need to say much more:

Left:  South Mountain Park, Phoenix (admittedly not in the lushest of seasons, but...it's this way a lot of the year).  Right:  a typical hike (in summer) from the hills around Vsetin.