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Quick Jaunt to New Zealand
One of the first things on our Australia bucket list was to visit my grandmother in New Zealand. I am very close to my grandmother, and Nick loves her as well, so it was a pretty high priority for us to go and see her as soon as we could. That plan came together during the second-last week of January. Just to show you how amazing my grandmother is, here’s a picture of her in her heyday as a go-go/cage dancer, after she had given birth to 4 sons: And without further ado, we were off to the airport! The first thing we did upon arriving, after settling in, was…
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Berry Creek Falls Hike
The Berry Creek Falls loop has been on our “to hike” list for a while now, pretty much ever since the first time we went to Big Basin State Park last June. It’s rated as a strenuous, 11-mile hike with about 2,000 feet of total elevation, and we’ve overheard park rangers telling others to set aside 6-8 hours to complete the full hike. If you’re curious, you can read a lot about this hike at the following links: http://www.redwoodhikes.com/BigBasin/BerryCreek.html (beautiful photos) http://www.bahiker.com/southbayhikes/bigbasin/waterfallloop.html (bahiker.com is the bible of Bay Area hikes) http://www.everytrail.com/guide/berry-creek-falls-loop-at-big-basin-redwoods-state-park (detailed walkthrough with step-by-step instructions) We finally decided to embark on the hike this weekend. We had a huge breakfast…