Leaving Jackson Hole

It has taken weeks to get ready for this two month+ trip to Seoul and Brisbane before spending 6 weeks tramping through New Zealand.  It will probably be an "all nighter" tonight also!  OF COURSE!  We leave at 1 tomorrow.  We're off to Seoul first, five days to see the places where our good friend Margaret was born and raised in a missionary family.  I have noted all the great museums to visit.  Next we're off to Brisbane to visit a good friend that Denny made years ago while traveling in South America.  We are only sorry that we can only spare a week to see the nearby sights with them as guides.  For we're REALLY off to New Zealand to tramp as many of the tracks as we can fit into 6 weeks.

It has taken weeks to get ready for this two month+ trip to Seoul and Brisbane before spending 6 weeks tramping through New Zealand.

I wrote to many of the B&Bs to get "the facts" from the locals and we came up with the plan to purchase passes on the Magic Bus (Magic Travel Network, www.magicbus.co.nz, which allows you to get on and off wherever you please, staying anywhere as long as you like.  We'll swap our suitcases for backpacks when we arrive in Auckland on the 26th and head out.  We hope to be tramping a track four or five days out of each week.  We have been haunting the tramping sites to determine the best ones.  The Great Walks (such as Milford and Routeburn)  may be too congested for Denny -- you all know how he likes to be in the wilderness on his own.  But the beauty of NZ is that there are HUNDREDS of great tracks.  We'll stay in the huts on some but have a lightweight tent that is held up with our hiking poles plus a titanium kitchen and the very tiniest of camping stoves.  Our new sleeping bags are not even 2 pounds!   Don't even try to imagine the clothing that we are NOT taking, NOT carrying!   But I do have insect repelling shirts and pants -- those sandflies better BEWARE!

We have honed our personal items down to two small carry ons for the essentials plus a large and a small rolling duffle bag.  In the large duffle we will carry our backpacks and in the small, our camping gear.  When we get back from Australia we will take out the tramping gear and place the carry-on luggage, small duffle and winter clothing into the large duffle bag, leaving it in storage at the Backpackers' Hostel, Sky Lodge, near the Auckland airport.  We'll pack our backpacks and head off on our first bus ride toward the "glowing caves" of Waitomo -- should we float through the dark caves in inner tubes?

More on all that soon...