Adventures

Ireland - Day 9 - Gap of Dunloe

The weather forecast for our day nine had been pretty good, so we wanted to use the day for our hiking trip through the Gap of Dunloe. We booked the trip "the wrong way round" - starting our journey with a boat ride through the Killarney Lakes, and then walking though the famous gap, where we'd be picked up again at the end.

We started the tour in a Vintage Bus at O'Connors Pub in Killarney. The bus took us out to Ross Castle, where we transfered into a small wooden boat.

Then the ride across the Killarney Lakes began. First we crossed the biggest lake, Lough Leane, until we came to the Meeting of the Waters.

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Ireland - Day 1 - From Dublin to Renvyle

Our day began really early when we left home for the Frankfurt Hahn Airport at about 4:30 am. At the airport everything was pretty uneventful, and soon we were on the plane and in the air. We had a very smooth flight (which I have been told is rather unusual) and a perfect landing in Dublin at about 9.00am local time. Our next step was the rental car pickup at the airport, and then it was Tims job to take us onto Irelands roads. Driving on the left side, of course, as our rental car, navigational systems and multiple road signs told us repeatedly.

Our first stop was Trim Castle, the biggest anglo-american castle...somewhere.

Anyways, it was in fact pretty impressive - and we walked around the castle grounds for quite some time to take our first photos on this trip. It was drizzling most of the time we spent at Trim, but we did not let that darken our mood. We all brought plenty of rain-equipment, because after all, we're in Ireland, what did we expect?

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Leuven - Short trip to Belgium

A few days ago I've been visiting Leuven for a short business related trip. Unfortunately I didn't really have the time to see much of the city. Nevertheless I've took a short stroll through the beautiful city centre before I headed to the trainstation back home. First thing i recognized: Everybody is, like in the Netherlands, cycling like a maniac in Belgium. That feels like a big contrast to Germany, where cycling isn't that popular I guess.

Another big difference to Germany is the still existing historical part of the city and all those tiny shops everywhere. I think that's probably mainly because Germany has lost a huge part of it's architectural history due to WWII which is quite sad. It creates such a cozy feeling which I experienced way more in cities in the Netherlands and now also Belgium.

Next time i visit I will try to find some more time, so I can also taste some of those > 1000 beers they have there ;)

Day 18 - Denali National Park and the green shuttle bus

The second day of our road trip began early for us, as we had to make our way to Denali National Park until 11.30 at the latest to be on time to board our shuttle bus. Since we hadn’t seen any animals on the previous day and were almost through the scenic parts of the road, we didn’t expect too much of the last bit of road left on the Denali Highway. But just about five minutes after we had started driving again two caribou stood right in the middle of the road. We stopped. They looked at us and then started to walk towards us. They stayed in sight for quite some time, looking at us just as curious as we looked at them. Then another car drove by and they went off into the bushes.

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Day 17 - The scenic Denali Highway

The beginning of our trip to the Denali Highway led us up the Glenn Highway, a route we had taken before, up to Glennallen. From there we followed the Richardson Highway to Paxson where we finally took a turn onto the Denali Highway. Just getting there had already swallowed up 6 hours in the car, and we were determined to drive at least half of the Denali Highway that day.

The craziest thing though was actually the process of gassing up. We knew we’d have to gas up again before we went onto the Denali Highway, but didn’t want to gas up as early as Glenallen. We had a map that showed a gas station in Paxson but I really didn’t want to take the risk of taking the very last possible gas station. Turned out it was a good decision, because Paxson ended up being something like a ghost town. The lodge advertised in our brochure was abandoned and the gas station was nowhere to be found...

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Day 10 - From Homer to Seward

Day 10 started with a lot of rain at night, which made packing up the tent much harder than hoped for. The rain kept pouring down while we travelled up the Sterling Highway towards Kenai, where we intended to do a short surprise-stop to visit some aquaintances of our hostfamily. Sadly the people we wanted to visit were't at home. Since it was still raining we ended up just driving around the town, going to the Visitors Center and then hitting the road again.

Just before getting to Seward we saw lots of cars parked in a rest area and people with cameras standing on a nearby bridge. It turned out they were watching an adult moose cow on one side, and two young moose on the other side of the bridge. So we also got out of the vehicle, grabbed our cameras and took a bunch of pictures. These moose were a lot closer than the ones we had seen before, so we managed to get a few pretty good pictures, especially of the moose cow.

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Day 9 - Homer

After a nice breakfast with Bagels and Cream Cheese we walked out to the Homer Spit. The view from the top of that short strip of land was incredible, since we basically had a 360° view around Kachemak Bay. The weather was OK, it wasn't very cold and it wasn't raining, but it was pretty foggy out there, so we couldn't see the glaciers that are supposed to be there. Instead we saw the blue-ish silhouettes of the mountains stacked up after each other, everything wrapped in fog and clouds, which gave us to the possibility to take some really nice pictures nevertheless. It almost gave the impression of twilight all day.

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Day 8 - The Kenai Peninsula

The start of our second week in Alaska also marked the beginning of our second road trip. This time we're not going up into interior Alaska, but rather down south to visit the Kenai Peninsula. With a pop-up trailer attached to the huge car we started our way south via the seward highway along Turnagain Arm. During the five hour drive we passed through Copper Landing, Sterling, Soldotna and Anchor Point to finally make it to our destination: Homer. The scenic drive led us along the sea, through the Chugach Mountains, over several rivers and swamp areas.

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Day 6 - Trip back to Eagle River

Our day #6 in Alaska started really early as we wanted to go pick blueberries again before we had to leave Tok. We got up at 5 o'clock to do so, and after about one and a half hours of picking we ended up having a whole bucket of blueberries that we got to take back to Eagle River so we could have some blueberry pancakes in the future.

After that we started our long drive back "home". Even though we really looked hard we didn't see many wild animals, besides a young fox and some swans. The road led us back the same way that we had come, following Tok Cutoff and the Glen Highway, but we did stop at a few different picture locations and took more photos...

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Day 4 - Four Mile Lake, Moose and the ice-cream-drop

Our first day in Tok started off rather uneventful. Later we went to the Tetlin Wildlife Refuge InfoCenter to find out about the bugs that had bothered us the day before. After some back and forth we found out what they were. Wait for it. Firebugs. Some bugs that lay their eggs in burning wood and coals – they will even singe their feet off doing so. There sure are some weird animals out there. Later in the day we drove out to 4-mile-lake. The lake is absolutely gorgeous, and even more so because we had a really beautiful day with a lot of sun and a perfect sky...

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