Vacation Running

Hawaii June 2009

My sister, Karen, and I went to Hawaii in June. We were hosted by a friend of hers who graciously allowed me to crash in along with a whole slew of other friends and family to celebrate his daughter's graduation from high school. Karen and I used the opportunity to do some great trail running on Oahu.

Here's the start of the trail on the wet side of the island.


We headed out on an 11 mile out and back section, not sure how far we would go. It was fairly dry and the views were great so we stopped a lot to take pictures.













Eventually we found a detour to a waterfall and decided to go check it out.








On the return trip to the car Karen takes a spill off the trail. I heard a crash and then a "help!" and when I ran back I found Karen dangling off the edge of a steep bank clinging to the bushes to keep from falling off into oblivion. After I pulled her back onto the trail she displays here wounds:
Good times! We finished off the morning by stopping for breakfast at a great local place where I had macadamia nut pancakes.

Ketchican, Alaska August 2009

To celebrate the 50th wedding anniversary of my parents we went on a cruise to Alaska. While in Ketchikan, Karen and I went trail running. We headed north by taxi then hit the trails on foot. A park ranger helped us pick out some nice places to explore. It rained buckets the whole time. We passed streams just packed with salmon heading for their spawning grounds.












We ran into some locals walking on the trail and they were very friendly and interested that two cruise ship passengers would make up their own land excursion this way.

We went around a lake and saw some guys from Alabama fishing for salmon. They were helped out by a park ranger.






One of the "trails" was board walk for several miles since the ground was unsuitable for trail making otherwise. It was steep and rooty and beautiful. We kept up a constant chatter to avoid scaring up any bears.









The trail ended up at a lake:





On the route home we ran on the highway that we had previously bypassed by taking the taxi. It was still pouring and the traffic whizzing by made it not much fun. Eventually up ahead I saw a car pulled over, just sitting there like the driver was waiting for us. She was! It was one of the locals we had talked to on the trail. She saw us on the road headed back to the ship and wondered if we might not like a lift back into town to avoid the last 3 miles of highway running! Cold and tired and soaking wet, we accepted! The locals are very friendly! Thanks Wendy!

It was a great day.