So Long, Scarpa; Hello, Bitterroot

Before we went to South America last year I bought a new pair of telemark boots. My old pair was still in good condition but was nearly nine seasons old. The problem was, if anything went wrong in South America I knew ahead of time there was no place down there to pick up something new or repair broken telemark gear. So in July I went to REI in Houston and picked up a new pair of Scarpa T2 boots for $569. Yep, I paid full price.

(Stuart Peak; 11/9/09)



The Scarpa plastic boots revolutionized telemark skiing. They first came out in the early 1990s. At about that time I bought a pair of Heidelberg leather telemark boots at a ski swap in Salt Lake City in 1991 and used them for just two years before getting a used pair of Scarpas at a different ski swap. I used those boots until 2000, when the plastic tore. I sold both the leather boots and the old Scarpas at a ski swap and picked up a new pair of Scarpas at REI for $359 (yep, I paid full price again) in Salt Lake City while on my way down to Elk Meadows to go skiing for Utah.com. Those old blue boots were fantastic.

(Sheep Mountain: boots, Plott hound, backpack; 11/9/09)



This summer, when we returned from our trip, I placed the old Scarpas on Craigslist in Houston, and got exactly one queery (from, it later turned out, a guy in Vermont). When I pulled the trailer up to Missoula from Houston I stuck the old pair in with the other baggage at the last minute. If nothing else, I figured, I could sell them for a hundred bucks or so.

(Bear Creek; 11/7/09)



I stuck the boots on Craigslist once I got here and again got no response. Then on Saturday came the SOS ski swap at Big Sky High, and I figured I ought to consign them there. So on Saturday morning Laura and I drove over, waited in line for a few minutes, and signed them up for the Sunday sale. SOS takes 20 percent, so I priced them at $120. Then, we went to the Bitterroot.

(Near Hamilton; 11/7/09)



The Bitterroot is a valley, river, mountain range and string of towns, all of which begins about 10 miles south of Missoula and runs for some 50 miles south to the Idaho line at Lost Trail Pass. I'd applied for a reporting job in Hamilton, the biggest town in the area, and we wanted to check out the area some more. So we got a coffee and headed south on US 93.

(Laura in Bear Creek, Bitterroots; 11/7/09)



Once you get past the turnoff for Lolo, the highway is marked every few miles with brown signs. The signs either point to the left, where there are access points along the river, or right, where there are roads heading to the base of the mountains. We picked a random trailhead called Bear Creek and followed the road up a few miles until the trailhead.

(Near Hamilton; 11/7/09)



The Bitterroot Mountains are fairly easy to describe. They are massive, both in scale and physical size. They are untouched: there are a few trails which pierce the canyons and then, like the one we took up Bear Creek, seem to wither away. And they are practically devoid of people.

(Bugs at work in Bear Creek; 11/7/09)



The bulk of the mountains lie in the Selway-Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Along with national parks, the creation and support of wilderness is one of the great American inventions. Managed by the federal government and owned collectively and equally by all Americans, wilderness areas are free to use by everyone and anyone, with two real caveats: you can only hike or ski in, and there can be no permanent structures. (I wonder how many people decrying America's "socialism" these days also think about national parks? Would they destroy national parks, too?) The Selway-Bitterroot contains 1.3 million acres. It is separated from the adjacent 2.4-million acre Frank Church/River of No Return Wilderness by a dirt road with a 600-foot right of way. And the Frank Church directly joins the 205,000-acre Gospel Hump Wilderness.

We hiked for four hours in light snow before reemerging at the truck. We drove through Hamilton (nice) before heading back to Missoula.

(Sheep Mountain, Rattlesnakes; 11/9/09)



On Sunday we were up early and at the ski swap by 10:30 a.m. We were not there nearly early enough, though. The swap opened at 10, and I learned later that 600 people filed through the doors in the first 10 minutes. Already, by 11 a.m., we were poking around the dregs of the sale. I picked up some ski area trail maps and some stickers and we decided to go. There, on the telemark table, were my lonely boots.

I had started thinking a lot about my boots, and was pretty sad to think about selling them. I had skied with them in some of the most amazing mountains in North America: Rogers Pass, Banff, Kicking Horse, Whistler, Whitewater, Lolo, the Cascades, Lake Tahoe, the Sierra, the Stansburys, the Wasatch, the Smokies (!), &c.

(Sheep Mountain, Rattlesnakes; 11/9/09)



Home from the swap we had lunch, cleaned around the house, went on a short hike, and at 5 I went back to Big Sky High to pick up my boots. I looked through piles of sad unsold gear -- and piles, and piles, and piles. Where were the boots? I went back again and looked. Nothing. Finally I went up to the sales counter and showed them my receipt. The girl there flipped through a stack of receipts and held mine up. "Yep," she said, "someone bought 'em."

How about that?

Stuart Peak

Since the sun does not rise here until after 8 a.m., it's pretty easy nowadays to do a dawn patrol. I took the day off from job hunting and hiked Stuart Peak.

Stuart Peak is a midlevel peak in the Rattlesnake Mountains National Recreation Area and Wilderness. The Rattlesnakes are a group of high peaks which back Missoula to the north. The entrance to the area is about 5 miles from downtown Missoula.



About a half-inch of sloppy snow dropped the night before in Missoula -- which translated to close to an inch at the trailhead, which is at about 3,500 feet.



The first 3 miles are wide and easy, then the climb begins in earnest.



It's dense forest much of the way, though you do get some views.



The summit is at 7,900 feet but I turned around about 600 feet shy of that when I ran into deeper snow, dense fog, strong winds



and big bear tracks.



I celebrated a successful hike with stickers!

16 feet of Nissan, 15 feet of trailer

Laura got the good news last Thursday -- she was hired by the school district, and would start work on Monday.

With that major hurdle out of the way, and nothing promising job-wise for me in the near future, we decided this was a good time for me to go to Houston and get the truck and trailer.



Buying a one-way ticket on short notice left us with few options. On Saturday we left the house at 5.30 am and drove nearly three hours -- including up and over the Contintal Divide -- to Bozeman, whose airport looks like an upscale ski lodge.



I flew from BZN to IAH via a six-hour layover at DIA. The flight to Denver took us over Yellowstone and the Wind Rivers and featured a great view of the Tetons. My parents picked me up in Houston, where for once the temperature was NOT 95 degrees, and we had a late dinner at Taco Cabana. I spent the next day packing and unloading and reloading the trailer when I realized there was too much weight on the tongue.

I left Houston on Monday and again went to Bryan, Waco and Fort Worth. It got dark way before the Panhandle but as there were no campgrounds I wound up pulling into the KOA in Amarillo -- perhaps the most expensive campground on Earth -- at 11.30 p.m.

I was up the next day and out by 8. Wanting to bypass Raton Pass, Monument Hill and the mess that is Denver I went north from Amarillo through Stratford and Boise City and entered the weird depopulated world of the plains. Living in the West I'm well acquainted with what appears to be abandoned towns, but in the West you are never that far from a thriving town even when in what appears to be a dead zone. In the plans, however, all you get is dead zone; there are no resort cities to buck the trend. Texas and Oklahoma were particularly bad for deserted cities; in Colorado, meanwhile, there seemed to be more emphasis on redevelopment and downtown beautification.







From Lamar I headed north to Limon and took back roads to Fort Collins, where I joined I-15. After raining all afternoon the rain turned to snow in Cheyenne and started to come down heavy. I spent the night in the truck at a rest area in Chugwater.



The next morning, with light snow falling but the roads cleared, I went to Caspar and then to Thermopolis and Cody before driving into the spectacular Absaroka Mountains at Red Lodge. I spent one final night in Columbus before making it home to Missoula in the early afternoon.



Laura did not like pulling the trailer, but once you get into the West, where there is more space and fewer people, I found it to be almost enjoyable. I set the cruise at 60 and idled along into the sky. Not a bad week. And now our home has furniture!

Montucky

August: Life becomes single-focused and practically monastic. Ride in the morning. Job hunt all day. Ride in the evening. Make dinner with the parents.



My ride is just about the same every day: 16 miles out and back to the hamlet of Thompsons. The job hunt is just about the same every day: I've carpet-bombed the Interior Northwest with resumes and applications. Dinner is often different but often the same: we don't call it "Mexican food" we just call it "food."

September: More of the same, though it's not as hot. I used to think of my afternoon rides as "rendering the lard," now, 90 degrees feels like autumn.



The job hunts plugs along, though we gradually narrow where we apply to. I made a list of top tier towns -- places which have everything we'd ever want -- and a list of second-best towns. Missoula was a top tier town, and luckily it had the most job prospects.

But job hunting 2,000 miles removed from your goal is difficult, at best. Laura and I decided that if Missoula was the place, then we just ought to head out there. Then, in one day, we both got nibbles on jobs in Missoula. In one crazy 72-hour period, during one of Atlanta's signature downpours, Laura packed the truck and trailer and got them both out to Houston with but one mishap: a flat tire on the Southwest Freeway during rush hour.

We spent two more days in Richmond arranging things before shoving off north by west in the Altima (leaving the heaving truck and trailer in Richmond). For the first two days we followed the route pioneered during our winter ski trips: Bryan, Waco, Ft. Worth, Wichita Falls, Vernon, Amarillo, Dalhart, Clayton, Raton, Trinidad, Denver. We spent the first night in Amarillo and were up before dawn the next day. We saw the mountains at Raton, sampled the good-old Colorado in Trinidad (not to be mistaken for the new Colorado, which might as well be a different state) and saw snow in the Central Rockies. We had each applied to jobs in Boulder, Ft. Collins, Longmont and Loveland and we checked those towns out. I found them to be just what the accolades say: clean, quiet, well-planned and eminently livable. And also: kind of boring and rather suburban.

From Ft. Collins we headed into Wyoming and camped in Sheridan after checking out Buffalo, where I was offered a job I turned down. Finally, on Sunday we crossed into Montana and idled through Livingston, Bozeman, Butte and Deer Lodge before entering Missoula.



I'll always remember the first time I drove into the Salt Lake Valley: it's a magnificent event. Driving down Hellgate Canyon to emerge in Missoula is a level or two less intense than that of Utah, but still memorable: the city set against yellow hills, sparkling afternoon sunlight, and the mountains all around.

October: Our home for two weeks was the Misasoula KOA, which was fine unless it was raining, snowing, windy or very cold. We again fell into a routine: up with the sun, breakfast at the picnic table, shower and dress up, and into the job service, where we'd spend a few hours on the job hunt. We'd break for lunch and poke around town for a bit before heading back to the job office.

We took a weekend to go to the nearby Swan Valley.





We both got job offers which we both turned down -- mine was in a pretty small town not far from Canada, and Laura's was at a nonprofit here in town.

Then it snowed.



We took this as our cue to check out of the KOA, where we were the last campers left and where we'd worn the grass pretty thin, and into a very livable apartment, which was no more expensive than camping, really.



Hopefully, we'll get some furniture soon.

There's lots going on, but not a whole lot to report. Stay tuned. Meanwhile, here's the Bitterroot River above the confluence with the Clark Fork to keep you company.

What Does the World Look Like?

So here's one of two nearly identical videos I made from photos of our year-long around-the-world trip. It's the first time I've used video editing software and obviously I had problems with some of the editing features (yes, I know I misspelled Uruguay!). Anyway ...

What It Cost

In looking back at some posts this summer Laura recently reminded me that I had not posted up the final financial data from the trip. So here it is.

I kept detailed financial information from Day One to Day 366 and cataloged every dime, dinar and dirham we spent. I compiled and analyzed the costs and divided them into a host of categories so we now know, for example, how much we spent the entire trip on bus tickets and what our per day spending average was in Brunei.

While it might seem that such information is relatively useless to other travelers or would-be travelers because our experiences and route were so unique, I'd suggest that's actually not the case. Why? In the final analysis you see that for the most part the percentage of what we spent on certain activities was roughly the same across large regions. That means that while we went to Uruguay and you might not, what we spent on park entry there was similar in proportion to what we spent in all of South America.

I'll try and lay this out as simply as possible ...

ROUND THE WORLD

Total spent: $30,915 in 366 days, for an average of $84.47 per day (or $42.24 per person per day). This figure does not include the roughly $14,000 we spent on our round-the-world plane tickets nor the approximately $600 we spent total on health insurance, nor does it include what we spent before the trip to get ready -- such as Laura's new backpack -- but it does include everything else, including what we spent on plane tickets for flights we picked up along the way.

Accommodations: $8,531
Food: $7,353
Transportation: $8,402
Entertainment: $1,245 (includes tours, skiing, surfing and more)
Visas: $1,042
Parks, museums and guides: $835
Phone, post and Internet: $743

Transportation: 27 percent of total spent. Of that, 37 percent was for bus, 29 percent for flights, 6 percent for car and driver, 8 percent for bikes and 6 percent for boats

Accommodation: 27 percent of total spent. Of that, 91 percent was for hotels and 9 percent for camping

Food: 24 percent of total spent. Of that, 14 percent was for breakfast, 19 percent for lunch, 34 percent for dinner and 24 percent for groceries

Entertainment: 4 percent of total spent.

Visas: 3 percent of total spent.

Parks, museums and guides: 3 percent of total spent.

Phone, post and Internet: 2 percent of total spent.

BY COUNTRY

Chile: $2,157 for 23 days, $93.79 average (33 percent skiing, 18 percent food)
Argentina: $3,699 for 35.5 days, $104.21 average (31 percent skiing, 24 percent food)
Uruguay: $795 for 7.5 days, $106.08 average (33 percent hotel, 33 percent bus)
Brazil: $889 for 6.5 days, $136.88 average (37 percent visa, 26 percent bus)
Bolivia: $1,002 for 13 days, $77.10 per day (27 percent visa, 20 percent food)
Peru: $1,769 for 21 days, $84.26 per day (25 percent hotel, 24 percent food)
Ecuador: $823 for 12 days, $68.62 per day (31 percent hotel, 23 percent food)
Colombia: $135 for 3 days, $44.97 per day (46 percent hotel, 15 percent food)
United States: $1,124 for 10.5 days, $107 per day (32 percent gear, 17 percent meds)
Australia: $4,764* for 61 days, $78.10 per day (31 percent food, 15 percent camping)
Indonesia: $1520 for 25.5 days, $59.60 per day(30 percent hotel, 23 percent flights)
Malaysia: $890 for 16.5 days, $54 per day (38 percent hotel, 18 percent food)
Brunei: $169 for 1.5 days, $112.47 per day (58 percent hotel, 17 percent food)
Philippines: $738 for 10 days, $73.80 per day (30 percent hotel, 20 percent food)
Thailand: $2,747 for 30.5 days, $90 per day (33 percent hotel, 22 percent flights)
Sri Lanka: $1,065 for 14.5 days, $73.49 per day (33 percent hotel, 22 percent flight)
Taiwan: $1,202 for 14.5 days, $82.93 per day (36 percent hotel, 20 percent flight)
Laos: $268 for 5.4 days, $59.68 per day (29 percent visa, 28 percent hotel)
Myanmar: $273 for 5.5 days, $49.71** (22 percent flight, 19 percent hotel)
United Arab Emirates: $578 for 2.5 days, $231.44 per day** (68 percent flight)
Oman: $427.2 for 7 days, $67.45 per day** (70 percent hotel, 11 percent food)
Mauritius: $526 for 8 days, $65.75 per day (63 percent hotel, 30 percent food)
Madagascar: $1,483 for 14 days, $106 per day (38 percent car/driver, 24 percent food)
Tunisia: $709 for 11.5 days, $61.64 per day (47 percent hotel, 22 percent food)
Malta: $602 for 6 days, $100 per day (65 percent hotel, 23 percent food)
United Kingdom: $142 for 1 days, $142 per day (50 percent hotel, 29 percent metro)

*Cost shown for Australia is net. While in some countries we saw a "gain" of money -- usually through selling things -- it was nominal. In Australia, however, total gain was $250 due to the sale of gear and finding money alongside a highway. Actual total costs for Australia were $5,014.
**I alone traveled to these three countries, so the per day average is for one person, not two. Laura was in the US, and expenses there were catalogued under US.

Obviously, the longer we stayed in a country the more our expenditure percentages reflect the actual cost of things. Totals are skewed in country like Bolivia -- which was essentially dirt cheap but where they charge an arm and a leg (well, about %150) for a visa. They are also skewed in a country like Myanmar, where the cost of the flight figured prominently into the totals due to the short duration of my stay. And they were also skewed in a country like Oman, where accommodation was so outrageously expensive that it left me unable to do practically anything else. Once you get past those exceptions, however, you see that in general the cost of food, transport and accommodation were all fairly similar.

And some interesting budget facts, told in the total amount spent:

Snacks: $173
Coffee: $268
Water: $14
Taxis: $341
Parking: $1
Surfing: $20
Souvenirs: $311
Laundry: $42
Internet: $467
Maps: $10
Books: $191
Pay phones: $21
Newspapers: $6
Photo downloading: $86
Tips: $46 (for lack of a better category, could also be called "bribes" and "money to make people go away"
Toilet fees: $5
Camera fee: $5 (charged at some parks and museums)
Shoe storage: $1 (to enter many temples you have to remove your shoes; some places make you pay to "store" them)

It's So Over

There's nothing quite like a jolt of reality to make you realize your vacation is over.

(Mountains to Sea Trail near Waterrock Knob)



The past few weeks have supplied ample evidence that our trip around the world was not simply over. It was totally finished, like, to the point where it's hard to imagine it ever existed.

(Laura and Lauren)



We spent about a week in Atlanta. Most of our time was spent shopping for a truck. I guess buying a vehicle is easy if you have minimal requirements and low expectations. We had neither, and it was a fairly involved process -- one which we could not see through to completion in Atlanta. Besides that, we cleaned our clothes (and cleaned, and cleaned, and cleaned them -- some items will likely never come clean), had a birthday party for Jimmy, saw the nieces, saw Liz, and took general stock of life in America which we'd skipped out on for the past year.

(Super Dome, New Oreans)



Then we made it up to Waynesville, where life seemed to be chugging along as normal. We made it to the Folkmoot International Day parade, went to a party at Max and Sheila's totally refinished house, saw our old home (which is looking quite nice), visited with Janelle, saw Blair and Lauren and Harper and went on a hike, visited with my old boss Vicki, saw some of our great neighbors at a party, and had a five-course meal at Chris and Michelle's.

(Me, Chris and Michelle on the porch in Dillsboro)



Two days later I was on a Greyhound. I left Atlanta at 6 a.m. and got into Houston some 19 hours later at about 1 a.m.

(Jimmy's birthday party)



Greyhound is not the world's greatest form of public transportation, but it's not the worst, either. If you could ignore the grimy, gritty bus stations it was actually fairly pleasant, and I got to watch large portions of the Deep South slide by from a big picture window while I read a book and listened to the radio on my mp3.
I saw a guy get his bag stolen just feet from him in the Biloxi bus station, saw downtown New Orleans (the bus driver, a big guy named Demetrius, announced to us on the PA, "People, now we is in Nawlins"), and got to generally see life in places like Montgomery, Tuskegee and Lake Charles like I'd never seen it before.

(My view for approximately 18 hours)



In Houston I've consumed my body weight in Mexican food (really, don't call it Mexican food, just call it "food"), helped out at the church, sifted through the things we left behind, done more cleaning, enjoyed a few beers with Jon and bought a truck.

(Truck!)



I, with the help of my dad, finally realized it was not much more expensive to buy a new truck than it was to buy a used one. In my previous jobs I'd saved all my mileage reimbursement checks into a separate account; by the time I left Waynesville it totaled more than $8,000 dollars, and I planned to use it to buy a truck. Well, if you want a Toyota or a Nissan with an extended cab and four wheel drive, $8,000 gets you a 12-year-old vehicle with 170,000 miles on it. So we bumped that up to $16,000 and the pickings were better but not great -- six or so years old with 50,000 miles. We went up again, to $18,000, and could get something pretty nice, but then my dad pointed out for just a little bit more I could get what I wanted brand new. So a 2009 Nissan Frontier king cab four wheel drive is now sitting in the garage, thanks to an end of model year sale and factory incentives.

Although I bought it, it's going to be Laura's truck for a while, so she arrives from Atlanta next week to fetch it, leaving me with the old Altima. Truck out of the way, we are focusing on where to move to. After spending a year in some of the world's hottest places, and after spending a scant two weeks in Houston, I'm hoping we move to somewhere within commuting distance of the Arctic Circle. Laura is hoping for something close to an airport, so we might have to settle for Bozeman or Missoula.

And think, all we need to do is travel a little bit more to get there.

(Baton Rouge)