Raft Trip & Leaving ID

Huckleberries are ripening on our property; this was right before we left.

We took a long bike ride before leaving Idaho on Farm to Market road.

My raft was the best! Jennifer (whom we traveled with in Australia), Garth (who we worked with in Antarctica in 2003) and myself. We took the roughest line each rapid and flipped our raft! What a blast!!!

Can you spot the other rafts in this photo? We had 5 boats, 2 kayakers & a paddle board.

Dave's boat was a cataraft and had The Todd (who's not in this photo but is our friend from Antarctica and lives in McCall) and Marshell (another friend we're lucky to work with this summer in Antarctica, also lives in Idaho).

The Todd on the paddleboard. He paddled through all the whitewater!

A typical lunch/dinner/camp spot.

So lucky to have all the ladies on the trip. 14 people total, 1 dog. This was dress night. Below is Dave jumping off a log up really high.

Dave after breakfast, ready to hit the river. We had such a blast! It was 5 days and 72 miles of the Lower Salmon river. We put in at White Bird and floated to a takeout close to a Lewiston. We both cannot wait until next year as we unanimously decided that this will be an annual event. It was a lot like backpacking but in sheer luxury with 3 course meals (I was the appetizer chef), camp chairs, music and other luxuries we're not used to in the backcountry. We even slept outside one night to watch the stars. After the awesomeness of the trip, Dave worked long hours to finish up the bathroom cabinets (5 of them, knotty alder, really pretty) and I volunteered some more, packed us up and baked some more goodies for the smokejumpers. We had a goodbye dinner at the Sushi place with our friend Thaona and Emily & Brian before hitting the road. I'm writing this from Murphy, North Carolina, so we've arrived safely after 5 long hot days of scenic driving. I'll put travel pictures up next, since we got to visit Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, have a cheese stop in Wisconsin, and a day to visit Dave's family (including his cousins!) in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It was a wonderful stop!

Idaho & Birthdays

A stunning Ponderosa Tree in Ponderosa State Park in McCall

Grandpa's 83rd Birthday was on July 7, and we toasted it in Reno

Dave's Birthday celebration in Reno with a toast and lots of delicious food, chocolate cake, & gifts...Thanks Mom & Dad! And thanks Tibor & Dora for the doovdez that he loves.

Sweeping views on my hike to Hard Butte lake, well worth the hour and fifteen on a dirt road to get to the Clayburn trailhead.

Hard Butte Lake's cliffs still draped in snow, but lots of wildflowers nearby.

Our July 4th weekend backpacking/camping trip on the twentymile trail up to Long lake. A fire took the chill away. Sunset at 10pm!

Shooting stars cover all the trails we've been on, and they're spectacular!

Our frequent walks and bike rides in Ponderosa State Park are always picturesque.

One of many flowers on our property. I did some yardwork out there.

Our first hike was to Hum Lake and as you can see, the trail was a bit covered.

The new beach park on Lake Payette in McCall is really great.

So wonderful to be back in Idaho and seeing and doing all the things we missed while we lived here. Even got to go rafting the Cabarton stretch of the Payette river. Dave gets to mountain and road bike regularly and I get to mark hikes off my to do list. It's been awesome and the weather has been perfect, with a high of 80F! Dave's still working hard on cabinet building and wants to finish by the time our 4 day raft trip comes up at the the end of the month. We had an awesome weekend in Reno, where we celebrated Dave and Grandpa's birthdays, took a long walk on the marsh near Mom & Dad's home and watched the world cup finale. Also got to skype with Tibor & Dora and see our beautiful nieces. We're back in McCall now and feeling very lucky to have had such a wonderful summer this year. Miss and LOVE you all!!!

A Year Flashed By

Mom & Dad at the Sparks Marina in Spring of 2010
Rose at the Christchurch New Zealand Botanic Garden
Abby's Baptism in Florida with the whole Koehlinger Family
Golf in Florida with the Koehlinger Men
Baking with Grandma Koehlinger in Indiana
A Kingfisher in Sparks, Nevada


Crocodile in Adelaide River near Kakadu National Park/Darwin, Australia
Sunrise in Uluru/Kata Tjuta National Park, Central Australia
Sunset champagne camel tour of Uluru, Australia
Uluru/Ayers Rock aglow in sunset colors, Central Australia
Sunset from our beach house near Abel Tasman Nat'l Park, S. Island of New Zealand
A windy hike in the Golden Bay with our friends, New Zealand

Cormorants in NZ
California, Fall 2009 with Piroska neniek, Grandma & Parents
Beach hike in California, Fall 2009
Bodega Bay, California
Florida beach time with Isaac, Mike & Jen, and Dave's Parents in Fall 2009

Group picture, Savannah beach Fall 2009 (Tibe Island)
Leaving Antarctica, March 5th 2010 awaiting our commercial flight
Christmas hike at McMurdo Station
Ice caving during Sea Ice Training in Antarctica
Survival Training a few miles from McMurdo Station
Lovely trip through Christchurch, New Zealand on my way to Antarctica

Wow, a year has somehow flashed by and it's been a blast! After the Sierra Nevada's on the Pacific Crest Trail (755 miles) last summer, we visited Mike & Jen in Florida and my parents in Reno as well as my aunt & uncle in California. It was a gorgeous trip through New Zealand to Antarctica and as soon as I arrived, I felt immediately at home. A lot of wonderful friends I haven't seen in ages made us feel infinitely welcome. Had a very busy and a really fun and lovely season at McMurdo Station catching up with friends, touring some scenic places and of course working. We stayed for the extended season and got to see some pretty sunsets before leaving on the last flight and getting a gorgeous fly over of the Erebus crater, the southernmost volcano in the world on a commercial flight in first class! Can't beat that.

Another perfect trip in New Zealand with three long backpacking trips, a gorgeous beach house in the Golden Bay with our friends, a weekend home at Hanmer Springs with Tibor, Dora & Tia, some awesome penguin rookeries and hiking near Dunedin, and getting to see Tibor & Dora's home in Wellington, NZ. An amazing 5 weeks that flew by! Then onto 3 weeks of spellbinding sights in the central red Outback of Australia that I've always craved to see in a camper van National Park hopping, existing on barramundi fish and beers and doing some fabulous smaller hikes with our friend Jennifer. Then the last week in Australia near Sydney in a sleepy sea village called Avalon where we hiked all day and bird-watched, toured bakeries and delighted in the sunsets. Back to the U.S. to see my parents in Reno in the spring, meet Abigail in Florida, tour a whiskey distillery in Kentucky, bake with Grandma Koehlinger in Indiana and return to Reno to help my parents move. It's been a year already, a gorgeous year that I'm so lucky to have shared with family and friends! Welcome to world Hanna & Abigail!!! (Tibor, please send pictures of our visits when you can, and thanks for Skyping!)

Sierra Nevada Mountains/PCT

I put different pictures on here than on Facebook so that you would visit each and see more. You don't have to sign up for anything, just go to this website (tobb kepet latni, legyenek szivesek clickoljanak erre a cimre, es ha nem, akkor masoljak be a cimet, koszonjuk!):

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=33479&id=1069755482&l=3bd7d62fb5

We had a perfect summer out in the woods, and feel that the Sierra Nevadas are the most gorgeous mountains in the world, definitely the prettiest place we've seen in the US. The high Sierras especially! The trail starts at Tehachapi Pass near Bakersfield, and the Mojave desert is just as hot as you'd imagine and full of flowering cacti & Joshua Trees. Four snakes, an animal that looked like a dragon and tons of lizards everywhere.
This is at Guitar Lake, when we at the last moment decided to detour (16 miles) to summit Mt. Whitney, which is the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states at 14,560feet!
This picture is on our way up Whitney, as the sun was coming up. We got used to 3 and 4 am start times for special trips like this one and for desert hiking where it was just too hot in the day and we needed to get the bulk of our miles hiked before noon. We were hiking 25 mile days, with 32 being our longest day, although it did take a while for our feet to "break in" to the weight and the mileage. We lightened our packs significantly after the first week.
Lunch spot in Kings Canyon National Park, which was just one of the gorgeous NP's that we got to traverse (Sequoia, Kings Canyon & Yosemite). Below is my favorite picture of the trip:

I guess they were right, we did look pretty clean for long distance hikers. This picture was at Belden Town. This was breakfast and a celebration as at that point, we were done with 700 miles and only had 50 left in the South. We ate 3 meals in a very short span that morning.
I was posing after returning to the trail down south after my two weeks in Texas. We hiked a section from Walker Pass to Kennedy Meadows as we had missed that 50 miles on our way through due to a water filter break. It was DRY and beautiful! We got to hike with 2 gallons of water each and set up a water cache for ourselves with 3 more gallons. The desert sunrises during those days were certainly worth every bit of effort! Stunning!!
The little person in the picture is me. Dave is an amazing photographer! This was another early, sunrise morning to summit Sonora Pass. It felt like being on the moon.
One of hundreds and hundreds of river crossings, this one by Mt. Lyell, the tallest mountain with a gorgeous glacier on it, in Yosemite National Park. Reticent at first, we got really quick at river crossings, as well as changing into and out of our river shoes before and after.
The PCT hugged ridges and so we had what seemed like millions of these breath taking views of snow covered jagged granite mountains with bright blue glacial lakes in the foreground. Sierra means serrated or jagged and Nevadas have to do with nieve (snow) and so translates to mean snowy, jagged mountains. The skies were almost always bright blue, except for one day that it barely rained on us and one day that it hailed so hard that it left marks all over our skin. I could write a thousand more paragraphs and still not be able to adequately describe the mountains' grandeur, the thousand colors of wildflowers that blanketed the valleys, the bird song at sunrise, the silhouette of a Joshua Tree, and the way in which foxtail pine look like mythical creatures, nor the way that every day, at least ten times I would round a corner or summit a pass and take in a view that would sock the air right of me. 755 miles, 2 months, and the best days of my life! More pictures with wildflowers are at the website mentioned above. :)