Welcome to Cappadocia

We took an overnight bus from Denizli last night which dropped us off in the center of Göreme at 6am. That's before sunrise. Which in Göreme, is actually a good thing. Göreme is the most popular town in the Turkish region of Cappadocia, and Cappadocia is popular because of its crazy terrain, and the best way and best time to see that crazy terrain is in a hot air balloon at sunrise.

We wandered up from the bus to our hotel, but apparently 6am is a little early to check in. They told us we could possibly check in at 10am though, and that's MUCH earlier than we thought, so we were happy about that. They let us drop our bags off and hang out on the restaurant balcony, which they said is the best place to view the balloons. It's not, but we didn't know any better. Yet.

Really only Butterfly balloons start up the valley where the Göreme Kaya Hotel is at. The rest start somewhere else. So after about 30 minutes we wandered back down into the center of town and then off to the right side looking for elevated points to get a good view. Eventually we found a road (we'd learn later, it's the road to the Göreme Open Air Museum) and off that road we found a path that you can get up to see great views (here's the lat/long if you're curious: 38.643872, 34.835599).

This is where I took this cool video...

A video posted by Brian Ciccotelli (@perfectlittleplanet) on Oct 9, 2015 at 12:04pm PDT

By the time the balloons had landed, it was still another 2 hours until we could check in. So we went back into town and found a coffee shop and ordered some hot chocolate.

It was nice to sit in the sun and warm up a bit. And that was some of the best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was hazelnut. Yeah, Nutella flavored hot chocolate.

Sipping hot cocoa killed off about another hour, so we slowly moseyed back to the hotel and got back around 9:30am and asked on the off chance if our room was ready.

"Yes. And we gave you a free upgrade."

What?! Yes please!

The only thing we wanted was to stay in a cave room - literally a room that was carved out of a rock. And boy did they deliver! And then some!

We walk in and this is what we see:

Yeah. We're not even in the bedroom yet! So we enter the living room/sitting area and Isa and I are trying to hide our excitement - we don't book hotels with more than one room. This is amazing. Down the stairs to our right is the bedroom. IN A CAVE!

So the sitting area is a stone room, but the bedroom is actually inside the cave.

How cool is that?! Obviously, WAY more room than we need, as this is bigger than our apartment in New York. But we are loving the luxury and space! Thank you Göreme Kaya Hotel!

As you may be able to gather from the above picture, I was tired. I didn't sleep well on the overnight bus, and frankly haven't been sleeping well this entire trip. And now I'm sick. So I needed to take a nap for a little bit.

[a little later]

When I woke up, Isa was watching Harry Potter. In a cave. I just can't get over that. We're staying in a comfy cave. :)

We decided to go to the Göreme Open Air Museum, which is a collection of cave churches. On our way over there, we ran into some Aussie friends we had met in Selçuk, so we teamed up and went together. Ollie (8 years old) and I (let's face it, I act like I'm 8) got distracted on the way.

The dogs here are fun. They follow you around and later, even act as tour guides. :)

You know how in Provo there are churches every few blocks? Well that's what this part of town was for the early Christians. There were tons of churches built into lots of the fairy chimneys. So you get in and walk along this large path and just check out each one of them.

The insides of the churches are painted beautifully and carved out with domes and naves and apses and arches. Most of them don't allow photography or video. But the less-cool ones do. Like this:

Or the ones that are outside because half of it fell down.

Among the churches are a few homes as well. Those aren't painted and decorated as much (at all), but they were still interesting. Here's us at a dining room table made of stone.

Isa, Hayley, Brian, and Ollie (Wayne is taking the picture)

Here's a banquet table.

And one with some art. Can you tell I was fascinated by these stone tables?

There's Wayne and Hayley chatting with Isa

After we toured through here, we cut up off the road and went exploring the abandoned fairy chimney homes.

There are SO MANY of these homes. This place must have been a pretty big city! We explored for over two hours in just one section and we didn't even come close to checking them all out.

Doesn't this house look like the Flintstones' house?

At one point, a dog found us and led me up to a sweet viewpoint.

I love hiking. I love exploring. This was FUN!

We watched the sunset over the Uchisar Castle (that's another fairy chimney - a giant one - full of carved out houses connected by stairs, tunnels, and passages).

And then we found some good food and went home. Bed. Yay! Another great day. :) (Even though I'm getting sick from lack of sleep.) :(

Minerva Mountain Trail in Ketchikan Alaska

It was a beautiful day in Ketchikan, so we couldn't waste it inside. The weather said it'd rain later in the afternoon, so we wanted to get an early jump on the day. I met up with Ali around 9am and we headed up to Carlanna Lake Trail.

The beginning part of the Carlanna Lake Trail is wide and gradual. It's probably only about a 5-minute walk from the parking lot to the lake, at which point you're graced with this incredible view.

The lake is always calm, the reflection on point, and that lone tree is just begging to be photographed (check out my instagram of that tree from an earlier hike up here).

Walking alongside the lake is equally as relaxing. The trail meanders through the woods and peeks out two or three times to docks with benches so you can relax on the lake.

Just beyond the lake, you cross a bridge over a stream...

...and then the trail begins its incline. Not difficult, but noticeable. The sun rays were beaming through the tree limbs at this hour and it was gorgeous!

About 30 minutes past the bridge, you hit the Avalanche Chute. Well, you actually hit it about 15 minutes in, but that's just the bottom of it. The trail winds along the side of it and then cuts through the middle, which is much more picturesque.

As you can see at the top of that picture, the mountain is barren. It's too steep for any vegetation to grow (just like the cliffs in Misty Fjords), so there's nothing to hold the snow up when it accumulates. So every winter, an avalanche falls in the same spot and clears out this path below it. So right here, we're standing in the middle of the Avalanche Chute.

The trail continues to climb through the dense forest, and our morning sun continued to dance with the trees.

Around 11am, or two hours into your hike, we popped out into the open muskeg. At this point the trail becomes all but impossible to follow. Trail markers are placed sporadically throughout, but you will get lost. We got lost on a sunny day with clear visibility. I can only imagine how daunting it would be in clouds or rain. Look for orange or yellow diamonds and then keep heading in that same general direction until you see another one. But also take some time to turn around and admire the view of Carlanna Lake behind you.

About 30 minutes up through the muskeg and you reach the saddle, at which point you can see into the inner part of Revillagigedo Island and see other mountains and lakes. Here's Perseverance Lake:

From the saddle, you also have a clear view of Juno Mountain.

Ali, just on her second hike now (Deer Mountain was her first real hike) wanted to continue up the mountain, so we headed to the peak.

If you've been hanging out around my YouTube channel lately you know that I've been posting pretty regularly over there. To see what's captured in the frame when I speak to camera, I usually take a quick selfie and then delete it and record the video. But I liked this selfie, so it didn't get deleted.

We had to cross through a few more muddy patches, but overall it wasn't very difficult to summit Juno Mountain at 2600 feet. Just past the summit, we ran into five mountain goats. I didn't get any pictures - just video. So you'll have to wait for me to edit that if you want to see them.

We continued on past Juno Mountain with the goal of summiting Ward Mountain, walking through short trees and some pretty leaves that are just starting to change for the Fall.

We found out that the trail doesn't actually go over the summit of Ward Mountain. It circumvents it and starts to descend quickly down toward the lake. So we about-faced and started our trek back.

We also saw some very dark and ominous clouds approaching. You can see their shadow in this picture:

We skirted Juno Mountain trying to track the mountain goats to get a closer picture, but by the time we saw them again they were forever far away. We got back to the saddle and it had only started sprinkling, although it was looking much sketchier. And then in a matter of about 5 minutes, the whole storm hit and visibility dropped to a few hundred feet.

The hoodies and jackets came out and we started our descent since summiting Minerva Mountain would be less exciting with no view. The wind and rain picked up, but the clouds started to abate so at least we could see. The extra rain made our trail immensely more difficult though. We were slipping and sliding all over the place!

Once we got through the slippery and poorly marked muskeg, the rest of the trail was a breeze. We were back on the lower part of Carlanna Lake trail by 3:30.

And off the trail by 4pm. It was a fun seven hours. Thanks Ali for a great hike!

Evann and Mom

Evann and her mom are in New York City for a few days and Isa and I met up with them today for lunch. All morning I thought, "Awesome, I can post about Evann tonight. We'll go out to eat, we'll take a picture, I'll write about it." We chatted and had a good time and all, but we all forgot to take a picture. So I scoured her facebook and stole my favorite:

Evann is awesome. She was one of my interns in Del Sol Juneau. She's gone on to work in Key West and Savannah, GA. She's so much fun to hang out with. One of my favorite hikes in Juneau was with her and Kendra up to the ice caves:

So... Lunch! We went to Cosi. We love Cosi!! I usually get the Chicken Parmesan Melt. Isa gets the TBM (Turkey-Balogna-Mushrooms, I can never remember what it stands for).

We had a lot of fun giving them as many ideas of things to do as a tourist. Mainly Times Square, Central Park, and Top of the Rock. Oh yeah, and a little (ok, not so little) Harry Potter exhibit (Evann loooves Harry Potter), complete with a sorting hat, quaffle throw on a quidditch pitch, and Hagrid's Hut where you can sit in his chair and everything! So yeah. Go there. :)

So yay! We love Evann. :)

ps: Isa just told me it's a Tomato-Basil-Mozzarella. Yummers!