At Last, Vagabond Girl Unleashed!!!

Yeay!! I finally get to create my own travelling blog.  I have always been passionate about travelling, but my immigrant status and my lazy-cheap ass has hindered me from travelling more than I should.  But now that I finally has my passport, it is time for me to explore this little world.

Thanks to Anthony Bourdain who has been my inspiration, I am now committed to preserve my experience through pictures and words.  Hopefully this travelling blog will last and make a huge hit!

Well anyway, I will start with sharing my little expedition at Manistee National Forrest on early October.  I went there with a couple friends to witness the fall foliage.  We arrived around 10 pm, so we just spent our first night setting up our tent at the camping area close to the parking lot.

The weather forecast said that we have 40% chance of thunderstorm that night, and we could just wish that mother nature will be on our side.  But of course weather forecast won!  Just when we finished building our tent and cooked some weirdly good instant raspberry chocolate dessert with moth sprinkles, the rain started to fall down.

We quickly brushed our teeth, changed our clothes, and retreated into our tent.  We end up spending the first night with heart to heart conversation, like you would in a girly sleepover night hahaha.

Although I am a huge fan of thunderstorm noise,  I slept like a baby with poops on my diaper.  My problem was not the noise,  it was the fact that our tent started to absorb the water!  I could feel water flowing through my sleeping pad.  It felt just like I was sleeping on a water bed. If you think water bed is glamorous, I will argue with my life that it was not!

The next morning was a beautiful day however!  We woke up around 8 o'clock and found out that apparently we set up our tent right at the down slope, noob~  No wonder all those water end up submerging our tent.

After folding back our tent and eating some breakfast, of course I would find the time to take a fabulous selfie before anything else.

Then we started the 5-7 hours walk to the wood before we found a good place to set up our tent!  Thanks to Ria who cooked this awesome Mediterranean lunch for us.

 I also found a cute mushroom with a slug near our spot.  It kinda remind me to the caterpillar in Alice in the Wonderland.  The one who like to do hookah on top a mushroom, thanks Disney for the message!

We hung parts of our tent between trees for 15 minutes to let it dry.  Then we set up our tent, remove some weights from our bag and finally walk for another 7 hours!  Yeah I started to feel my butt is gaining muscle from all those hiking time.  One of my friend actually have this calories counter gadget and we apparently burnt about 1800 calories for the 20 hours that we spent hiking that day.  Geez that's like a family size potato chips that I could eat in an hour!!! Oh how I wish I can eat whatever I want without gaining weight~

By the way, I found this adorable hairy caterpillar when we walk to see the water falls (which wasn't as grandeur as I imagine, so I didn't take a picture of it).

When we walk back, just about 3-4 miles from our tent, the thunder start to rumble! We started power walking back to our spot. How lucky we were, the actual thunderstorm didn't start until we actually reached our place.  Then at around 7 pm the rain stopped, so we were planning to set up a camp fire and eat some smores.  But mother nature loves to troll, just when we step outside the tent, it started to rain again!

Again, the second night becoming another pillow talk time~

The next morning we walk back and meet a daddy-and-son hikers.  The daddy seems to be a veteran of war of some kind.  He has this vintage backpack with an iron bar to keep his back straight, it was pretty cool.  Anyway, we asked them to take a picture of us.  We did the sorority squad hoping the beautiful scenery in our back would be captured.  Total failure however, I cannot safe this picture with my low level editing skills hahaha.

Once we arrived to the parking spot, my shoes was soaking wet.  I couldn't help but keep on thinking how people in army losing their toes because they didn't get the chance to change their socks.  So, the first thing that I did was drying up my beautiful feet and wear my flip flops.  I also has to let go the training shoes that has accompany me for the past 7 years, because it has holes here and there.  I feel really accomplished though hahaha.

Overall, this little expedition has taught me to once again appreciate the beautiful gift that God has given to me.  The magnificent nature that I capture in these pictures are nothing close to the real thing.  I also learned that my plan would never work if it is not according to God's will.  In this trip, we were planning on so many things, like eating smores for example, but it will never happen if God has different plan.  In that case, I need to fully put my trust in God and keep enjoying my life in its ups and downs~

Until the next adventure you all... Vagabond Girl is out