Traveling Adventures Hi! Welcome to my travel journal. I created this so friends and family can keep track of me on my adventures. I'll update this when I can.

on the morning of the 18th we headed out of nigde for the ihlara valley and cappadocia.  we started our hike into the ihlara valley from a small village at the top below a big snowy mountain (mt. husan i believe).  this valley, or canyon more like it, was so similar to the rimrock canyons along the crooked and deschutes rivers in central oregon that i almost felt like i was back home!  there was even a real river with clear water and small rapids and no floating garbage islands (we saw one on the nile in cairo).  the canyon has a bunch of churches and dwellings painstakingly chiseled into the walls.  the first church we went to had some spectacular 11th century frescoes with really great colors still.  there was one with st. daniel fighting lions and another with the three wise men with pointy hats which is appearently really unique.  the 2nd church we went to had a frescoe of a snake biting three women in the eyes, ears, and chest and nothing like has ever been found anywhere else in the world.  they think it relates to the "sins" of the three women and is a warning.  we hiked about 3 miles through the canyon and stopped at a small restaurant for soup, lots and lots of delicious bread and trout!  mmmm i miss fish.  it was delicious.  mon and i played in the creek and hunted aquatic benthic macroinvertebrates!  we found turkish trichoptera (caddisfly) and ephemeroptera (mayfly).  one of the trichoptera even had a net!  in all my collecting and sampling i've never seen that- just in textbook photos so i was super excited about that.  i was so happy i could barely talk for a whole hour!  for those of you who dont know, these little guys were the focus of my undergrad thesis and thus i have a nerdy love for them!  it was such a beautiful place.  after lunch we continued to the Dirinkuyu underground city (i think from the 9-11 centuries and made by the hetites).  it is a huge underground city complex with tunnels and rooms and a winery and a dungeon all chiseled out of the rock.  at one point we were 150ft below ground!  it was used as a place to hide during persian invasions and was discovered i think in the 1800s by a shepard whose sheep fell down a hole and landed in the city.  after running around in the tunnels for awhile we headed into the village of goreme.  it is so bizarre.  there are all these formations that look like giant gnome hats and people live in some of them so they have windows and doors and rooms.  the town itself is really nice with tree-lined cobblestone streets and lots of shops with cool socks and hats and other cool knitted things.  The main thing to do in goreme is to hike the several valleys around the village.  so thats what we've been doing...  the first day we went out to love valley with lots of yellow aspen and poplars and random apple orchards/ vineyards in the middle of nowhere wherever there was flat ground.  at the end of the valley we found a church chiseled into one of the gnome hat formations.  there were frescoes and some graves and you had to climb up to the entrance using little carved hand and foot holds.  it was a good find.  on the way down we had really good views of goreme with its little stone cottages, minerets and funny gnome hat dwellings.  in the evening i went on a knit sock shopping spree and mon and i got three cups of free tea (and thus used several people's toilets) and one guy played his saz (turkish guitar) for us.  a guy at the pottery shop took us to his studio and we got to watch him make a plate on the pottery wheel and see him paint a few dishes.  we then discovered a great local bar owned by an aussie ex-pat and her turkish husband.  we have been hanging out there every night now.  yesterday we hiked through the pigeon valley and somehow went the wrong way and ended up in someone's orchard.  after wandering around for awhile we miraclously found a random path up to a nearby village, uchisar, with a giant gnome hat castle and pretty little buildings and windy cobble streets.  in the afternoon, we met up with our trip group to say goodbye.  we are now on our own!  in the evening the bartended put on the dark knight for us, which i hadnt seen yet.  it was really good!  last night we stayed in a hostel inside one of the gnome hats.  it was cool.  the owner's little turkish mother made us french toast for breakfast this morning.  yummers.  today we hiked through red and rose valleys.  the best by far of all the valleys.  we found a "doorway" in the side of one of the gnome hats and climbed up and up through holes in the ceiling and ended up on the top floor of an old dwelling.  it was really cool!  abandoned now of course.  the top floor was for pigeons because they are a very important part of the cappadocia culture.  they were used for communication and food and thus people built them huge rooms out of the gnome hats with little windows for them to fly into and little crannies for their nests.  there weren't any pigeons in there when we were there.  the colors of these valleys were spectacular- white, yellow, tan, pink, red.  and the formations are so bizarre.  it is all a sedimentary conglomerate rock so it has been easily eroded over the years to form what we saw.  it was a really nice hike and took most of the day.  its hard to describe the formations in detail- you'll just have to see my pictures when i post them in a month.  tonight at ten we are headed to antalya on the coast via overnight bus.  hope all is well.  love you all at home!