After the quite gross bus dropped us off around noon in the middle of San Diego, we started to get an overview about the city. That’s why we wanted to store our big backpacks somewhere and for all the travellers of you, we’re telling you now the ultimate tip: we just went to one of the bigger and more luxurious Marriott hotels and there you are, storing luggage for free (nobody asks for a hotel reservation or similar). At the Greyhound station they asked for $4 per backpack per hour, but not with us 😉 Having solved this problem, we wandered along the waterfront of San Diego and tried to figure out our plans for the next days. The waterfront not only offers the harbor including all Navy Ships of the States (San Diego is one of the main Navy harbors of the States), but also a museum on one of the ships (USS Midway) and a Marine Museum. Unfortunately quite expensive and as we heard not more impressive than another museum with ships….

In the late afternoon, we made our way to our host for the next days. You might remember Steven, our hiking acquaintance from Grand Canyon. Indeed we were able to stay with him for our time in San Diego, but unfortunately Steven was for the weekend in L.A. and we only saw him Monday evening. But we cannot complain having a house on our own, it wasn’t that bad 😉 And it is even getting better, Steven has a 3-year old white dog (the breed is not too clear, a husky might have played a role) Max and we should take care of him. A cute dog full of energy! When we arrived, he jumped in a circle around us for 5min like a bouncing ball. Also later on, he didn’t show any shyness and so we had a lot of fun the next days.

Our program for San Diego was really quickly set (there is not tooooo much to see). We spent the first day in the Balboa park in the middle of the city, which is home to the world famous San Diego zoo (also here with $40 entry fees not really affordable). Additionally, there are museums, an artist village, a lot of green and numerous beautiful buildings built in a Spanish-Mexican way. Afterwards we went again to the Waterfront and Little Italy (indeed it is Little).

The next day, it was beach time, because San Diego is famous for being a holiday paradise. We took the bus to the half island Coronado and had a look in the park and in a small touristy beach road, before we went on to Coronado beach and the hotel with the same name. The hotel is known for its special architecture and mainly for the unusual roof shape. We took the bus another time to the next beach (Imperial Beach), where we spent a relaxed afternoon with swimming and a nap on the beach.

And then, our next personal highlight of San Diego was on the schedule (and one of the main reasons why we went to San Diego): Tijuana, Mexico! But due to reasons of a nicer blog shape, we made a separate blog entry for Mexico (see here).

That was our last day in San Diego, because after having dinner and a good chat with Steven, who came back home on Monday evening, we made our way to the airport the next day in order to leave in the evening to the West Coast and fly to Washington D.C. We spent the day in Old Town (the first settling of the Spanish) and Mission Bay and then, the 11-hour flight started, but this is another story!

praktisch / handy

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Back at Judy’s house in Orinda, we relaxed a bit and ordered the probably best Pizza in San Francisco, Zachary’s Chicago Style. As we already saw most of the highlights of the city and because the tickets for Alcatraz were unfortunately sold out (due to the peak season they were booked out a few weeks in advance), we decided to visit Point Reyes the next day. This is directly at the San Andreas Fault Line, which separates the pacific and the northern American continental plate (A few thousand years from now, huge parts of California will become an island due to the movement of the plates). It’s quite interesting to just “jump” from one plate to another 🙂 Besides the fault line, there is also a light house at Point Reyes, which we visited. Due to the San Andreas Fault line Point Reyes is situated on kind of an half island with beautiful long beaches inviting to have a swim in. Unfortunately, it was Sunday and so probably whole San Francisco was gathered there which is not surprising due to its proximity to San Francisco. That’s why we were in a traffic jam for most parts of the day :-/

We spent the evening together with Judy having delicious dinner (as always) and a skype call to New Zealand with Karl and Claire, but the next day we had to say good bye to Judy and San Francisco with a heavy heart. On the way back to L.A., where we had to return our car, we made a stopover in the Sequoia National Park in order to have a look at the largest trees in the world. This time large means the trunk with the largest volume and belongs to the General Sherman Tree. In contrast, the Kauri trees in New Zealand seem to be tiny. After a strong rain – yes you read correctly, rain in California – we made our way to a campground. All in all a good stopover, if you want to split the inland drive between San Francisco and L.A.

After a fairly comfortable night in the car, we went on the next day to L.A. and Carlos, who agreed to

host us again. We directly dropped off the car, had breakfast and made our way to the top of the City Hall of Los Angeles enjoying the view over the city (on our first visit the roof was closed due to a private event). Carlos invited Alex, one of his former AirBnB guests, who is currently trying to relocate from Germany to L.A. in order to begin a career in the movie music industry. Afterwards, we drove to the beach in Santa Monica, which we missed the first time as well, and went the first time for a swim in the American Pacific Ocean. Maybe it was the wine, but we were really surprised about the warm temperature of the sea. 🙂 Of course, we couldn’t miss the Santa Monica Pier – and with it the official end of the Route 66 – and having a delicious dinner. But we didn’t just go somewhere, but to the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. restaurant. Who might think now that this sounds familiar to you is completely right. This restaurant is the movie location for Forrest Gump! Quite funny how you randomly encounter movie locations.

We started the next two days a bit more relaxed and visited the Getty Villa (a copy of a villa in Pompei with a highly expensive art collection) together with another friend of Carlos and made on the last day a hike behind the Hollywood sign, this time again together with Alex. Of course we couldn’t miss another American experience, having breakfast in a real American Diner (Denny’s). We spent the two evenings with relaxed and delicious dinners, beer and wine at Carlos’s place, who invited Alex and other friends as well as his current AirBnB guest Gary from Buffalo. He instantly gave us his business card in order to catch up with him once we get closer to the Niagara Falls! Just typical American 🙂

Friday morning we said good bye to Carlos and took the bus to San Diego close to the Mexican border to our Grand Canyon acquaintance, but that is another story.

Point Reyes in San Francisco

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The drive to Crater Lake figured out to be longer as we initially thought (around 6 hours) and that’s why we arrived at the north entrance of Crater Lake NP in the late afternoon. We tried our luck at a camp ground in the National Forest which surrounds the national park and were able to grab a site next to a lake. Due to the elevation of almost 3,000m (10,000 feet) it was way too cold to swim there, but in return we could obfuscate a breathtaking red sunset over the lake. We haven’t seen such an extreme red until now.

Even though it was freezing cold (around 5°C or 40°F), the night in the tent was quite comfortable and we took off at 6:30 in order to have breakfast at Crater Lake. The first view on the lake might take your breath away. Due to its unique geological features, the lake has a crystal clear blue colour which might hardly be found elsewhere in the world. Little geology lesson: Only 7,700 years ago, Crater Lake was not a lake, but an active volcano and additionally the highest peak in Oregon. However, its magma chamber almost completely emptied after an enormous explosion and forced the volcano and huge parts of its surroundings to collapse into the chamber leaving an up to 800m deep hole in the ground. Due to the elevation of the plateau, there are up to 13m snow every year and what do we get if we combine a huge hole without outlets with a lot of snow and therefore meltwater in the summer? Correct, a lake 🙂 As there are almost no natural creatures (there are some fish and crayfish though, but we’re pretty sure that they are imported by humans) or plants, the lake is crystal clear without any pollutions.

Ok enough of geology… We drove once around the lake and hiked the Cleetwood Cove Trail downhill to the surface of the lake (which is of course too cold to swim with 14°C, 57°F) and uphill the Watchman Trail to the highest point overlooking the lake. So we got all different perspectives! There is not much more to do there and so we drove to Medford to our next couchsurfer Chelsea. She, her boyfriend, her two dogs and the house pig Wilbur accepted us to stay for a night. Yes you read right, we had a super cute and funny pig in the house for a night 🙂 They took us out to a local brewery for a beer and super delicious tacos for dinner.

The next morning, we drove back to California to the Lassen Volcanic NP. Unfortunately we had to swap our beloved car, as one tyre made problems since a few weeks (yes, that’s how Hertz handles problems with tyres, they exchange the car and not the tyre…).

After that was all set up (which took more time than we thought) we drove to the national park where we wanted to catch up with Mike and Michelle from Australia for two nights. It’s pretty cool if you can catch up every here and then on the road 🙂 They also rented a car and do a similar tour as we did, but in the reversed direction. We made a campfire and barbecue and of course we had a lot to chat about. Together, we climbed up Lassen Peak the next day, walked to Bumpass Hell and swam in the Summit Lake the next day. Especially, Bumpass Hell is quite weird as there is an active volcanic area with mud pools and geysers showing up in the middle of nowhere. Tobias and Mike had to give a miss to surf on a swimming trunk in the lake (Kerstin managed to do so for a few seconds, but with a lot of help of the two of them :–) ). In the evening we had another campfire with barbecue, beer and long chats before saying good bye the next morning. They drove north to the Redwood NP, while we were driving south back to San Francisco in order to return the borrowed camp gear. So just a few hours later we were around 500km apart from each other, how weird is that? But hopefully they catch up with us again on their way through Germany 🙂

Sonnenuntergang am Campingplatz / sunset at the campground

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After we left the (sorry again, but the guy thought to be really important) asshole at the border behind us, we were back in the States. The city Seattle is mainly known for music, legalisation of marihuana and the main location of Microsoft. We were lucky enough to find again super nice couchsurfers named Emily and Matthew (both in their late 20^th). As time was running we had to shorten our program a bit and that’s why we directly started to discover downtown Seattle and the local market at the Waterfront. In addition we visited “Seattle Center”, which was the location for a world exhibition and is still used for all kinds of events and recreation possibilities. Here is also the Space Needle, which contributes in big parts to Seattle’s skyline.

But these were the highlights Seattle has to offer, why we asked Emily and Matthew for more things to do around Seattle while enjoying a local beer. They explained us that Seattle is like Vancouver rather a nice city to live than to do sightseeing. There are countless parks and mountains to hike on and other outdoor activities for which you need more time than just a day.

Therefore we enjoyed Lake Union the next day, the architecturally seen incredibly beautiful city library as well as the campus of the University of Washington. Mainly the campus impressed us a lot. It resembles a small town and actually there is no reason for a student to leave the campus. Not only restaurants and several food options are offered, but also bowling, private party rooms, 9-ball, table tennis and games. Not to forget the countless sports options. The library is also impressive, as it looks from the inside and outside like a church. Just huge!

In the evening, we went together with Matthew to a sports-bar to watch the soccer game USA-Panama (there is currently the CONCACEF Cup on) and ate Nachos and Chicken Wings. How American is that 🙂 But that’s it for Seattle. It probably doesn’t sound too exciting, but as in Vancouver, the flair of the city really impressed us.

From Seattle we headed to Crater Lake National Park, with a coffee stopover in Portland’s famous Stump Town Roasting Company. But that is a new story 🙂

Seattles Waterfront

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From Marylin, we drove towards Glacier National Park, more specifically to Kalispell, where Lance and Shelley Jo wanted to host us for the next two days. A short 6 hour drive and two stopovers in a small town next to a river and at the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas later, we arrived at their house where they were waiting for us with dinner. Once again, so nice! Lance is a typical example why couchsurfing in USA is so much fun, totally relaxed, helpful, funny and interested. The same is true for Shelley Jo, his wife, who is a super creative artist and enthusiastic participant of the Burning Man in addition. You can see that an artist lives in the house. There is small, crazy, self-made art work all over the place! One example: the mirror in the bathroom is attached to a very old suitcase hanging on the wall, so it’s used as a bathroom cabinet. They had two other guests the same evening, Evelyn from Germany who drives her bike through the West of the USA, Canada and Alaska and Willis who cycles from New York to San Francisco (when we met him he was on the road for over 2 months and makes around 100 miles a day :-O ). Especially Willis was really easy to talk with and he gave us some hints for New York plus his mobile number in case we don’t find a host there. Summarized a really nice evening!

The next day we drove to Glacier NP. You’ve never heard of that one? So didn’t we! There is a quite famous picture, which is every here and then in movies, so you might recognize it. Anyway, it’s one of the oldest and most traditional parks in the States and also quite famous with 2 million visitors per year. The main attraction is, as the name implies, the glaciers. Roughly speaking, the park consists of the Rocky Mountains in the center of it and the core of the park is a pass crossing them. Obviously, climbing and hiking are the main activities besides driving along the road, but there are also countless glacier lakes totally different in colour and sizs. Most of the 2 Mio visitors stay on the road, making even the main hikes not too crowded. We did a hike to a view point on the “Hidden Lakes” (the hike to the lakes itself was closed due to bear danger 🙁 ), along the Highland Track and to the Avalanche Lake. First we wanted to swim there, but it was that could that we just put our heads under water… The park is really idyllic which was really pleasant and surprising after experiencing the crowds in Yellowstone.

We had another very nice evening with Lance and Shelley Jo and actually wanted to leave the next morning to Canada. However, it was the 4^th of July, Independence Day, which is the most important public holiday in USA. That’s why we couldn’t resist watching the parade in the city with Shelley Jo and the two kids of them. Probably not as extraordinary as in a big city, but really authentic and funny! After that, we drove over the border to Canada, but this is part of the next post 🙂

Garten der / Garden of 1000 Buddhas

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