During our time in Grand Teton and Yellowstone national park, we found a couchsurfer named Bruce. When we arrived (it was finally a bit cooler, only roundabout 30°C), it seemed there was no one at home, until he opened the door being on the way back to work. Bruce is 66 years old and to make a long story short: he is working way too much. He doesn’t only work in a hospital and has his own doctor’s office, but he also does office work until late in the evening. Before Bruce went again to work, he showed us around his house and our sleeping spot. His house is just awesome, you feel like in a mixture of an art museum, an antiquities shop and a small witch house. As we knew before, we could sleep in a tent in his garden, but we didn’t know that it was such a big and comfortable tent including a bed, chair and books. When Bruce was gone and we carried our stuff into the tent, we got to know Susan, Bruce’s girlfriend. We chatted about our travels and mainly about New Zealand, as her son is staying for one year in New Zealand. We also told her that we plan to go to the east coast and once she heard that Washington D.C. is on our route, she directly contacted her brother who lives there and asked him if he could host us there. Of course he agreed! Americans are just cool!

After a first night in the tent we drove to Grand Teton National Park the next morning, which is one of the most interesting ones in terms of landscapes in America. Basically the park includes some mountains, glaciers and glacier lakes in addition to forests which are habitat for antelopes, deers, moose, elks, wolfs and black and grizzly bears. We walked a bit along Jenny Lake in order to reach the “Hidden Falls” and Inspiration Point which offers nice views over the park. Additionally, we drove to String Lake for a swim and wildlife viewing in the evening. Unfortunately “just” moose, elks and antelopes, but no bears even though there are tons of signs “Bears with cubs crossing” in the park. Somehow we didn’t get the picture of bears with tea cups walking along the street out of our heads 🙂

Once back at home, we talked with Susan and Bruce in addition to a few other guests who were staying that night and took off to Yellowstone the next day. Unfortunately, we totally underestimated the distances, that is to say the driving time. It’s only 50 miles from Bruce to the entrance of Yellowstone, but there is so much traffic that it took 1 ½ hours. Additionally, Yellowstone is different to the other national parks, where you get around quite easy once you are inside. Not so Yellowstone. It is so huge, that one easily drives 30 miles from one attraction to another and because there are speed limits, camping busses, animals and daydreamers on the road it can easily take an hour to get there. Therefore, we basically spent the next three days in the car, without having enough time to actually get away from the main tourist paths. On the other hand, Yellowstone has a lot to offer. Not only the very famous geysers (first of all Old Faithful), but also hot pools, mud pools, fumaroles and even a grand canyon (you will find everything on the pictures). Really impressive, how much geothermal activities are going on there and also the canyon is just beautiful with different colors and water falls. Beside the Grand Canyon, the Prismatic Spring was another highlight for us. It’s a hot pool which glimmers blue and also has a lot of different colours to offer! We couldn’t resist climbing up a little hill in order to see it from a higher point of view, which was definitely worth doing. For everyone who might be in Yellowstone one day: Walk along the pool until you find a sign “do not enter”. That’s where you have to climb up 🙂 Another funny location are the mud pools, which were not too interesting compared to the ones in New Zealand, but funny enough some bisons like it there why we could observe them from very close. Another bison was walking with its calf along a street in the park, fortunately not in our direction, and caused a queue of at least a mile. Too funny!

If you plan to go there, just be careful where you’re going to stay, as it might be a longer way as you expect. On the other hand, that’s how we got accommodation in Washington D.C. why we definitely can’t complain about that!

Anyway, as we wanted to continue going north, we decided to leave Bruce‘s place one day earlier as previously planned in order to find a place to camp at the north side of the national park. Otherwise the drive north from Bruce to Glacier national park would have been too long! We told Bruce about our plan and not only that he understood our problem, he directly called a friend of his who lives north of the park, if she could host us for a night. How cool is that? That’s why we visited the Mammoth Hot Springs at our last day in the park and took a bath in a boiling river. Yes you heard right. There is a river, approximately 80°C hot, which runs into a river from a glacier. Where both meet, the water is between 20 and 50°C depending on where you place yourself. After that we drove to Marylin, around 30km outside the park.

She lives a bit off the road along a gravel road. The wooden house and the location could be a canvas. Unbelievable! The next house is maybe 500m apart and she occasionally meets wolfs, moose or bears in her garden! She and her husband own a wilderness tour guide company where one can book multi day tours through Yellowstone and other wild spots in America. We chatted with her in the evening and after a very relaxed breakfast in the morning we took off to Glacier National Park. Why we chose that? That’s another story…

Grand Teton National Park

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As we already know, Utah is the biggest habitat for followers of the Mormon Church and Salt Lake City as the capital of Utah does the same job for the church. The centre of the city is characterized by the Temple Square with an enormous concert hall and a temple for weddings, which is not open for the public (we saw two brides within 10 minutes). In addition, there is the most impressive building in the city, the conference centre. The church owns a lot of real estate in the city centre, a huge mall is only one example. It’s quite tricky to deal with Mormons, as they are really nice and friendly, but also very missionary, why it’s common to get into a discussion about the church. The quite annoying part is, that these discussions are more about the church and its charitable work, rather than the religion. Other than that, the complete “history” about the church is a lie. They say, after the Resurrection, Jesus came to America in order to convert the Indians which was the start of the religion. If you search for 5 minutes in google, you will find out the true story, which is the complete opposite. But the leaders of the church are not stupid, why it’s forbidden to do research about the church if you’re a true supporter of the church. Knowing that, the structure of the church is downright ridiculous for common sense. The president (or how he calls himself, prophet) is “appointed by god” who appoints the 12 apostels…

However, each to his own, we thought, and arrived at our host Mike (hoping he wouldn’t be Mormon 🙂 ). Fortunately he isn’t, what was clear after he made some jokes about them. Again, super nice and relaxed. After a bit of chatting, he gave us some hints for the next two days and we went to bed early (that is to say on our couch and hammock 🙂 )

We visited one of the venues of the Olympic Games 2002 the next day. The surroundings of Salt Lake City are apparently a very famous winter sport location. We visited Park City, which hosted ski jumping, skeleton and bobbing and we could even watch trainings for freestyle skiing into a pool of water. We also watched some super adventurous people sliding down a crazy zip line (beware of sarcasm) and couldn’t resist doing a free gondola ride. We visited some winter sport exhibitions in the museums they have there and drove back to Salt Lake City after having lunch in order to go to the already described Temple Square. First, we listened to an organ concert in an oval building with an amazing acoustic. However, the room made the organ unbearable loud (and the artist was definitely not a genius) that we escaped after the second “track”. After that we went to the Family History Museum (which apparently has the largest collection of ancestor research documents in the world), where you can search for your ancestors for hours. They had some examples of famous family trees, e.g. Churchill, Roosevelt, George W. Bush and Nixon share one ancestor in the 17^th century.

We also participated a guided walk in the already mentioned conference building. It’s ridiculous, what a church does if they have too much money (compared to that, the Vatican is kind of sober). The main room, the conference hall, hosts 21.000 people without having a single pile in the room. The lighting partially comes from 12 (!!!) wells to the roof. The roof itself is more a park than a roof, having fountains, trees, plants and water falls. Somehow we had the feeling that most of the people working in the building are related to each-other (which obviously makes sense as the ideology of the church is to have as many children as possible…). When we visited a little exhibition in the nearby visitor centre, Kerstin almost got converted by two 19 year old girls, but fortunately she could rescue herself in the last second.

Mike invited us to join him and a friend of his to a pretty cool sports bar with amazing burgers! His friend was actually a former Mormon, why we know this stuff about their history. The next day we visited the probably most famous speedway in the world. As the name Salt Lake City implies, there are salt lakes around that area (actually it was one, but it evaporated and now there are a few “smaller” ones). The famous part evaporated centuries ago and left a few thousand km² big salt flat which dries out that much in summer, that one can drive a car on it. In late summer, they prepare a 10 mile speedway for approaching new high-speed records. In the evening we had a very American experiences, when we drove to a softball match of Mike. We couldn’t resist cheering a bit, it was so funny! So after another very nice evening with cocktails later, we said good bye to Mike the next morning and drove, with a shorter stopover on Antelope Island (where we could see antelopes and bisons), to the next highlight of America, Yellowstone!

Oylmpia Ski Freestyle

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Yes we went back to Utah, the state with all these nice national parks. We only saw two of them so far, why we wanted to extend the list with another two. The main reason for the 7h drive (which is extremely scenic, so not boring at all) was Arches National Park, but as Moab is the best location to visit it, we got the Canyonlands National Park in addition.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find a couchsurfer this time, why we took out our tent again and we stayed on a campground in Moab for the next two nights. As usual, we went to the Visitor Center, but this time we were really unlucky with the girl who gave us advices. She was very bored and when we asked her for some good hikes, she just said “None, it’s too hot here”. What an answer… We have to mention it was actually brutally hot with almost 40°C in the shade. Fortunately she mentioned, that we need to start very early (if we were so stupid and decide to hike, what we did for sure 🙂 ) and we went on to our camp ground.

Of course we followed her advice and got to bed very early in order to get off at 6:30. The first target was Delicate Arch, the probably most impressive structure in the park. A completely outstanding stone arch without any connections to the surrounding rocks. Unfortunately the hike was quite easy, why there were too many people (a bus full of Chinese who went there as well). The story about the development of the arches would be a bit too long, but it’s pretty interesting so look it up on google if you want to know it! The short version: Water, salt, erosion, wind etc…

After this highlight early in the morning, we drove to Canyonland NP, which was an advice of (the this time competent) girl in the Information Center of the national park and do the other hike in Arches the next morning (because it got really hot actually…)

Canyonland (roughly 10° Fahrennheit cooler) is similar impressive as the Grand Canyon. Again, one stays on the edge of the canyon, 500m above the ground and you’d think you stay in front of a surreal canvas. It’s really difficult to believe or even try to describe the dimensions. We did some shorter walks to the highlights of the parks: Upheaval Dome, Mesa Arch and the Grand View Point, which offers views on the three main canyons of the park. As already said, really really impressive!

After another short and stormy night, we got up early again (as we had pack our tent already at 5:30) and drove to Arches NP again to do the hike through Devils Garden. We’ve no clue how that name developed, but it definitely makes sense. There are the weirdest sandstone formations and one can basically see the different states of the development of an arch. The around 4h roundtrip offers views on the Double O Arch, Landscape Arche (the hugest natural arch worldwide), Vavajo Arch, Partition Arch, Pine Tree Arch and Tunnel Arch. Afterwards we drove to the Window Arches (South, North and Turret Arch) and saw the Courthouse tower in addition to the Park Avenue (someone thought that looks like a street with skyscrapers, which explains the name). The park and the landscape is extraordinary impressive, so whoever is in the area. GO THERE!

After that we continued to Salt Lake City, but that’s another story…

Fahrt nach Moab durch Devil's Canyon / drive to Moab through Devil's Canyon

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A quick 2.5 hour drive later, we arrived at the very popular Las Vegas Boulevard aka “The Strip”. The obvious goal of the Party-/gambling-/entertainment-/luxury-mile is to fulfil even the weirdest wishes of its customers. Whatever that might be… Everything is possible here. You name it, you’ll find it. Luxury Hotels (which are apparently not as expensive as one might think, e.g. the Bellagio is only 80$/night/room during the week) in the weirdest shapes, luxury shopping, night clubs, day clubs, pool parties, 24h-nightclubs, shows, circus and of course gambling everywhere. We could extend this list arbitrary…

After we found a parking lot (which are free in all the hotels on the strip), we were almost knocked out by a wall of heat. Las Vegas is actually really hot. In order to name it, it was every day more than 40°C, once even 45°C. Anyway, we just wandered a bit around through the acclimatized Casinos and Hotels which try to top each other with extraordinary themes. To name a few, there is a copy of the old Rome (Caesars Palace), Paris, Venice (incl. the famous canal in the second floor of the building where you can take a ride on a gondola), Monte Carlo, New York, a castle called Excalibur, a pyramid with a copy of Ramses, etc. Additionally, each of them has a special attraction. The Bellagio has a show with water fountains and music every 10-15 minutes, Caesars Palace shows the sinking of Atlantis (whoever was so bright to connect Rome and Atlantis) and in Treasure Island a volcano erupts every hour after sunset.

After checking out the area a bit, we caught up with Mike and Michelle in their hotel. You possibly remember them, as they were our two Couchsurfers from Perth, who borrowed us their tent for our trip on the West Coast. Saturday was Michelle’s birthday and of course that had to be celebrated in Vegas! After a bit of chatting, we went to another room, where two friends of them from Perth were staying (we already got to know them in Perth) and we drunk some cocktails together and figured out a plan for the next days. The others wanted to go to a concert in a night club the same evening, but we found the tickets a bit too expensive and would have needed new clothes for it anyway, why we gave it a miss (we obviously didn’t have proper dresses for a night in Vegas in our luggage…) However, we wanted to join them at her actual birthday to a pool party and tried to get tickets for it, but first we met our couchsurfing hosts in Vegas!

Heiko (31) and Susan (28) are a German-American married couple, who moved to America not too long ago in order to work here. As Susan already lived and studied in Germany for five years, her German was quite fluent why we mostly talked in German (which was sometimes really weird as we talked so much English previously…). It was, typical for our experiences in America, a perfect time as they were super nice and easy-going. We also tried to get the tickets for the pool party, but unfortunately the ticket skyrocketed why we had to give the party a miss.

However, while searching for deals Tobi found out how the system Vegas works. It’s actually pretty stupid to pay admittance for nightclubs or other parties here, as there are hundreds of promoters who are pretty happy to put one on the guest list for free. We wrote one of them, who invited us to 5 different parties within the next two days (sometimes incl. drinks). But unfortunately the pool party on Saturday was completely overcrowded which was really a bummer.

The next day (the day before the birthday), we bought a present for Michelle and drove back to the strip in order to explore it a bit more. In the evening we caught up with Mike and Michelle again and drove together to the “Old Strip”, because Heiko and Susan wanted to show us around there. A totally different experience compared to the actual strip, but much more fun in our opinion. There are enormous Hot Dogs and Burgers and fried sweets for a very cheap price! We tried some Twinkies: fried, sweet dough, filled with crème and topped with chocolate and icing powder. Very sweet, delicious …. and unhealthy! Next to all the food, there is free live music and at a certain time the roofing transforms into a huge screen and shows a concert of a specific artist. When we were there it was Bon Jovi.

The next day (Michelle’s birthday) it continued like that, but this time we stayed on the strip in the evening and watched Las Vegas by night. To make it short, even more crazy than during daytime, as the strip hosts a lot of street artists in addition to the crowds. Beside the shows we already mentioned at the beginning, we also watched a free circus show in the casino “Circus Circus”. After we saw the show at Bellagio for the third time, we drove back home and were done with the Strip.

We spent our last day in Vegas with visiting the Hoover Dam together with Mike and Michelle plus another friend of them from Perth (who also travels at the moment and flew in for her birthday as well). The Hoover Dam is quite famous, as it is the widest dam in North America, which also dams the Colorado River. There are two ways to visit it. First we went over the fairly new bridge (before it was built, all the traffic actually went over the dam itself), which offers a quite spectacular view on the dam from ab ove before we drove over the actual dam. Basically, really huge and quite windy to stay over the Grand Canyon. Afterwards we visited the Red Rocks and drove a loop through (again) diverse stone formations. Summary: Really beautiful, but compared to the other canyons we saw before quite average. We drove the three Aussies back to their hotels and back to Heiko and Susan who invited us for a barbecue at their pool. Of course you don’t say no to that!!! It was actually our first American barbecue, with corn (of course 🙂 ), chicken in Terriyaki sauce and potatoes in melted cheese plus fruit salad. Super yummy! Of course we jumped in the pool to cool down from the heat and after it cooled down a bit (that is to say below 40°C) we jumped in the heated Jacuzzi, because we didn’t want to get a cold 😛

It was again time to say good bye the next morning and we went further to Utah. Utah? You might think we’ve been there before, don’t you? But that’s another story.

Paris

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After we said good bye to Marc and Rachel, we continued our way along the North Rim of the Grand Canyon and crossed the Glen Canyon Dam (the highest dam of America), in order to drive to our next destination, Bryce Canyon National Park where we planned to stay half a day. First we drove the Scenic Route and stopped along the way in order to see the “Canyon” from above (Sunset and Sunrise Point, Inspiration Point, Bryce Point, Paria View). However, Canyon is actually not the correct name, as it’s actually a huge amphitheatre instead of a canyon. A guy named Bryce started discovering the area one day, and the local people just called the area Bryce’s Canyon. The first view is weird but amazing. Orange-red rocks in lots of different formations, but especially the small rock piles are very extraordinary. Once again, this phenomena developed through glaciers, water and erosion. Going from view point to view point, you won’t recognize a lot of changes in the view, why we decided we had to go down and watch the rocks from the bottom. That makes the experience much more remarkable. The highlights are Thors Hammer, two bridges and Wall Street (see pics) and definitely worth the two hour hike.

However, there is not that much more to do in Bryce Canyon and we continued the drive to our hostess Lark in Cedar City in the evening, who accepted us on a very short notice. She is 26 years old, has a master in Spanish and English as a foreign language. She moved to Nebraska two weeks after we visited her, in order to reunion with her fairly new husband and start a new life there, teaching at the local university. Lark taught us a lot about politics (finally, we were always afraid to talk about that, as it’s a bit of a taboo topic here, and yes she is democratic 🙂 ), Mormons, Amish and the development of the American language. Apparently, Utah is THE mormon state. A few of you folks probably think now: what was a Mormon? The answer: Mormons are Christians and they determined their sense of life in getting married as young as possible and producing as many children as possible. Yes exactly, you heard correctly. Lark explained us more, it goes so far that a usual car is not enough, instead a bus is needed. No, not a small van! A huge, yellow, American school bus, in which all of the 18 children are squeezed to fit in. If we learned something on this travel, then each to his own! 🙂

Lark gave us a few good tips for our destination for the next two days: Zion National Park. All people we met told us Zion is much nicer than Bryce why we planned only one day in Bryce and two in Zion. As the weather forecast was good (no rain), Lark recommended us to hike the Narrow Walk, which leads along a river to a narrow canyon. A word, a blow! When we arrived the next morning at the entry of the national park, we were a bit worried as apparently there were no free parking spots left in the park. The nice lady at the fee station stated again that there were no parking spots left. We just thought, let’s try! And there you are, we drive on the parking ground and a second later someone leaves. Sometimes we are in a flow! As cars are forbidden in the park, we took the shuttle bus and made our way to the Narrow Trailhead, a hike which was paved within the first 30 minutes, but then leads through the river. Afterwards we walked (or better to say waded) for 4-5km, across and through the river until the canyon narrowed to only 1-2m. Really impressive and of course no usual experience. Back at Lark’s place, she waited for us with self-made and delicious Mexican Enchiladas!

The next day we planned to do the Hike to Angel’s Landing. This time with a bit of a longer parking spot search, but still no problem. The way to Angel’s Landing consists of three parts. In the beginning we walked in the hot sun (around 40°C) along a couple of switchbacks and approximately 150m in altitude into a small canyon. That’s where it became shady, otherwise we would have had a problem with our water reserves. Within the canyon, we walked up another 150m just to arrive on a plateau and see the actual highlight of the hike. A narrow trail leads to an elevation of around 500m above the canyon. The elevation is just a narrow tongue into the canyon with steep cliffs on either sides. The way is primitive, just a few chains to hold on transmit a good feeling if you are balancing on a stone 50cm apart from the deep. Ok, that does sound a bit more dramatic than it actually was, but anyone who is afraid of heights should definitely avoid this trail. Apparently, 6 people died on this trail, which is due to our description probably not surprising, but it was rather carelessness than real danger. Anyway, finally arrived at the top, there is a beautiful 360° view into 3 further canyons. After a short lunch break and defence of our food against thieving squirrels and chipmunks, we made our way back. The awesome view and the exciting trail was definitely worth the effort!

Back in the canyon, we walked to Emerald Pools, which didn’t blew us away too much, and back at Lark’s, we finally could prepare dinner for her (German pasta salad). Again an awesome couchsurfing experience in Amerika, it’s still getting better here. The next morning, we said goodbye to Lark and drove to the city of sin – but with a small delay, as we somehow managed to lock us out of our room with all our stuff being inside the room and then after an hour managed to break in with a supermarket club card,…

Ostende des Grand Cayons / east end of Grand Canyon

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Marc (44) and Rachel (29) were our hosts for our time in Arizona and once again, it couldn’t have been any better. They were not at home when we arrived, but they left the door unlocked and we made ourselves comfortable in one of the two guest rooms we were allowed to choose from. After they came back we talked a bit and they gave us some good hints for our visit of Sedona, which was planned the next day, which basically keeled us over.

Sedona is approximately 30 minutes away from Flagstaff, and the road leads through a gorgeous canyon. We basically couldn’t close our mouth for probably 50% of the drive, because we never saw anything similar. Orange and red cliffs and mountains covered with rich green grass in the strangest formations. The town Sedona itself is built in-between that canyon and looks like on a canvas. We climbed up one of those mountains, Cathedral Rock, which offers an amazing view over the Valley. Later we saw Bell Rock (looks like a bell), the Courthouse and the chapel “Holy Cross” which is attached to one of those rocks. We also did a small lunch break at the small river which flows through the valley and drove to the trailhead of the second walk of the day, which should lead us to the Natural Bridge.

Our hiking guide book was a bit out of date (it was already 7 y.o.) because the road which was meant to be “difficult dirt road, but no problem for usual passenger vehicles”, figured out to be impossible for our car and was only opened for 4WD. So we had to walk the additional 1.5 miles from the carpark to the actual start of the trail. It was not a difficult walk, but we found 1.5 miles along a road really boring. That’s why we tried to hitchhike with the first car wanting to overtake us and it worked out instantly and we got in touch with Shawn and Emily from Phoenix. Driving was apparently much more fun (even though not significantly faster 🙂 ) than walking. We directly had a good connection with them and we walked together to the natural bridge (which gave us a ride back in addition 🙂 ) Once we arrived at the bridge, we crossed it for sure, which apparently looks scarier than it actually was. However, it was an incredible feeling to stay on a 50-150cm thick stone 40m over the ground. After an obligatory beer on the bridge we went back to the car and wanted to watch the sunset, but there were so many clouds making it really uninteresting. Back at home we chatted with Marc and Rachel who made dinner for us and planned the next day, the GRAND CANYON.

The two already warned us, that the park might be quite crowded and unfortunately they were right. It took us 30 minutes until we could enter the park (because one has to pay the entry, or in our case show our annual pass). Finally arrived and got a parking lot, we directly started the track Marc and Rachel recommended us and soon we arrived at the rim of the Grand Canyon. The view is not from this world… It’s literally not possible to take a picture capturing the dimensions. You stay there and think you just stay in front of an enormous canvas. Maybe our walk illustrates this at least a bit. As we wanted to see as much as possible, we decided to walk downhill as long as we can. In the following we walked 735m altitude, and we were not even close to the bottom and the Colorado River, or even able to see it (For better understanding, the Burj al Arab in Dubai is 830m high). The scenery looks even more unreal if you watch it from farer downhill. Just unbelievable majestic. Arrived at the 3-miles checkpoint we decided to have lunch and turn back as we wanted to see the other parts of the national park as well. On the way back we made a connection which seems to become quite usual during our trip. While overtaking a couple we got into chatting with them, as they liked following our speed. So we did most of the walk together and talked with Stephen and Victoria who had something like a blind date the other evening (not the worst idea to do that at Grand Canyon) and were on the way back from a “romantic” picnic. Stephen is actually from San Diego, and offered us to host us when we come to San Diego after we arrived at the top (and had to fill out a survey measuring our drinking behaviour during these really high temperatures^^). So cool the Americans!!!
After this track (which we thought was much easier than expected), we took the free shuttle bus along the canyon to some viewpoints and drove to Lipan Point to watch the sunset. The Colorado River makes a 90° curve there why one gets an awesome view into two different canyons. The sunset itself was not extraordinary but the canyon is lighted in a weird shiny light which makes it really beautiful.

Obviously, we were back in Flagstaff quite late (and therefore had a really bad feeling as we didn’t spend a lot of time with our hosts), why we arranged to go swimming together with them the next afternoon. In the morning we extended the rental of our car for another two weeks, because we definitely would need more time in Utah/Arizona than we actually planned. Later, Marc and Rachel took us to a little canyon, around 60 miles away! One of the best swimming spots we’ve ever seen and kind of a secret hint. The canyon is between 2 and 15 m high and perfect for jumping into the water (which had a really comfortable temperature). There were also two other friends of them along, one of them had an inflatable Stand-Up-Paddle-Board we could borrow to follow the river a while. It was totally relaxing and a lot of fun, within this amazing scenery.

In the evening we were finally able to cook for Marc and Rachel and left early next morning to continue cruising once around the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon was our next stop…

Sedona - einfach unbegreiflich / just unbelievable

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From Orinda we took off to Yosemite national park which is probably one of the most famous (and the 3^rd oldest) national parks worldwide. And for sure there is a reason why, you will recognize it clearly in the pictures. However, approximately 4 million visitors per year ask for entertainment why the main part, the Yosemite Valley, looks more like a theme park rather than a national park. There are free shuttle busses to the important spots, shops, grocery stores, restaurants, child care, evening entertainment, bus tours next to several hotels, motels and campgrounds. This even became a little problem. We already heard that it’s not the best idea to be spontaneous in Yosemite in terms of accommodation but we were quite shocked when we actually saw it. All camp grounds were completely full and we were put on a waiting list. Then a few spots were drawn from the list, but unfortunately we weren’t lucky, but the nice ranger organised another camp ground for us only a few miles outside the main area. We were, however, quite lucky as it would have been possible that we get a spot outside the park either. Anyway, we saw Mirror Lake which mirrors the cliffs of Half Dome (where we saw our first American snake) and walked to the famous Yosemite Falls, which marks the highest water fall in northern America with 700m. Very impressive!

Even camping in Yosemite is quite an adventure, as there are brown and black bears in the park, who enjoy robbing food of campers. That’s why each camp spot has its own bear box, where one has to store everything with a nice smell, like food or shampoos. Honestly a bit scary, but also really exciting. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to spot a bear and that’s why we took off the next morning to one of the best hikes we did so far. We wanted to see the Vernal Falls, which overshadows most of the falls we’ve seen so far. Just breathtaking! Unfortunately this walk is so famous, that too many people who shouldn’t do such a hike do it anyway. So we had to overtake, stop or wait for some daydreamers, inconsiderate Chinese and chatting teenagers. Even though definitely a recommendation for everyone who might be in the area! If you have the choice, avoid peak season. The best time to be there is probably March – May or October/November, but sometimes roads are closed due to snow…

However, it was already time to say good bye to the Yosemite Village and we drove through the much less crowded north east part of the park towards Mono Lake. Even in summer this part is not too crowded, so it might be a good hint! The drive is an adventure by itself. We camped at Mono Lake (a very very salty lake) in order to drive towards Death Valley the next day. Unfortunately it started raining in the morning, while our tent ended up being in a huge billabong. Hoping to await a break of the rain, we first drove to the visitor centre and left our tent in the rain. The nice ranger helped us figuring out our route and it stopped raining afterwards indeed, why we could store the (extremely dirty) tent in the car. So we were able to see the petrified salt springs in the lake and another totally weird stone formation close to Mammoth Like. Devils Postpile was formed through Lava and glaciers and consists of sometimes perfect hexagonal stone piles. Another strange example of nature‘s forces…

We spent the following night (this time without rain but strong wind) in Lone Pine to (finally) take off to the deepest and hottest spot in Northern America. The Death Valley developed when the northern American and the pacific plate shifted apart from each other, which basically left a huge crack between two high mountain ranges (we learned that while watching a 30 minute movie in the acclimatized visitor centre 😉 ) It is the largest National Park of the States, outside Alaska. The deepest point is 85m (330ft) below sea level and there were 105°F (appr. 45°C). Just too hot to get out of the car and walk, why we basically drove through the valley while doing a few stops on the way and jumped back in the car as soon as possible. Death Valley is absolutely gorgeous and if you’re around in spring it’s definitely worth a longer visit! Just driving through is breathtaking with a lot of panoramic views on different mountain formations in different colours. Red, orange, yellow, violet or green, you name it you see it. We wouldn’t have thought that a desert could be so beautiful. We stopped at the sand dunes, the Golden Canyon, Devils Golf Course (which basically looks like a place where the devil had a few trials punting), Zabriskie Point and of course the famous Badwater Point, as already mentioned 85m below sea level. Additionally, the highest temperature in the US was measured here (56,7°C = 134°F).

After this beautiful experiences, we left Death Valley, that is to say California, and drove to Nevada. But we just crossed this state and the beautiful Red Rocks and the Hoover Dam on the way, because our actual destination was Arizona, the state of the Grand Canyon. Again, we drove through a landscape which doesn’t look real, which gave us a good first impression of the Grand Canyon. With this trip we saw 3 states in a day (3/50 of the US). What waited for us in Flagstaff, where we found our next host for 4 nights, is once again another story.

Einfahrt in Yosemite / Driveway to Yosemite

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When you inform yourself about San Francisco, you will be overwhelmed with positive references. But we wouldn’t have thought that the city is so extremely charming. But one thing after the other…

We arrived clearly after sunset at Judy’s place, who wanted to host us for our time in San Francisco. Judy is a friend of Karl and Claire from Wellington. Karl got to know Judy while they were living in San Francisco for 2 years. However, they warned us: previously they sent friends to Judy for a week, ended up staying for 9 months, but that won’t happen to us, or does it? Ok, we can already say that it didn’t happen. But we can completely understand it, because Judy lives in a huge house with pool and a beautiful garden. Orinda is located behind a chain of mountains which often keeps away the bad weather over San Francisco, but still it is only a 20 min ride by train to the city centre. So a perfect location with a perfect hostess. After chatting during dinner, Judy showed us what Karl expected us to do for his efforts. There is a morning tradition in the house of Judy that is maintained by Karl (and actually only by him). He jumps every morning before breakfast twice into the pool. It didn’t sound too bad so we tried it the next morning, but the pool is not heated why the water is quite cold. Tobi didn’t hesitate (Kerstin did) to repeat that every morning (it doesn’t happen often that you have a pool in your garden, right?).

After creating a plan for the next days, we drove around lunch time to Berkley to have a look on the campus of the university. One word, impressive! You see that Berkley receives around 10,000$ student fees per semester. There are not only really nice buildings, but also the probably most impressive library we have seen so far. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take pictures, but as an example the reading hall has (probably highly expensive) leather couches, which highly reminded us of an English saloon from the 19^th century. Judy recommended us a pizza restaurant for lunch named Cheese Board. They use self-made cheese and each day, they offer only one certain vegetarian pizza. Summary: a huge queue and incredibly delicious! But that was only the first part of the food specialities during our time in San Francisco!

The next day we finally took the train to the city center! After the kind man in the tourist information told us for around 20min all the highlights of the city, we wandered through the hilly streets of Chinatown and Little Italy to the Pier 39 being home to around 100 sea lions. On our way back we passed the Coit Tower and went on to Fisherman’s Wharf comprising all distinct types of specialties (including free tasting 🙂 ). In the evening, we had the craziest pizza we have ever eaten. Judy invited her two neighbors and ordered one pizza from Ray’s. Yes you heard right, ONE pizza for 5 people. How does that work? But after opening the cardboard we knew how that works. The pizza (from the bottom: dough, lots of cheese, dough and then tomato sauce) reminded us rather of a cake and after 2 pieces you are definitely full!

The two following days, we went again to the city to visit the Golden Gate Bridge, part of the coast, the Golden Gate Park and a district called “Mission”. All of that doesn’t sound really spectacular, but as we had enough time we could relaxingly inhale the atmosphere of the city and it blew us away. San Francisco has a flair that we know only from Paris, London and maybe Melbourne. Indeed there are a lot of tourists in the city, but still there are enough spots in which you can wander through streets without other tourists and have a look on the stunning houses. In “Mission”, that’s even more obvious than in other parts, because two cultures crash into each other. On the one hand, newly wealthier people and on the other hand elderly Mexican emigrants. In addition, there is the probably coolest shop in San Francisco. A “Pirate Supplies Store” which sells everything a potential pirate could need. From a treasure box, wooden legs and hooks to bottle post bottles or a biased dice. Next door, there is another scurrile shop selling dried creepy-crawlies and so on. So whoever is wanting to brew a magic drink, you know where to find the ingredients!

On the day before our last day in Orinda, we organised our further trip and picked up a few street maps from the American AAA. Judy recommended us another place close to the AAA where we could have lunch. That’s where we met the last cliché concerning American fast food. Fuddrackers sells the best burger, we have ever eaten. One pound of meat in a freshly baked bread. All other ingredients (tomato, salad, dressing etc.) can be taken from a salad buffet, how much you’d like to. And all for $9.50. Incredibly delicious! And a lot of meat! The same day, we made a short walk around a lake in Orinda and did part of the Rim Trail (short description: up and down for over 6 miles). We spent the last day in the city, visited the Union Square, Lombard Street and Pier 43 with a great view on the Golden Gate Bridge being half covered in fog.

The next day we started our adventure in direction Grand Canyon with stopovers in the Yosemite National Park and Death Valley. In order to not again buy tent and sleeping bags, Judy’s neighbours borrowed us theirs and Judy added a few self-inflatable mats. The next prove for American hospitality (it also happened in Australia though 🙂 ) Then our 4 day camping adventure started, more follows the next time…

kurz vor dem Sprung in den Pool / close before the jump in the pool

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Why Spanish town, we are in America, aren’t we? That’s what we thought as well, but it makes sense (be aware, we want to sound smart now). On the one hand, California is a famous place for Mexican immigrants (who earlier days made friends with Spanish people, as we all know). Secondly, in the beginning of the 20^th century (1908 or so), Santa Barbara burned down completely after an earthquake and had to be rebuilt. That’s why a few artists thought, why not rebuilding the city in a Spanish way? Indeed, they were successful with their suggestion and the result can be seen today. Cute white houses with blue doors and windows, a pretty city hall with a tower (which was unfortunately closed due to renovation) and a mission church. In addition a beautiful beach walkway with pier. Unfortunately, we thought that the water was quite dirty, but probably we are quite spoiled now, because the locals were not afraid of swimming there.

We planned to stay for 2 nights and organized two different couchsurfers for one night each. The first one was Nina, an east Ukrainian emigrant with her mother and 5-year old son. Nina is in the States since around 5 years and her mother joined her 18 months ago. We didn’t want to put our foot in our mouth, why we didn’t ask, but it was obviously that her mother came to America due to the crisis in the Ukraine. Nina was busy that evening, which was a pity, but on the other hand it allowed us to go early to bed and get a bit more sleep. The next day, we did a bit of sightseeing of the above described highlights and additionally hiked on a vista point (Inspiration Point). We had a great weather, but clouds hang over city and sea, so the view was a bit destroyed.

In the evening, we met our second hosts, a married couple in their mid-forties, and went to a local brewery around the corner for a beer. We were a bit helpless because of the many choices, why the nice waitress just gave us a taste of all different beers they had (You may have recognized that we got pretty excited about the hospitality of the Americans!!!). Back at Lisa’s and Michael’s place, we got a huge (!!!) American Steak! In addition, both of them helped us planning our route through America, as they travelled a lot, which later on drove us to change our plan completely. A great evening that was crowned by an Italian espresso in the morning. What a shame that we could only stay for one night!

We made our way quite early in order to drive the Pacific Coast Highway to San Francisco. If on purpose or not, everyone heard something of that highway. It is probably one of the most famous coastal highways in the world, which is pretty distinct with cliffs, golden beaches and water falls. Most of it in the area of the Big Sur, a 150km long part of the coast. There, we could also observe a beach full of sea elephants! During our last stop in Santa Cruz, we were able to observe two huge otters while collecting oysters. Really fascinating! As oysters sticked at the piles of the pier, the otters dive and come up with an oyster and a stone. Afterwards they swim on their back on the surface of the water. The stone is put on their belly and they smash the oyster against the stone until the shell is broken and the oyster can be eaten. What nature is doing sometimes!

That was our last stop and afterwards we continued our trip to Orinda, a suburb of San Francisco, and to Judy, our hostess. But again, this is another story…

Santa Barbara Strand / Beach

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36 (!!!) hours delayed, we finally arrived in the city of angels in the land of unlimited opportunities. Caused by the delay, we didn’t arrive in the afternoon as we actually thought, but at midnight. That’s why we got a grandiose landing with thousands of lights, but on the other hand we were kind of homeless as we obviously couldn’t ask our host to pick us up that time. Additionally, we had to pass the customs and we heard some really scary stories about people spending hours until they got processed. That’s why we asked Fiji Airways (in Nadi) to provide us a hotel room and they agreed to that. However, as we know now, Fiji Airways is not famous for being reliable why we were a bit sceptic. After we got through the customs in only about 5 minutes (YEAH), we again queued at the service desk of Fiji Airways. We got company of two Norwegian girls who were with us in the hotel in Nadi having the same problem. The guy at the desk looked a bit sceptic but he didn’t even try to change our minds and we got checked into the Crowne Plaza hotel close to the airport. As we never heard about the name before, we thought it would be a cheap motel, but that didn’t bother us as long as we would get a bed and a shower in order to get rid of the jetlag. A short 15 minute walk later we were quite surprised. Crowne Plaza is no cheap fleabag at all, but a quite expensive hotel chain (regarding the website, the cheapest room was 179$/night). Not too bad… and we directly went to sleep. The next morning we even got a giant 30$ p.p. breakfast buffet which was the perfect start for our adventure in L.A…

As we were a bit tired of HelpX, we decided to try to get back to more couchsurfing in the States (and additionally HelpX is known in USA, but not as famous as in New Zealand). We found (that is to say we were found by) Carlos, a Peruvian photographer who lives in L.A. since around 18 years. After he picked us up from the hotel, he welcomed us with a German cake, American beer and Donuts. Directly after that he invited us to a short visit of Hollywood, a delicious Peruvian lunch and a movie (Mad Max II) in the Chinese Theatre. Carlos wanted us not only to see, but also to experience Hollywood! The cinema is directly at the Hollywood Boulevard, and location for the many movie premieres of the Dolby Digital studios. His friend Peter, a hopefully quite soon very famous actor, went with us and also joined us for the following obligatory In-And-Out-Burger with American Beer. What a fabulous start!

The next day everything went on really rapidly. Carlos organized a free guided bus tour for us at his neighbour’s business. So we started at 11am for the 6 hour our through all the important parts of the city. That was the point when we realized how huge L.A. is. We spent almost half of the time on highways between the different parts (they definitely should consider a better public transport). We saw Venice Beach (part of it is muscle beach where Arnold Schwarzenegger was discovered), Santa Monica Pier, Downtown L.A., Beverly Hills (including celebrity houses, e.g. the one of Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory), Bel Air (where Michael Jackson lived), the Griffith Observatory and back to Hollywood. All in all an impressive day! The tour offered us a good overview of LA and we wouldn’t have seen a couple of places without that tour. But it was a rush and would we have paid for it, we were quite disappointed. The really nice tour guide was talking – no joke – the whole 6 hours without a break which is quite tiring if you want to listen. But ….

The next morning, Carlos wanted to take professional pictures of us for his AirBnB account. That was so to say the deal for our accommodation (could be worse, couldn’t it? 😉 Afterwards, we got a private city tour by Carlos to Japan-, China- and Koreatown, Downtown L.A. including the City Hall, the Getty Museum and for sunset and star watching again to the Griffith Observatory that offers an amazing view over the city. But one prejudice was confirmed, which we heard before about L.A. There is a lot of smog hanging above the city (our bus guide the day before explained us the difference between fog and smog: „Fog is white, Smog not“ ;-)). But we cannot confirm the second prejudice that L.A. is boring. The city is full of (positive) crazy people, artists and therefore alive as not too many other cities.

Summarizing, an incredible good start for our USA adventure, mainly due to Carlos’s enthusiasm for L.A., who definitely earned a spot in our best-host-ranking! We rented a car for the next weeks and the next morning, we started in direction to San Francisco with the first stopover in Santa Barbara. Of course not before having a closer look on the Hollywood sign (Carlos was so kind to drive us to Hertz with a small detour). From L.A. to Santa Barbara, we drove the coastal highway, why we could have a look on Miami Beach. Basically, all beaches in L.A. are quite similar, golden sand, a lot of people and a wide range of distinct activities (skating, basketball, volleyball, surfing,…). But a really relaxed atmosphere in the apparently so hectic USA.

Afterwards, we really started to make our way to Santa Barbara, but what happened there is part of the next part of our adventure.

Unser Willkommenskuchen / our welcome cake

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