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!

Kerstin & Max

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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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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,…

Runter mussten wir natürlich auch / we also had to go downhill

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