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Our hiking guide book was a bit out of date (it was already 7 y.o.) because the road which was meant to be “difficult dirt road, but no problem for usual passenger vehicles”, figured out to be impossible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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