Goodbye Canada

Now it's time to give you some data about our Roadtrip:

In two months we've driven more than 18.000km! The Easttrip was 7300km and the Westtrip over 11000km.

We visited 21 cities, 7 National Parks and came through 5 Canadian Provinces and 18 American States.

Special thanks to Walmart on which we camped dozens of times during our Trip, to YMCA where we could take showers, to the hospitality of the National Parks and finally to L'Université Laval in Québec where we spent 7 days.

Vancouver was supposed to be a very nice city. That's what everybody told us, but at the moment it is just raining all day long, making it difficult to walk around and see something. So I can't really agree that it's such a beautiful city, but the people we met were very nice: For example there was one guy from Singapore who told us there are 4 seasons in Singapore: one is hot and dry, one is hot and humid, one is wet and rainy and one is the shopping season which is all year round... ok
One week in the Hostel again, we haven't done that in months!
So that is Vancouver by night:

There was a funny sculpture at the harbour:

And this is in an Irish Pub where we went with a guy from the Netherlands who stayed in the same room:

It was a great Trip and an awesome stay in Canada and the USA! Now I'm going back Home, so this Blogg will rest for a couple of months. Should I continue later with my journey, I'll let you know.
Thanks to my family who supported my journey, my friends who stayed in contact with me and all the great people I met in Canada, especially Family Mueller and Toni.

Thanks for reading, cu soon!

Canada is a magnificent country, I will come back, but for now

Goodbye Canada! 

 

 

The Final Stops

Our Roadtrip finally had its last stops. Thanksgiving in Monterey, south of San Francisco, where Bjoern has family, with a visit to the beach:

This is California in November: Sunny and 20°C.

We left Monterey after a couple of days and only had 3 more days to get to Vancouver before our insurance was running out. But before that drove to Sequoia National Park to see the Giant Redwood Trees:

This is "General Sherman", with the greatest mass of all trees in the world.

In the next two days we drove 2000km along the West Coast to reach Vancouver in time, unfortunately we didn't see too much on the way. Then one short visit to Seattle and suddenly our Roadtrip had come to an end.

By now we have already sold the Van and I'm already preparing to go home, cause I'll stay there for the winter time.

But before that there will still be coming one or two blog entries, so come back!

St. Francisco

San Francisco was amazing!

We were invited to Thanksgiving Dinner on November 22 by Bjoerns relatives to Monterey which is south of San Francisco, but as we had to be in Vancouver by the 26th because our insurance was running out by then, we visited San Francisco first, to have some more time there.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about... the Golden Gate Bridge...

Lombard Street with its narrow path down the hills of SF through flowers...

and Chinatown... that was the best actually - the biggest Chinatown of the USA. We loved to have a look in all the stores, buy cheap Chinese food which is sometimes strange and bad tasting...

 and sometimes veeery good:

In the last nights around San Francisco we had a little bit more badluck than usual:
To one Walmart we came back for our second night and a security guy was waiting at the front door, saying: Soory, we are clozzzzed.
Then we asked if we can stay one more night on the parking lot, but he said: Only once in a monththth.

Ok, we drove off to another Walmart and finally got some sleep... 

tocktocktocktocktocktocktock
A security guy stands outside of the car. It's 1am. Bjoern opens a window: Hello, ser, what'sup?
"I've decided to let you know that we have a non-overnight parking policy on our premises"
In other words: Vanish!
Ok, that's what we did, and after another hour of driving, we finally found our sleep... on a third Walmart.

What a day!

Los Angeles

From Nevada, the Silver State, we drove on to the Golden State California, and golden it was indeed. 

84°F it had which is almost 30°C!

 

Of course a day on the beach is a must when you go to L.A. The best locations are Santa Monica or Venice Beach.

 

 And the sea at Sunset:

(Don't ask how long I waited for that no person is in the picture and then comes this f***ing airplane!)

But as beautiful and pleasing as the beaches are, so ugly and dull is the downtown of L.A. itself. There is just nothing you can do or see if you don't live or work there.

The real party is going on in Hollywood, and there they know how to party. Though the whole thing is more like a big mess of cinemas, clubs, restaurants and wanna-be sights.

For one thing: Forget the famous "Walk of Fame" - "Walk of Shame" I call it. It's nothing more than a boring street with crazy people, just like in any other L.A. street.

Though some of the persons eternalised in the walk are just ingenious - respect!

 Thanks Gene, for your great invention

Uuups, Steven, you're upside down, my apologies!







So now to the next great attraction of Hollywood: The Hollywood Sign:

What?! You can't see it? Wait...

Now, that's much better! Not overwhelmed? Well, I wasn't either. For one thing, you don't really get any closer, and then the Hollywood sign still stays what it is: 9 white letters on a hill. Don't trouble to come to L.A. because of that!

But there are must-does in Hollywood. No visit without a good movie!

But the best thing happened the other night: we were obsessed with the idea to get into one of the Nightclubs in L.A. So what we did was to take a shower in YMCA and then to dress in our best clothes. Which was in my case a black shirt, good jeans and ... fucked up shoes. As to Bjoern - same outfit, only he had a training jacket instead of a shirt. Anyway, we went to the "Empire" and waited to get in. The girls around were pretty and very well dressed. So we didn't have too big hopes to get in.

But luckily we met a guy on Walmart who gave us some names and with those we didn't only get in, but also payed less. A big thanks to Jerry from Legalschild!

Well, that's the story of L.A.
CU soon

Las Vegas

Las Vegas earns its name Sin City and can get boring very fast if you don't Gamble, Drink and go to Night Clubs. True, the fabulous Las Vegas Boulevard is worth to visit.

 

One Hotel stands right to the next, each trying to be more impressive than the last. In front of the famous Bellagio there starts a water show every half hour, the Cesar's is built like an ancient roman-style Village and next to the Mirage erupts a Volcano frequently.

But inside the Hotels, the Casinos look all just the same, one slot next to the other, endless tables of Poker, Black Jack and Roulette and less known games where you are invited to leave your money. In addition to that you can participate in sport bets, Million$ Poker and much more.

It can get boring very fast if you don't gamble, drink and enjoy nightlife, but it is the best place to go, if you do.

Of course we gambled a little bit, too, but we were off to Los Angeles before we lost all our money.

The Grand Canyon

No Route 66 without the Grand Canyon! Though I must say that I didn't get the best shots due to bad weather and a snow storm. But still, this is definitely a place to visit once in a lifetime.

It is typical to go down the so called "Kaibab-Trail" to the bottom of the Canyon on one day which takes about 6 hours, then stay there overnight and hike up again the next day. Up you need 8 hours. And in the heat of summer that can be quite an exhausting trip. Well, it wasn't hot when we were at the Canyon, even so we didn't climb down because rooms down there have to be booked 13 months in advance.

At least we went down a bit and returned after an hour - this is the steep path leading down.

And as mentioned the first snow encountered us on Walmart

Petrificus Totalus!

One could think that it was an invention of J.K. Rowling to petrify people with a spell. Well, may be so, but if you drive from Albuquerque West to Arizona, you will notice that Petrifying existed long before Harry Potter. In the Petrified Forest National Park in the desert of Arizona exists a whole forest of petrified trees, only here it's not magic that took effect, but time.

Ok, Forest might be a little exaggerated, it's more like a desert of fallen and broken trees. But anyway, what looks like dead wood here, actually isn't... 225 Million years ago this was a tree which then was covered by sediments of volcanic ash. Containing silica, quartz crystals replaced the wood. Later (60 Million years ago) tectonic movements lifted the Colorado Plateau up and revealed the Petrified Forest.

In this desert, many smaller and bigger parts of petrified trees can be found...

In the late 19th century, when the area wasn't a National Park yet, many people came by the Route 66 and stopped to see the petrified wood. Unfortunately they didn't only look, but also took away so many stones as souvenirs that soon there wasn't much left. Today it is strictly prohibited to take away petrified wood, but despite penalties, there is stolen 1 ton of petrified wood each month.

So hurry up to visit the place before it's all gone!^^

After our stop at the Forest we drove on on our Countryroad:

This time it will bring us to the Grand Canyon, Las Vegas and the City of Angels, so keep reading, the Best of the Roadtrip will be here soon!

The Rockies

That's what it often looks like in the Midwestern USA: Endless countryroads, nothing to see for miles except for some cattle, dry grass and no clouds. It is the famous Route 66 we've been following through the US so far, but in Kansas City we decided to drive to Denver instead to Oklahoma City. And that for a good reason: We wanted to visit the Rocky Mountains, now that we are in America. And that's what we did:

 Though we are well in November now, on our hike to the top of one of the Mountains it was warm and beautiful

 Compared to the alps, the Rockies have more red soil and of course... rocks










On another hike there can suddenly be snow and ice, though we were not higher up than before:

And on the way back a herd of deer was next to the street:

Hurricane Sandy

  While Hurricane Sandy is devastating The East of the US and even reached Toronto where we've been still been just one week ago, we are walking through the European-style Architecture of Kansas City - in T-shirts at 25°C on the very first day of November.

Later I got the chance to continue my lecture of R.R. Martin's Game Of Thrones which is my dear companion on our Roadtrip...

A visit to the The Blue Room in the Jazz District of the City made the Day perfect!

Thank you Kansas City and Goodbye

St. Louis

This is St. Louis, a picture token in the City Park. In the background is the Gateway Arch, probably St. Louis' most popular mark. Built as monument of the US Western Movement, today it attracts thousands of tourists.

Next thing near the Park, I saw a truck from far, many people standing in front of it and we thought: Hey, there must be something for free!

And indeed it was an Italian Food Truck, celebrating the 1st anniversary of the Truck and giving meals for free. And I must say, the food was very good.
Thanks for  this awesome lunch!

Later we went to the House where famous Ragtime-Composer Scott Joplin used to live when he was in St. Louis. Now it as a museum which includes a room where this "Ghost-Piano" plays Ragtimes by itself as seen in Halloween movies. Well, at least it reminded me of those movies...
Of course it doesn't play itself, but works with a system of valves and pressure.
 

There's a lot going on in St. Louis, including free museums and zoo in the Forest Park or Tours of the Anheuser-Busch Comp. which produce the famous Budweiser.

A little bit outside of St. Louis there is the World Heritage Site of "Cahokia", an ancient city of Indians who built so called "Mounds" over centuries. From the biggest one, "Monks Mound", the chief ruled over the city.

The population of Cahokia declined around 1300AD and finally the city ceased to exist. The cause of the decline is not known for sure.

Wecome to the USA!

This was our Welcome when we entered the USA in Detroit. The first thing that happened was: Two men running down the street very fast, almost being hit by cars as they crossed the street... a hundred feet behind two police officers chasing them, screaming into their walkie-talkies. One of them letting a piece of his equipment fall, grabbing it and running on, the other one further behind - barely keeping pace. Didn't look too good for the police, until they came with their police cars, but how the chase ended I couldn't tell - but Welcome to Detroit!

That's the Detroit Skyline from the Canadian side. Detroit is famous for its automobile industry and its Ice Hockey Team.

 

Not only because it's warmer that we went to the US, but also because it's cheaper. For example: the gas prices, here we were really lucky, only 3,19$/US-Gallon which is even better than the Canadian Dollar most of the time. If you now consider that 1 Gallon = 3,78 Litres, the 1 Litre-Price is only 0,84$ which is about 0,65€/Litre!!
 

And on we went to Chicago, the Windy City which is really beautiful: