Monthly Archives: June 2010

Entering the Bay Area

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After a night with a very loud air conditioning system, we got up and prepared for the trip to the best anticipated city of our trip: San Francisco.
Getting out of the Yosemite region is about as hard as getting into it, long and windy roads lead you eventually to an Interstate leading to SF.

Entering the Bay Area is probably one of the most impressing things we’ve done so far. After driving through the upper Bay Area with cities like Daly City with approximately 400.000 inhabitants and bigger, you arrive at a two bridge system called Bay Bridge. This is the Eastern entrance to San Francisco and almost as famous as the Golden Gate Bridge.

First thing we did in San Francisco wad to find a route called 49 Mile Scenic Drive. This road will lead you to most of the car accessible sites the city has to offer. As we couldn’t find the start of the tour, we started touring ourselves and found our way to the Golden Gate bridge. We first drove it Southbound and went to the tourist designated site there, especially made for all photographing tourists. The view from over there is great, but it is at about the same level ad the deck of the bridge itself. We heard from another tourist that driving to the other side of the highway and going up the hill would yield a better view.

So we went up there and got excellent views of the bridge and the city from across the bay. Wonderful. Albeit a bit windy. And cold.
With us getting comfy with temperatures high in the 30′s, the mere 21 in San Francisco was quite a switch. Stewed in shirts, shirts and jackets we stood there to take pictures while our pants were nearly blown off by the syringe gusts of wind up there.

Going back Northbound we had to pay toll; 6 dollars. Going over the Bay Bridge was cheaper at 4 dollars, but the Golden Gate is quite a bit bigger. After returning to the city, we drove to the hotel to find that the Hilton Financial District is located directly next to Chinatown. Hoe great is that!

Also, we had a grim reminder that the hotel was dead in the middle of the city: parking was a whopping 45 dollars per night. With 2 nights to spend, we have been parking cheaper…
After checking in at the very luxureus hotel, we made our way into the town to start sightseeing. We did Union Square and a whole lot of walking up and down steep hills, which is good fun as long as you’re going downhill. The other way around is really not ok!

To find dinner, we started searching for non dinghy looking places in Chinatown. Luckily, this was daily easy and we settled for some teriyaki at a restaurant called Floating Boats Sushi Restaurant. As you might suspect judging by the name, it features a carousel of chain linked boats (floating in real water!) with sushi dishes on the boats for the guests to pick and eat. It was really funny to look at. The food was great, and pretty cheap, so the day ended great.

Giant trees and a whole bunch of wildlife

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Today we’ve got a full day to explore the wilderness of Yosemite National Park. And there’s lots of it!
Like Grand Canyon NP and Zion NP, Yosemite NP has its own free shuttle bus system. It runs on hybrid drive buses with diesel-electric power, which are on a 10 minute schedule. Great for hopping on or off!

We started our day off with a long drive to Mariposa Grove, where the giant Sequoia can be found. In total there are about 500 trees in both upper and lower Mariposa Grove of which trees with names like Faithful Couple, Grizzly Giant and California Tunnel Tree are the vest known trees.
And yes, we walked through a tunneled tree!
Previously, there were two, but the biggest of the two toppeled over in 1957.

There is very much wildlife to be seen in this park. There are a lot of deer, chipmunks, squirrels and even bears. We are proud to say we’ve seen all of those.
Yes, we even stumbeled upon a bear!
It was a small black bear, which is remarkably brown for it’s name. We suspect it was a juvenile bear, as it was not as big as a fully grown bear and there was not a big bear in its vicinity. We hope. We actually don’t know. It was a bear. And it was not as big as you’d think. Still a bear though! Amazing!

Yosemite is perhaps most famous for having huge waterfalls by the dozen. And huge they are! They are not by the dozen, but we visited the three most famous ones: Yosemite, Bridalvail and Nevada falls. Especially Bridalvail falls is amazing as it gives out a huge spray which photographs really well, but you and your camera will get soaked by doing so. Really big fun.
The park also boasts about having the best scenic view in the world. It is said to be from Glacier Point and is located around 7200 feet or 2200 metres above the valley floor. It also gives you a spectacular view of the granite mountains on the opposite side if the valley, which are whopping big and equally tall.
I must say, we were impressed by the shear size of it all and the grandeur such a view just has. Perfect place to end a wonderful day!

Unfortunately, as Yosemite National Park too is really big, we had a 45 minutes drive to the pizza place for our dinner. As described, there was not a lot to choose from, so pizza it was! Good pizza, even though we were both too tired to enjoy it fully.

We tucked in early, as the next day would be the day that we are driving to San Francisco! We are really looking forward to it, as we’ve only heard great stories about the city.
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Snowy peaks ahead!

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Parting Ridgecrest was easy, after a cosy breakfast watching soccer with two other couples (I guess there were not more guests at the hotel) we left and headed for the second National Park in the USA, which also is the biggest in the lower 48 states: Yosemite National Park.
Home of two valleys where Giant Sequoia can be found, and four different habitats. Ranging from highland alpine meadows to thick pine forests; this park has them all.

We entered the park via highway 140 and the Tioga Pass. Only since June 8th is this mountain pass opened for traffic, which at over 10 thousand feet altitude is not a big surprise.

The park is huge! After driving for about 3 hours, we reached the valley, the park it’s visitor centre. After that, it took us another 40 minutes to get to the exit and yet another 20 to get to the hotel. So that is 4 straight hours driving to get from the east entrance to the south exit! The park is spectacular! Best park so far.

We particularly liked a part called High Sierra, which is flat highland almost alpine meadows and grassland. Because this is very high up the mountain there still was quite some snow up there which made for some very lovely views and equal pictures. I think we could’ve spent an extra day up there just to get to grips with the beauty of the scenery. Unfortunately we had to get a move on to go to the hotel.

We passed by the other types of land and eventually made it to a place called El Portal where the hotel Cedar Lodge was located. It is quite warm up here! Still in the 30s degrees Celsius, and the airco in the room is very much needed.
There are four dining facilities in the vicinity (that is within 30 miles distance both ways) 2 a la carte restaurants, a grill restaurant and a pizza place. We quickly figured out that today there would be grilled food on the menu and tomorrow pizza!

What stays in Vegas…

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What stays in Vegas… doesn’t leave Vegas. It is as simple as that. So we left. Checked out, tugged al baggage to the car and drove off. Destination? Ridgecrest.

Our main goal for today was not Ridgecrest, as one might have guessed; it is Death Valley.
The lowest and hottest point of North America. Today it was a mere 43 degrees in the shade at the visitors center, so at Badwater (at -68 metres the lowest and hottest point) it was several degrees warmer.

We went out to see all major points on the roadside and after the advice of the very cheerful National Park Ranger “In this weather, you don’t want to walk more than 20 metres from your car” we kind of did.
At Badwater, we walked about half a kilometre over the salt crust to the more virgin salt crust and took some pictures. Very impressive, and equally warm!

Other points of interest we attended were: Zabriskie Point, Dantes View, the Towne pass, Badwater and Artists Drive. The last is a very scenic drive to several bumps and big rocks on a hillside with loads of different colors. There are yellow, green, blue, red and all other tones to be seen in these formations which is fascinating.

Leaving Death Valley is not an easy task as it is surrounded by three big mountain ranges. You have a steep climb to come in and an even steeper descend to go out. After that there virtually is nothing there, as it simply is yet another dry, low valley where almost nothing lives.

There are a few people though, in places called Trona and Ridgecrest (formerly known as Crumville). Tomorrow off to Yosemite National Park!

Vegas baby!

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Sleeping in our lush hotel in the kingsize bed is quite nice, I can get used to that! The only thing is that the constant ringing and plinging and zinging of the slotmachines is getting to you after about 15 minutes…

Having bought a full day pass to the buffet at the Luxor we had breakfast and git ready to board the bus to to to the Bellagio to get our tickets for their 7:30pm show. Because of the double bus system they have on the Strip with a slow bus which stops at every stop and an express bus which only stops on selected stops the ride up took us ages on the slower double decker bus called the Deuce.

After the lady at the Bellagio box office helped us out great with refunding double booked (and charged!) tickets we watched and even filmed a couple of the fountain shows the hotel offers. These are as crazy as one would imagine, complete with super high water jets, light show and music to top it all off. The best free show in town.

We dove straight back into the bus to ride it all the way to the Stratosphere Hotel to take a look at Las Vegas from the tallest building around. From 185 meters up, it is really impressive! As Kirsten was not feeling well, we did not go on any rides up there, which is too bad as they looked like a lot of fun. Unfortunately, as the elevator system is really weird in the tower, we waited for around half an hour to get a ride down and finally got one.

After this ordeal we went on to visit some more hotels, and the whackiest stores in the strip: M&M’s World, next to Coca Cola World. Both have 4 floors of merchandise, and both are equally expensive. Good fun though!
Since it was nearly time for dinner we boarded the Ace again and made our way to the Luxor to eat at the buffet. Weird as it sounds, it was actually great! The food was pretty good and it has a true Vegas feel to it to eat together with the gamblers and the likes.

After dinner we got dressed properly for the show and headed out to the Bellagio to go the latest Cirque du Soleil show O. Simply put: it is really expensive but one should go see it. It is mindblowingly good and an absolute joy to watch. For those interested in theatre techniques, it is even better!

Right after the show we got back to our hotel where we spent money like the high rollers at the slotmachines and git a net profit of -10 dollars. Oh well, the casino always wins…