Road Trip through the West 2

In our last installment of these blog posts, Jerome left you while flying back from San Francisco Airport to Minneapolis after an extended road trip. And this is the exact location where this story starts! I was lucky enough to have a second friend group, Darius, Dominique, Felix and Cédric to join me for a second trip along the west coast of the United States. And this is what this blog post is about.

One long leg to LA and a not so amazing city

It all started on a Friday morning in San Francisco. Darius and his Friends had already arrived couple of days earlier in Seattle and had travelled to San Francisco by Amtrak (they were hyped about the experience!). We had planned to meet in San Francisco as it seemed practical – they were able to look at the city and I was able to fly in easily. We boarded our tour vehicles. Sadly, no convertible was available, but we instead were able to score a Golf GTI (Kübelwagen GTI), how fitting for us Europeans. We immediately took off and drove all the way to LA.

It was a pretty long journey to LA, and once we arrived, we first had to struggle with our hotel: Turns out that under the 100°F (35°C+) heat, the AC units at the hotel did not or barely work. The hotel was unable to give us other rooms, which in turn meant that some of us had to sleep with windows open during the first night. While this was not as bad, turned out that in the second room the AC unit was making a grindy, loud noise every 15mins or so, waking up everybody inside the room. After some back and forth with the hotel, at least in one room AC was fixed for the next night.

In LA, we first visited USS Iowa, a decomissioned battleship that now acts as a museum. Overall, a really cool experience. On the ship many stories are told, all have in common that they talk about cameraderie and pride.

Besides the battleship, we spent some time at the Griffith observatory, from which we were able to see the famous Hollywood sign. Finally, as our hotel was located close to Santa Monica, we visited its pier in the evening, and were even able to ride a rollercoaster there!

Joshua Tree NP, Montezuma Castle and Flagstaff

From LA we drove direction east. Our first planned stop was Joshua Tree National Park – for our friends from Switzerland the first National Park experience. While there, we were able to observe a beautiful sunset in the desert. Also fascinating: Driving through the park, at one point, the trees stop. This has to do with elevation, when driving down into a lower part of the park, no more joshua trees grow. We stayed overnight at a roadside hotel.

The next day, we drove further to the east. On the way we stopped at Montezumas Castle National Monument, only the first of many awesome pueblo settlements we were going to see throughout our trip! That day, it was 40°C in the shadow, so we only stayed for a very brief amount of time… We drove further north through Red Rock State Park and finally arrived in Flagstaff, the goal for the day. Flagstaff is the biggest town in this area and serves as starting point for most excursions to the Grand Canyon.

Grand Canyon NP

The entire next day we spent in Grand Canyon National Park. Even though I was lucky enough to see the park from the North side already, it was again a mind blowing experience. We used the entire day to drive through the park to different viewpoints, ending at the Colter tower at the west end of the park.

Walnut Canyon NP, Petrified Forest NP

After another night in Flagstaff, we drove direction East. First stop was Walnut Canyon National Monument, a pueblo settlement hit into the stone. Rains and rivers had over thousands of years washed out a line around the cliffsides, into which early settlers had built settlements. All around this canyon, such pueblo houses can be found. And we saw a snake! Sadly, visitors in the early 20th century had stolen a lot of artifacts, which are missing to this day.

We continued our drive to the east. We stopped at a local tourist attraction, the Meteor Crater. We regret having paid the entrance fee, as it is a money grab. At least we were able to touch a piece of the meteor that lead to the huge hole.

Petrified Forest on the other hand was a cool experience! As this area used to be a swamp, entire trees were petrified in the mud of the swamp. Because of erosion, these trees are found today. Petrified forest is a big area where such trees can be found, protected, so that people cannot steal the pieces of stone anymore. Finally, there are some areas that reminded me of Badlands National Park.

Airbnb, Chaco Culture NP, Mesa Verde NP

This night, we arrived at an Airbnb in Farmington, NM, close to the border to Colorado.What a cool experience: The villa had a pool, a whirlpool, a huge indoor dining area plus 5 bedrooms. While spending most of our time in the whirlpool, on the first day, Felix and I decided to visit Chaco Culture National Park, a large old Pueblo settlement in the middle of nowhere.

We drove over many miles of gravel road with our perfectly fitting Golf GTI. But the park itself was absolutely stunning. While not huge, the park consists of a set of pueblo villages that are each about 20 mins of footway apart from each other. One was always able to see the “next” village up or down the canyon. Impressive was the craftmanship that must have gone into these, and the change in construction style was clearly visible (basically, older settlements were built in a more “rough” fashion). After returning to our villa, we enjoyed a self made BBQ for dinner.

The next day, altogether, we visited Mesa Verde National Park, a park again famous for its pueblo villages built under stone arches into cliffsides. Mesa Verde itself is a huge plateau, and being able to see the pueblo village requires a steep climb onto that plateau and then partially down again on the other side. The views from up there were stunning, as were the villages we were able to see. Nowadays, accessing these villages is only possible under surveillance of park rangers – which is a good thing! In earlier days, one was able to hike down to these villages individually. Finally, the park is also able to tell the story of very early settlements that were created ahead of the ones that were built into the cliffsides. To protect these, roofs were erected over them.

Monument Valley

We left our Airbnb and drove northwards crossing through Colorado and then entering Utah. On our way, we passed through Monument Valley. Monument Valley is not a National Park, but is located on native land. There is a big visitor center and an offroad street one can follow to drive to the base of some of the big monumental rocks. We chose to use our sofa mobile to get up and down that very steep and sandy road and left the Golf behind (it did not have four wheel drive like the sofa did). To our surprise, the sofa mobile had absolutely no problem scaling the terrain and made other cars look like a joke. The views in monument valley are breathtaking.

Maybe one of the most famous picture spots?

On our way further north, we also passed the Forest Gump picture spot and of course had to take a picture on our own. Hungry, we stopped at a small restaurant near the road, and were able to see some cute hummingbirds that were drinking sugar water from a dispenser. Finally, we stayed overnight in Moab – a town that obviously exists because of Arches and Canyonlands National Park, there is no other close-by civilization in this area of the United States. The prices inside town were accordingly high, but we were able to find a hotel with a 4-bed bedroom.

Arches National Park

Arches National Park is one of the most famous parks within Utah, and that for a good reason! The bridge like formations are an extraordinary sight! Only few minutes away from Moab, we decided to do two a bit more extensive hikes. The first one brought us up to Delicate Arch, revealing what must be the most famous arch of the park. As you can see from the pictures below, it looks completely out of place. The second hike led us to a set of different arches, with Landscape Arch looking incredibly fragile and thin.

Canyonlands NP

Right on the other side of the Moab valley lies Canyonlands National Park. While originally not completely understanding the significance of the park, we were blown away by the breathtaking views. We were lucky enough to experience very clear views of the surrounding area, and the scale of the ridges and cliffs can only be understood when actually seeing them with your own eyes.
We stayed in the park to experience a beautiful sunset and spent our night again in Moab, in the same hotel we stayed the night before.

Capitol Reef and Bryce Canyon NP

We had a lot of driving ahead of us. From Moab, it is a long distance to Bryce Canyon, so we started driving early. We had reached one of the northmost and eastmost points in our trip and were now again travelling to the west.
Arriving at Capitol Reef national park, we decided to hike into “The Narrows”, a hike along the river bed, turning back after a good 45 minutes of walking. After this short excursion and stopping at multiple viewpoints, we continued our long drive. For more pictures please see my previous post, as this is my second time visiting.

As we were again on our way, we passed through Scenic Byway 12, an absolute must to drive through if in the region. This road leads into nothingness, there are like 2 villages that you pass over 2-3 hours of driving time.

We arrived at our two cute cabins we had rented for the night, ready to experience Bryce Canyon National Park the next day. Bryce Canyon was again breathtaking, alike for Capitol Reef, this was already my second time visiting but absolutely worth it. I even participated in a hunt for placards, where if you collect all you receive a small price, and I in fact found all of them 😊.

Zion NP

Our next stop on the route was Zion National Park. We decided that we wanted to visit the park by bike this time. This was a great idea, and I can only suggest that you do the same when you visit. Zion is very crowded, and not having to use the shuttle buses is great. Besides, one is not really able to enjoy the view from the bus window, so for my second visit, I actually was able to experience the park in a new way. Worth to mention that we saw some live turkeys on the way, and what appeared to be the fattest squirrels I got to see so far. At the end of the day, we drove down to Vegas.

Las Vegas, Valley of Fire State Park

In Vegas, we stayed at a vacation property, not a casino hotel, and this was a good idea. We had a full apartment at our disposal, including pool and whirlpool. This time, we also did sightseeing on the strip, something we had not done the last time. Moving from hotel to hotel, we also passed through Circus Circus that has an attached small indoor amusement park. The ticket prices were absolutely insane, so I had to let these attractions slide ☹.
Highlight was a ride on the huge ferris wheel on the strip, and while the cabin windows were not very clean, the views of the strip were nice. The whole trip on the wheel takes 30 minutes for one full round trip. You can even buy a ticket where a bar is integrated into the gondola.

Worth to mention also was our dinner at peppermill (or was it breakfast?). Peppermill is a famous restaurant on the strip known to serve breakfast 24/7. Its hard to get a table, its always booked.

Overall, we stayed in Vegas for 3 nights, one day travelling out to see Hover Dam and the Valley of Fire. More on that on our last post, as I have been there before.

Death Valley NP

A new experience for me: Death Valley National Park is one of the hottest places on earth. The big salt lakes are crazy to look at, and the monumental piles of colorful rocks and sand were breathtaking. There are wandering sand dunes as well!

I personally had a shock moment: After going to a restroom, I was no longer able to open the door from the inside! These toilets have no ventilation, and the inside temperature was over 40°C. After banging on the door for a couple of seconds, the woman previously on the restroom came back and opened the door for me, telling me that she had the same problem. The potential consequences of this are hard to imagine, but you would die from heat exhaustion quickly. We called the authorities and left notes so that people would not fall for the same death trap…
We still had a long drive ahead of us, and from low Death Valley had to drive up a mountain ridge over 1000m high. We headed further North to arrive at a ski resort town called Mammoth Lakes for our overnight stay (from the hot desert into the cold mountains within couple hundred miles…)

Devils Postpile National Monument and Yosemite NP

On this Saturday, we got lucky and unlucky on the same day. Lucky, because we were able to visit Devils Postpile, which was closed during the week because of renovation work. Of course, we did not know until arrival, and found the park accessible 😊 The formations were created due to volcanic activities, and look unnatural. There is a hiking path that leads around the bottom of the Postpiles and then over the top for you to look down.

We continued our trip, reaching a Northern point from which we headed west in direction of Yosemite National Park. This is where we got unlucky (or just proved to ourselves that we were badly organized): You needed an access reservation for Yosemite – which we of course did not have. So we had to wait until 3pm until we were admitted to the park. Yosemite is a big national park, and contains also one of the few connecting roads that leads from east to west. Constantly driving takes about 1:45h from east to west gate. So we drove through, already able to observe some of the nature and stayed overnight in a hotel close by the southwest entrance.
The next morning, we drove back into the park (this time with the allowance in our pocket), and were able to see picturesque Yosemite National Park, including the area stemming from the wallpaper of MacOS. While beautiful, for Swiss people, the park does not “hit” on the same level as the others, but it is still an amazing place to be. 😊

There you go, many have seen that exact foto 🙂

Trip back to LA, Pinnacles NP and back to San Francisco

Our group then split for a day – while my friends visited Sequoia National Park, I had the great idea to drive back to LA to go to Universal Hollywood Studios, a 4.5 hour drive per way. More on that in the nerd section below. We met up again the next night in the middle of nowhere at what seemed more like a big rest stop area than a town for a sleepover, in the midst of California. The next day, we drove further north to Pinnacles National Park, a very young National Park that has some cool caves to hike through.

We started our last leg of our journey to Santa Cruz where we stayed one last night. And while there is a waterfront amusement park, as it was under the week, it was closed ☹.

The final day we had to say goodbye to each other, and I headed back to San Francisco to fly back to Minneapolis. It was a great adventure! We returned the Golf with an additional 4727 miles on the clock. Again, the West of the United States is amazing, and you should 100% go and visit one day. Maybe not now though.

Toronto

This blog post is not yet over! Shortly after this trip to the west coast of the United States, I was able to travel to the greater Toronto region for the first time! While this was a business trip, I was able to extend my stay there to see Niagra Falls as well as downtown Toronto.
Toronto itself is a huge traffic mess. So driving through downtown is never a good idea. What is a 10min drive at night can develop into a 1h journey easy. This is also why all customers are super relaxed about people arriving late, as they are simply used to this challenge. Downtown, I bought a ticket up to the CN tower, and the views were amazing!
Finally, what everyone wants to see when in Toronto are the Niagra Falls, and oh boy, this is definitely one of the highlights of our time here in North America! Its a bit a shame that it is as touristy as it was, but to be honest, what else could you expect…

And now, thats it. Sorry for keeping you for so long. We will be back sooner or later 🙂

Nerd Talk

Universal Hollywood

As outlined above, I went to Universal Hollywood for one day to see the attractions there. Universal Hollywood lies in central LA and is therefore a bit annoying to reach when travelling from the outside of LA. Once arrived, you first pay A LOT for parking (35$), and the gate tickets are also eyewateringly expensive. I was there on a very slow day, so I did not get any fast passes, and I in fact didnt need any! The park was mostly empty and I was able to enjoy myself without lines.
The park is as you would expect from a Universal parks one of the best themed I have ever visited. Compared to its counterpart in Orlando its a little smaller (or at least it feels to be). It is spread over two areas, one upper and one lower area, which are connected over a long series of escalators. At the time of my visit they were building the new Fast and Furious ride there – sadly not yet open.
Highlights in the park are the definitely the studio tours (which, compared to the Orlando counterpart, are real). You are driven through the still active filming studios of Universal, and some attractions are spread here and there (your bus drives into a building and something happens). The whole program took like 45mins. Must do when you are there.
What I sadly missed was the major show they have there (a stunt show), but I was unable to wait for an additional two hours for the show to start…
Attraction wise, while the rides were cool, they are not on the same level as the ones in Orlando. Most likely this is why they are now building the Fast and Furious coaster which looked very promissing. They also have the Harry Potter “Hogsmeade” area as well as the castle, and they share exact copies of those rides existing in Orlando. The same is true for the Mummy ride.
I had a hard time finding some food that pleased me, so I got some very expensive taccos. And while they were decent, they were not really worth the money to be honest.
Overall – if you have seen the Orlando park, there is not really a need to come here as well. The park is still amazing though. I give it an 8.5 out 11.

Canadas Wonderland

Where do I start. They have Leviathan, the first B&M Giga coaster (height > 300ft). This ride is amazing, but I am 100% spoiled by living (partially) two hours from Carowinds and having access to Fury 325, the best coaster of that type in existence. I was there in early autumn on a weekday, and the park was packed. I did get a fastpass, and I was barely able to get all the rides done, which is shocking. Based on reviews, this park is always packed, and I got lucky. So I wonder how it feels in the summer months. One thing that annoyed me that not all rides are included in the fast pass – resulting in me cueing longer than I was originally expecting.
This park is the biggest by far in Canada. Today it boasts a whopping 17 counts :). I surely had an amazing time there. Notable mentions are Leviathan, which is an amazing ride. Yukon Striker, another B&M, but this time a dive coaster, one of the highest in existence. Vortex, an old Arrow Dynamics Suspended Coaster (I was super afraid for this coaster to be closed) which has amazing G’s in its curves, and Time Warp, a Zamperla Volare coaster, which at the time of writing is actually being torn down. Time Warp is very intense, so its a shame to see this coaster go :'(. The concept of it is that you climb into the car from the back, doing so you are lying on your stomach, and you hold onto handlebars in front of you. After a spiral lift, you are being thrown around like crazy around corkscrews and so forth. While not necessarily a comfortable experience, still a really fun one.

Finally, there was also a Mack coaster: Thunder Run is a Mack powered coaster, like Alpenexpress Enzian at Europapark. It has basically the same layout.
Food at the park, like with so many others, was not really something to be excited about. Overall, this is one of the nice Cedar Fair parks – decorations were nice and felt natural, lots of trees. Definitely one of the nice examples. Combine that with the ride selection, and this park is high on the park list. What is not so great is the fact that in summer its supposed to get extremely crowded here, definitely not fun. Finally, I actually rate this park on the same level as the one above: 8.5 out of 11.