Roadtrip life: Highway 1 adventure

As soon as our car was fixed, we immediately got on the road again. Enough town life and car issues, time for a bit of fun! We chose Seaside, California (we have also already been to Seaside, Oregon) because it felt like a nice place. Turned out it was quite a big city, but it still had a nice sunset ;) It reminded me a bit of the one's I watched in Hawaii!

Typical US Lifeguard house

Uhm, yes, that was quite perfect. See this line of clouds just on the horizon?

The next day we reached one of the prime destinations of this West Coast Roadie! The famous 17-Mile-Drive! Of course, we had to pay extra to be allowed to drive a long this road (the Americans are very good at making money of everything), but as far as I remmeber it was like 15$ or so and well worth it! Just see for yourselves! Oh and if you every have the possibility go and do this drive!!

Pebble beach - I'm sure the famous golf course here is named after this particular spot :)

This is calles bird's rock or something similar... Guess why?

Millions of seals and birds on this thing!

WOW WOW WOW what a view!

The lone cypress - I read that it is one of the most photographed trees in the world... Hm, I wonder why...

Proof that I was there in person! At a spor calles restless waters - you could see all little currents and swirls in there, very cool! P.S. probably the only not windy moment.

This was really one of my favourite parts of the roadtrip! I am taking a break studying for my first round if exams for my master's degree and I am tiny little bit lost in memories... I will regret taking the time for uploading all these pictures, but then it also puts me in a positive mood!

So, I haven't yet actually talked about driving down the Highway 1. Not a lot I mean. SO. This road is an adventure to itself. It's winding itself along the coast, going up and down and countles curves. If you're stuck behind a huge RV - you are stuck. For miles and miles and it will annoy the shit out of you as a driver and put also put your stomach at a test. I get easily car sick (not usually driving), and this road... yes I was really close sometimes. But hey, none of us was ever really sick - pat on the shoulder, we seem to be ok drivers ;)

B***ch road with great views

But, to summarize it, at least it's pretty and soooooo well worth it ;D We then skipped on the 'castle' our favourite repair shop owner recommended. We felt as Europeans everything less than Neuschwanstein Castle just would be a dissappointment, and also, it was early evening when we passed Hearst Castle. Instead, we stopped a a point where we were supposed to see endangered Elephant Seals. There was a huge parking lot and it seemed to be a popular spot to stop. Oh! And they were so cool, just chilling there and casually getting into a what seemed to be quite a nasty fight. And the wind. Oh the wind on this particular day! I tried to open the car door and it almost went back into my face because it was so strong.

Elephant seals

You think they're the biggest chillers until you hear them fight

Uhm maybe sometimes they are chillers after all

Also, we've made it till San Luis Obispo, and old mission from 1772, quite olf for America but it didn't strike me as very special, we have seen nicer things, but we can tick it off the list anyway.

That's it for today, I need to get back to studying, so this in an half an hour taking a quick break quickie blog entry, hope you like it!

Roadtriplife: Visiting the Bay Area and San Francisco

Follow our adventure! Browse my blog to find out some more about the roadtrip of our lives!

This happens top be the time our car broke down - I am going to save you on reading about our car breaking down again (if you are interested anyway: klick here to read about it). 

So, after this little detour into hinterland California we finally made it to San Francisco! One day late, but luckily, we could change our Airb'n'b booking. Time for a little 'luxury', 2 nights in a real BED in a HOUSE with a KITCHEN! And San Francisco! I was particulary excited to see this  town. 

Cable car

After weeks of sunny, hot weather, we hit the fog. And the wind! Luckily, we found out on time that we have to pay for crossing the Golden Gate bridge going inwards before actually crossing it. We went downtown to explore a little. The mood was a bit down because of all the car (and money) issues and we couldn't make much of downtown San Francisco. But the next day, we went to Fishermen's Wharf and all the Piers which made up a bit for ugly downtown. We did not know that going to Alcatraz required as reservation made weeks before. Kind of a bummer, we really wanted to go. Instead, we treated ourselves to a nice lunch and bought NFL hats...Time for a little treatment for ourselves. We didn't cover some of the most popular sites in San Francisco. I feel we could have made a lot more of this visit and we were really missing out, but there is up's and down's and these days, we were not at our best. BUT the stay definitely helped to recover ourselves a bit, get some sleep and eat proper food.

View on Bay Bridge

Alcatraz

Found some pretty flowers!

To finish up our visit to the Bay (and a bit recovered from the last shock) we went to see the University of Berkeley! Our accomodation was strictly spoken in Oakland and our Airb'n'B host recommend to just drop by as this uni was literally around the corner. It was super nice to sniff some uni air again! There was a lot of construction at the time we visited, but of course we did find the biology buildin.

After getting a taste of uni again, we remembered that there is a second well known university near San Francisco (yeah and obviously a lot more all over California ;D), so off we went on our way to Stanford university! We crossed a bridge over the Bay and of course, the trouble started again. The engine was heating up and... oh well. The next drama was coming. We stopped as soon as possible, quickly became memberes of the AMA (Alberta motor association) to save money on towing and had to get towed to the next auto repair shop. Again, they were really helpful people, but close to 5 p.m. there was nothing they could do the same day.  We were allowed to sleep in the car in their backyard (yes we were that desperate at this point) and the next morning got an estimate for getting the cart fixed. Another 1100$ made us want to cry. Then, again, we were extremely lucky with the repair shop. The owner had daughters our age and felt really sorry for us. He phoned around a bit and we ended up only having to pay for the parts - 800$ it was. Still, basically money we didn't have and the though to just leave everything as it is and just go home did cross our mind not only once. Again, I can't be more thankful for my family, who jumped in to help pay for the repair and made it possible for us to finish the roadtrip! Also, a good talk with them and some motivational speeches of a few other friends did help a lot. The mood was up a bit!!!

While our car was being fixed, the owner of the repair shop helped us organize a rental car for the day for only 30$! We were stuck there already for 1.5 days and we were in kind of an industrial area, so it was good to be able to still do some sightseeing for realtively cheap. We already were in Palo Alto, a very nice suburb (?) of San Francisco and also the town were Stanford is located. And WOW!!!!!!!! I am still amazed by this place. I feel like I need to marry very rich very soon to be able to go there and study! It is a very very cool place and I don't want to even imagine how much tuition is. See for yourselves:

This is the DRIVEWAY to uni. The driveway.

Following a 'secret' tip from our favourite repair shop owner: Facebook! We went to see 'the Facebook' ;) The only thing that's really remarkable though is that it is really really huge! And we did the must-do pictures with our thumbs up. This is very social media is made, so it was still cool to see it. We finished the little sightseeing trip in our cute rental car up by a visit in downtown Palo Alto which was really lovely. It becomes obvious really quickly that this is probably a town where mostly rich people live and this is reflected in the whole town. We had some food there and were finally able to hit the road again! Time to get going!

Roadtrip life: Crater Lake National Park, Redwood National Park

Follow the adventure of your dreams!

We started our journey in Western Canada, crossed the border to the US, travelled the Pacific Northwest, and yes, finally, we've made it down to Cali! Both of us have been California dreaming for like 9 months (that this visit needs to happen was planned well ahead) and we were so close now! But first, we did a little detour to visit our first American National Park (NP), Crater Lake NP! Being fed up with cities already, we very much welcomed this adventure into nature. It was like a 600km detour, so this better be good! 

Crater Lake

And WOW.

No dissappointment here. So pretty. So incredibly pretty!! A former volcano, and in its old crater a lake has formed. The color was the bluest of blue and you can drive all around this beauty (about 67km).
Obviously we were sharing this pretty view with an incredible amount of tourists, something that took some time getting used to. In the end, we were tourists as well, but you can be a tourist, or you can try a little more and don't act like stupid dumbasses from backcountry wherever. A little respect, everyone!

The Pinnacles

We took another detour to see the Pinnacles which where advertised in the brochure you get when entering the NP. Some more evidence that this, indeed has been an active volcano at some point. Very impressive, and for me, who never has been close to any volvano, active or not, specifically awe-inspiring.

And then: CALIFORNIA!!

Just entering California coming down Highway 101 from the North, you are going to drive through the Redwood forest. Redwood trees, giants of the nature!
For those who don't know: I studied Biology (and Krissy as well) and although I am not particularly interested in botany, this was great. We talked about these wonders of the nature in lectures but it's different to finally see the real thing!

Huge, huge, HUGE

You could literally hide IN the tree.

And you just find again how small and insiginifcant you actually are

There's trees growing on trees. How cool is that?

You drive right through this dense forrest. We stopped a couple of times and did a little exploring. Climbing onto those huge trunks can be a little mission! There's alway time to fool around a little ;D The inner child will never die... ALSO we found a (cheap!) campsite in the Redwood Forrest. It was an amazing experience to camp underneath the gentle giants. Furthermore, our campground neighbours were a friendly couple traveling on motorcycles from no other place then Calgary, Alberta, Canada. What a small world. We enjoyed great conversations with these lovely people! (You can't say that about a lot of campgrounds we stayed on)

First glimpses of California beaches :)

Why this place was called Elk Meadows... I don't know ;)

Unforutnately I can't remember the name of this tiny town, but it did have a very pretty view!

 The next night in California we spent in Eureka, a bit of a bigger beach town because we were hoping to find a garage. By this time, our car was making very weird squeeching (whatever the proper word for that is). And yes, we did forget that it was actually Sunday. Even in America no auto garage is open Sundays. So we had to take the risk and drive some more the next day as we had an Airb'n'b booked in San Francisco. We had to be there in 2 days time and it was still quite a drive.

Dead on Sundays...

... we took a littel stroll around anyway.