Our favourite city in the States...

Without flowers in our hair but with Yosemite dust in our shoes we arrived in San Francisco after the 3 1/2 hour drive from the National Park. Exhausted we checked into the HI City Center Youth Hostel on Ellis street. That area of downtown turned out not to be a really nice place to hang out a night...lots of drunken an drugged people on the streets...but then again, interesting to see and not feeling bad about missing out on that :)

After a good bagel breakfast at the hostel, we got a map from the frontdesk at the hostel and hit the streets. Up and down, up and down, up, up, up and down and we arrived at Fishermens Warf. :) It was great relaxing after over 2 weeks on the road, just watching all the different people walk by, taking in the air and sounds of the city and the bay...just chilling... :)

Then it was time for some shopping and dinner at yet another 50s style diner in downtown San Francisco.

The next day was jail time...we left Pier 33 on a ferry and arrived 15 minutes later on Alcatraz. After hiking up to the cell block building and going through a very informative audio tour, one of the park rangers gave us a brilliant and fun presentation about some of the most infamous prisoners on the island, such as Georges "Machine Gun" Kelly and the Birdman of Alcatraz (goooooooooogle them :)). Again, he knew where Luxembourg was and was saying, in his loud voice so that all of the cell block dining hall could hear it: "It's so small that, when driving through Luxembourg from France to Germany, you shouldn't sneeze and close your eyes, coz you'll miss it." :) Oh well...

We hiked all the way back to the hostel and packed our stuff for the next day's drive along the coastal highway via Monterrey to Pismo Beach. Surfin' USA... :)

Here some impressions of the roads and the houses:

And we found our "Madeleine de Proust" : Chewing gum cigarettes!!!:)

Hanford and Yosemite

Pat showed his beautiful town to his beautiful girlfriend :) She was hungry for some ice cream. So he took her, like on a first date, to Superior Dairy across from the park downtown. She picked a single chocolate on a cone... (cf picture) :)

We drove around the streets, trying to find various places Pat would use when he was there. Not that much had changed and yet so much had changed... It was a bit strange seeing it all again, but it felt like home right away. So I guess that was a good sign.

We concluded our first day with some miniature golf at the Advenute Park :) Woohooooo... I won! (you have to guess who :)).

Check out d'Aiga Wutz video :0)

After getting up late...again, we managed to get ahold of Pat's host family and arranged to go to Bakersfield for dinner.

After a bit of a treasure hunt through the streets of Bakersfield (nice song by the way :)), we finally went for some real country western style dinner at the Crystal Palace, a place founded by country legend Buck Owens. Yeeehaw. After some steak salad and chili soup we drove back the 1 1/2 hours to Hanford where we had to say good-bye to Cheryl, Jim and Dustin and went to bed...it was good seeing them again. All together. But it was a bit short. Maybe longer next time. :)

Good night and good-bye Hanford, you smelly but lovely place... :)

We left the Central Valley for San Francisco, but not without passing through Yosemite National Park. It was well worth the detour...look at those pictures... :)

Pat's California...

We left Vegas in the heat heading through the piping hot Mojave desert over the Nevada-California state line towards Baker, Barstow and Bakersfield. It was a loooong drive. 5 hours.

After a having driving the beautiful moutain road leading down into the Californian Central Valley, we stopped in Bakersfield at a In 'n Out Burger in order to pick up some strength for the last 2 hours of driving towards Hanford and Lemoore.

Pat spent one year in Hanford in 2000-2001, and he became more and more excited as the typical valley smell of cows intensified. :) We checked into our motel in neighbouring Lemoore and went for a quick dinner of soup and salad at Applebee's.

Can't wait to see the changes to Hanford in the daylight and hopefully we'll meet up with Pat's host family.

Night night for now. :)

Vegas, Baby...

Crazy city...it really is. Emotions going from: 'WOW, how pretty is that' via 'Hm, that's strange' to 'Oh my God, that's baaaad' :)

The casinos are amazing buildings. All different themes (Circus, Caesar's Palace, Paris, New York, Treasure Island, Venice, whatever you want). People gamble all day and night long. There are now windows or clocks in the casino parts of the hotels so that you can play without having to wonder what time it is or whether maybe you should stop... :) The first night we dined at what Christine labelled 'the best Italian food in the States' (of what we've seen so far) at Maggiano's...yummy :).

The next day, we took a stroll on Las Vegas Boulevard after a hearty breakfast at a local Denny's. We went to Harrah's to pick up our tickets for a tribute show later in the evening and crossed over into Caesar's Palace where we lost all our money on roulette...we'll be coming home next week. :)

The show we went to see was called 'Legends in Concert' and, as sceptical as we had been before it started, we were very pleasantly surprised. It was a GREAT show. Tribute artistes performing as Jerry Lee Louis, Tina Turner, Bette Midler, Micheal Jackson and Elvis Presley put on a very impressive show. Jerry Lee Louis played the piano like a mad man...Bette Midler pulled dirty jokes and Michael Jackson did a moon walk lacking nothing on the real deal. Well done :) After the show we went back to Caesar's Palace feast on their famous dinner buffet...and was it a feast or what...man...all we can say is that after we ate, we walked all the way to the New York New York Casino and back to Circus Circus and we still felt full :)

After a good-night-gamble at Paris, we went back to our hotel and it was 2 am. Oh well, that's Vegas...crazy, loud, bright, exaggerated, colourful, like a big Schueberfouer, but without the fish :).

California tomorrow...

The last bit of old 66...

We left Flagstaff today knowing that it would be our last day driving on the old 66. After today, we would wander off to the north on one of them modern 2 to 6 lane freeways across the deserts of the south western states. So we took it all in slowly and nicely. :)
One of our last stops was in Seligman. A small town on 66 in Arizona, famous for its shops, cafes and motels. It was there that we spotted an old 100 franc bill on the wall (Moie Jang). Hadn't seen one of those in a while, but then again, what would 100 franc buy you today? Oh, the good old days :)

We drove on, or better, Christine drove on through rolling hills and several Native American Reservations. It's quite hard to see how run down they are and it looks like most of them live in pretty poorly...

In Kingman, Arizona, we parted with the Mother Road. It was a bit sad to leave her when we headed north to Las Vegas and she headed south towards California. She had been good to us, not giving us any trouble, but only great experiences, sights, weather changes, a trip back in time but with all the modern conveniences...Thanks old 66.

So we headed north through the Arizona desert towards the Hoover Dam and Lake Mead. What a sight. They are just building a new arch bridge across the canyon so that most people can bypass the dam itself and head straight to Vegas. It's pretty impressive to see how such a bridge is built. When we got out of the car, over 100 degrees Fahrenheit hit us in the face. These would stay with us until we left Vegas. Pat loooooves the heat :).

In the evening we arrived in Las Vegas and checked into the Circus Circus hotel. The women must have felt sorry for us with our huge backpacks and gave us an awesome (haven't used this one in a while) room on the top (35th) floor...we were happy, to say the least :)

Viva Las Vegas

The Grand Canyon

Just a few picture impressions.



They talk for themselves :)
P.S. We almost hit a moose cow on the way back...huge those things!

P.P.S. As it seems, Christine doesn't know how to work the self-trigger...

Sedona...

Hi again.

Since we had a late start today, we decided to leave the Grand Canyon for tomorrow and instead drive to Sedona, about 25 miles south of Flagstaff. Pat remembered it as being a nice town from when he had been there 9 years ago.

And sure enough...it was a very nice town. A bit touristy, but then again, one could see why. The red rock formations seemed to grow into the deep blue sky from the lush green of all the trees, bushes and cactuses (or is it cacti? :)). After strolling through the streets and resisting the temptation of going on a tour in a pink Jeep (yuk), we had a healthy lunch (as healthy as one can get) and went up to the airport where we had a stunning view of the city towards the north.

Since we were both in urgent need of some physical exercice (after all the nice food and sitting in the car for hours), we hiked and climbed up Cathedral Rock. The views can't be described in words, the contrasting colours of the rocks, the sky and the vegetation...WOW. And we got some serious exercice...so, we'll be fit for tomorrow when it means hiking into Grand Canyon.

Thank you Arizona for this beautiful day ful of well-being. We'll drop into bed tonight. :)

Arizona...

...Arizona. Again, breathtaking landscapes, unpaved roads, unfortunately some I-40, looooooooong trains and more jellyfish thunderstorms...

We supported the US government by visiting 2 National Parks: the Petrified Forest

and the Meteor Crater (very original name!) Google them! :)

We felt like at home...RAIN!! :)
Anecdote of the day: Arizona is a Mountain Time state. So it should be 8 hours behind Luxembourg. But, surprise, they do not do daylight saving, thus they are 9 hours behind. As we wanted to enter Meteor Crater, we saw that the park would close at 5 and on our watches it was 5:40. We were about to turn around when the park ranger told us that they would let people in until 5...we were a bit startled...and checked we were running one hour ahead of everyone else in the state...oh well. :) One hour gained, trois de retrouvees (says Christine)... (???)

We arrived in Flagstaff where we'll spend 3 nights. Hopefully the weather will allow us to go and visit the Grand Canyon tomorrow.

P.S. Photos for all of this will follow tomorrow.
P.P.S. Thanks Jimmy and Flepp (sorry, no accents :)) for your membership

Hola de Nuevo Mexico...muchachos!

Buenos dias, buenas noches (whatever time it is in your zone) :)

WOW...what a change in landscape (see for yourselves). Whereas one Israeli Texan told us : "We don't believe in trees, we believe in grass...

...New Mexicans seem to believe in wild nature.

From the flat plains to hills, rocks, tumbleweeds, more tarantulas, all kinds of bugs (yeah, we had a quite a few stuck to the radiator of the car at the end of one day's driving in NM) and rattle snakes.

As said before, we left Amarillo and its Cadillac Ranch and in New Mexico the sun started shining. We had lunch at the lovely Midpoint Cafe, which, as the name might suggest it, is exactly half way (1139) from Chicago to LA. It was there that our lovely waitresss, after the standard "where y'all from?" revealed to us that earlier that day, Annie and Edy from Duelem, Luxembourg were there. We decided to take their addresse and write them a card :).

We arrived early in Tucumcari and the Blue Swallow Motel. Bill, the owner, surprised us when he proudly anounced that he knew Luxembourg since many Luxembourgers had already stayed at his classic and famous motel. He had a little crush on Christine, which led him to offer her a pink Cadillac...almost as good as Elvis, but this was just a pin. Oh well, but still very nice. :)

We decided to take a walk to the local 'walking park'. Christine was convinced this would be a nice thing to do, to get a little walk and some fresh air in the shade in order to get some exercice and burn away the "Schwabbeli" (made in the USA :)). Yet, the walk TO the park already was a bit of a challenge, since we were looked at very strangely by the locals in their cars. THEM FOLKS DON'T SEEM TO WALK! :) When we arrived at the park, there were a couple of heavier built women power walking on a concrete path...surprise: walking park ONLY means place where you can walk. :) We have to start thinking American.

The Motel was nice...neon, old style, very friendly owners (who warned us not to venture into downtown Albuquerque at night, since there are supposedly all the gangs hanging around, shooting at each other, at the police and especially, at TOURISTS :))...nice cars.


Since old Route 66 doesn't exist anymore for the greater part between Tucumcari and Albuquerque, we had to drive on Interstate 40 (yuuuuuuuuk, our enemy) :). This had as a consequence that we arrived very early and thus wanted to spend some time relaxing near the pool. But...we ended up spending 8 hours in the emergency room at the Presbyterian Hospital in downtown Albuquerque...What an experience. As the hours went by, we felt more and more like in a slaughter house...nice. And so, against Bill's advice, we left downtown at midnight. Exciting day.

The day after, we went to Petroglyph National Monument to walk under the burning sun and look at old Native American engravments. Pat didn't approve of walking under the burning sun, and didn't leave out any opportunity to remind Christine of this...(he gets grumpy when he gets too hot :)).

The day encore after (Christine's pigeon English :)) we drove over unpaved roads all the way to Gallup. It was great to feel the gravel under the wheels of our so-not-made-for-offroad-Focus. Moohaha. We can tell you, a thunderstorm in the desert is very impressive. You can see it approach when it is still miles away and the rain pouring out from the clouds make the whole thing look like a giant purple jellyfish...(ya, man, everyting is gonna be alright, right Bob) (What do they mean? Are they on drugs? Who's Bob now? :)).

Slept next to Ronald Reagan, in Lorraine Day,... we're talking about rooms of course (who's that gal anyway?). This was at the famous El Rancho Hotel in Gallup. Home to movie stars in a long gone period. Many of them were filming their Westerns in the area around the town and spent their nights and money at the Hotel, its bar and excellent Tex-Mex restaurant. Yummy!

After leaving Gallup, only a few more miles were left on Route 66 in New Mexico before we headed into...