Travel

Anscheinend ist endlich ein Ende des Wahnsinns in Sicht, die Leute nur mit Flüssigkeiten in 100ml-Mengen im Handgepäck reisen zu lassen. Dann kann man endlich auch wieder mit Handgepäck länger als einen Tag reisen, denn 100ml Duschgel sind bei 192cm ein echter Witz. Auf jeden Fall glaubt die Lufthansa, das dem Flüssigkeiten wegwerfen bald ein Ende gesetzt wird. Was für ein Problem das ist, sah man ganz gut nach dem Inkrafttreten dieser Regelung: Mülltonnen voll bis oben hin, vollgestellte Tische mit angebrochenen Wasserflaschen, zurückgeschickte Passagiere, weil die Frischhaltetüte nicht den Normen entsprach.

Das waren also zwei Tage auf der FrOSCon. Da ich einen Vortragsslot am Ende des letzten Tages hat, war ich die komplette Zeit da und habe Standdienst gemacht. War ganz spassig, es war weniger los als auf der CeBIT, man hatte also mehr Zeit für das einzelne Gespräch.

Aber vielleicht sollte ich erstmal mit dem Samstag anfangen. 4:30 aufstehen. Wie ich bei Twitter schon schrieb: TUIfly möchte die Passagiere schon 45 minuten vor dem Abflug am Boarding sehen. Ging denoch erst zwanzig Minuten vor Abflug mit dem Einsteigen los. Wie bei fast allen anderen Fluglinien auch. Hass, 25 Minuten weniger Schlaf .... müde. In Köln ankommen. Leihwagen geholt, positiv überrascht, A-Klasse mit Navi. Hätte ich mir auch das Ausdrucken der Wegbeschreibung sparen können. Am Flughafen in Köln gemerkt: Es gibt wirklich Menschen, die mit Kölner Dialekt sprechen. Musste mich echt zusammenreissen

Egal: Von 09:00 bis 15:00 Uhr Standdienst gemacht. Es kam nichts, an das man nach einigen Jahren CeBIT-Standdienst nicht schon gewöhnt wäre.

Am frühen Abend dann die Gelegenheit genutzt, endlich mal local kennenzulernen und zumindestens einen der Kaffees einzuloesen, die ich ihr schulde. Sehr angenehmer Mensch Hat sogar darüber hinweggesehen, das ich es schade fand, das sich ein Ballon über dem Rhein nicht für eine Landung im Fluss entschieden hat, obwohl wirklich nur so nen Meter gefehlt hat. Leider früh beendet, weil ich meinen Vortrag noch finalisieren musste ... aergerlich ... sollte damit wirklich mal früher anfangen, aber ich hab immer bis zur letzten Minute noch Ideen.

Dank Navi sehr schnell mein Hotel in Bonn gefunden. War positiv überrascht. Ich habe leider erst morgens erfahren, das die Minibar im Preis mit drin war. Nein, ich war nicht im Froscon-Sprecherhotel "Hotel Regina" ... ich hatte eigentlich eine Übernachtung bei Freunden geplant. Das hat aber eine Erkaeltung verhindert, die der Herr des Hauses wahrscheinlich wieder mit groesster Qual ertragen hat. Also musste ich mir am Tag vor der Froscon noch eine Unterkunft suchen.

Zweiter Tag ... eher weniger los an den Staenden, was Wunder auch bei diesem Wetter. Bei solchen Events ist Regen besser Längere Pausen zwischen den Events waeren auch nicht schlecht. Mein Vortrag war dann der am Sonntag um 17:45. Ich habe die Zeit voll ausgenutzt und war um 18:45 mit meinem Vortrag durch. Noch Fragen beantworten. Mir ist da übrigens etwas aufgefallen: Das was ich am anfang gesagt habe ist vollkommener Quatsch: Virtualbox hat keine vmtools.iso .... das ist etwas innerhalb von Parallels .... peinlich, peinlich. Das bitte also ignorieren. Der Vortrag an sich hat mir aber Spass gemacht. Ich werde diesen in den nächsten Tagen hier verlinken. Es gibt diesmal sogar eine Video- und Tonspur

Dann ziemlich expressiert auf die Strasse. Leihwagen am Flughafen zurueckgeben. Zum Zug laufen. Toll, den vorletzten Zug Richtung Hamburg verpasst. Ich hasse es, den absolut letzten Zug irgendwohin zu nehmen, denn die Anschlusserreichungsfähigkeit der Bahn ist legendär. 20:04 Richtung Köln Hbf. Im Starbucks Köln den City Mug für Bonn kaufen. Die haben da jetzt fast alle Mugs aus Deutschland. Das zaehlt nicht!

Bei Rheda-Wiedenbrück hielt dann der Zug auch erstmal für knapp 20 Minuten. Sehr beruhigend bei 12 Minuten Umstiegszeit. Selbstmordgefaerdete Person im Bahnhof Gütersloh. Anschlusszug in Hannover in Richtung Hamburg bekommen, da der Zug aus Richtung München auf Basis der Chinese Maybe Time verkehrte und auch seine 10 Minuten Verspätung hatte. Kurz nach eins in Hamburg, kurz nach halb zwei im Bett.

Alles in allem: Das Wochenende war anstrengend, aber gut Ich denke ich werde wohl auch nächstes Jahr wieder auf der Froscon zugegen sein, wenn man mich als Redner haben will ... aber ich nehm nicht wieder den letzten Slot des letzten Tages

Man mag ja von der Baustellenorgie auf der A1 zwischen Buchholzer Dreieck und und Bremer Kreuz halten was man will. Aber ein Beitrag zum Umweltschutz sind diese definitiv. Am Wochenende in der alten Heimat gewesen. 5.7 Liter Durchschnittsverbrauch pro 100 km. Mit einem halben Tank 400 km gefahren. Normalerweise brauche ich nen ganzen Tank für diese Strecke. Nur 80 fahren zu dürfen spart schon was ... ich hoffe nur, die kommen nicht auf den Gedanken, den dreispurigen Ausbau der A1 dann auf 120 zu limitieren. Obwohl: Seit den tausenden von Meilen in Kalifornien ertrage ich das langsame Fahren auf Autobahnen besser ... nur das an der einen Seite der A1 nicht der Pazifik liegt ... nun ... das ist irgendwie schade.

It looks like, there are some people who wants to do something similar in a vacation and asked for the hotels i´ve used at my trip. Before i answer the people with a mail for each, i will do it per blog entry. In total it were four throughout the trip. Just to say it frontup: I don´t like this 39$ motels. When you do business travel on a regular schedule those cheaper hotels are a real downer. And i was able to get quite reasonable prices by booking via Internet. So it wasn´t as half as expensive as you may think after reading this article.

Sheraton Fishermens Wharf
This hotel was nice. It was directly in the Fishermens Wharf district so in the touristic central of San Francisco. As it wasn´t directly at the Fishermens Wharf it was reasonable quiet with the exception of the historic street trains passing i regular schedules. So a room away from Beach St would be a reasonable choice. On the other side: Those rooms at the Beach St with the Radisson at the other side have an reaaallly big advantage ... The rooms were nice. The best TV set of all the hotels at this vacation ... a big LCD. You can put a 15 inch MacBook Pro in the safe. The big downer of this hotel: The prices for parking. Those were outright ridiclious. We would have payed more for parking than for lodging if we had used it throughout the whole time.

Comfort Inn in Oakhurst
Well ... there wasn´t a well-known hotel company in Oakhurst so i had to opt for one of this *-Inns. I must admit, that the "free wireless" was an important criteria for me to choose this hotel. Well .. the Internet is incredible slow at this hotel. On the other side: The continental breakfast wasn´t a continental breakfast ... it was more american but without all this stuff incompatible to german early-morning stomaches (like bacon or sausages). The waffles (you get the "dough" and you can do them on your own) were nice.

The downers at this hotel: The cleaning services use too much chlorine detergents to clean the room. The first two hours the room was quite unacceptable. But the room itself was acceptable. i was told later on that drowing the room with chlorine is quite usual for hotels in the US. No safe in the room. So i had to carry the notebook with me

Paris Las Vegas in Las Vegas
After the experiment with a Inn i wasn´t that risk-friendly with the next hotel. I knew that the Paris Las Vegas is an acceptable hotel at a reasonable price. I stayed twice there because of the CEC. Wireless Internet costs $14.99 there. We skipped the breakfast buffets there ... i don´t wait an hour just for such a breakfast. And as there is a Wholefoods at the beginning of the Strip and a Starbucks in the Planet Hollywood hotel (the hotel next to the right when you stand in front of the Paris looking to the Paris) there were better and faster alternatives.
Safe large enough for a 15 inch Notebook.

Hilton - Universal City
This was the last hotel in the US and it was meant as a station between Las Vegas and San Francisco. Good rooms. Nice location (Universal City is on the other side of the street). Adjactent to the the 101 in the north of the Los Angeles area, so we didn´t need so much time for leaving Los Angeles. Wireless Internet for $9.99, Parking $17.99. Both prices were cheap compared with the prices at the Sheraton at the start of the journey. Safe looks large enough to drop a 17 inch Macbook Pro in it.

Conclusion
There wasn´t an EPIC FAIL within the hotels and all hotels were at least acceptable. You could sleep in all of them, they were clean and most of the time quite quiet. Perhaps this list helps you with your own planing.

This entry is both: Telling about an experience in the US and as a note for myself in the case i need it in the future. The contacts with the authorities in the US were pleasant: The people at TSA or at Immigration were really friendly. This contact with the authorities between Barstow and Las Vegas one wasn´t so pleasant.

At first ... it was easy to see, that we were tourists and to be more exact, it was easy to see that we were german tourists. We waited at every red pedestrian traffic light, we didn´t speeded (okay, we drove more than 55 where 55 was allowed, 65 where 65 was allowed, but just by the margin we knew that the speed meter is incorrect as we drove through several "Your speed is" signs. We were on vacation, not on escape ... and the trips were part of the vacation. And we are guests in a country, so it´s a good idea to follow the rules of the country. By the way ... i have the impression that the speed limit is just a behavior suggestion for many people in the US. At least from looking at the traffic at all the Interstates.

Well ... back to the unpleasant contact. Driving a car is largely something you really learn with driving experience. It´s like drill. And in complex traffic situation you use your learned knowledge.

We got aware of several different rules in US and German Traffic. At first ... i strongly opinionated that the traffic is overregulated in the US. What´s left to the driver in germany is controlled by signs in the US ... i don´t really think that you need a speed limit in front of each curve as on some of the US roads.

There is one thing German Autobahns (something like the Interstates in US) are famous for: No speed limit. If your car delivers 300 kilometres per hour and the street, traffic and weather conditions allow it ... well ... then you are allowed to drive this way. As there are large speed differences between the right lane and the left lane you don´t swap lanes without really being safe, that there isn´t a car that comes down the left lane. You look at best twice to be sure that there isn´t a big BMW nearing with 250 kilometres per hour from the rear.

When a police vehicle tries to stop a car, in Germany it overtakes the car, most of them have a scolling text bar ( at least at the highways) saying "Please follow" ... and then you follow the car to the next exit or rest area, but you aren´t stopped " on the highway just because of speeding. Or in case of older signaling equipment or a civil police car you get the signaling disk with a "Polizei. Bitte Folgen".

Well ... In the US the police car seems to stop the car from behind. I was aware of this fact as i saw enough movies .... but in stress situations you fall back to your drilled knowledge. When a police car lights it´s lights in front of you, you think you´ve made an error or the police wants to check you. And you do not overtake the police car, you stay behind it. But this initial thought is problematic in the US and led to the following chain of events.

There is a law in California (and throughout the US) that made things difficult a few days ago. We´ve got a ticket in the US. It´s a ticket because of 21809(a) of the California Vehicle Code. When a police vehicles lights its warning lights you have to move left.

a) A person driving a vehicle on a freeway approaching a stationary authorized emergency vehicle that is displaying emergency lights, or a stationary tow truck that is displaying flashing amber warning lights, shall approach with due caution and, before passing in a lane immediately adjacent to the authorized emergency vehicle or tow truck, absent any other direction by a peace officer, proceed to do one of the following:
(1) Make a lane change into an available lane not immediately adjacent to the authorized emergency vehicle or tow truck with due regard for safety and traffic conditions, if practicable and not prohibited by law.

I perfectly understand the sense of this law but overall the situation was a little bit strange. There is this law and we didn´t acted like mandated by the law in the eyes of the offices. I have a strong opinion about the situation in the way it happend, but i wont write it here, because i want to reenter the US .

What happened: We drove between Barstow and Las Vegas short of the border to Nevada. We drove on the right lane of the Interstate 15 with exactly the speed designated by the sign. Another car drove a little bit faster and a police car drove behind him and activated his lights. We used the german mode in this case: We thought "What the heck?" and "Does he want´s to stop us?" and decelerated the car to be ready to stop the car. We didn´t started an attempt to overtake the police car. A few seconds later we saw that the car in front of the police vehicle decelerated as well. German mode again: When such an situation happens, you stay on the same lane and driving slower and drive with caution (and the foot on the brake ready for a rapid stop past the sitation and continue your drive as well. Of course you change the line, when you have enough time to assess the situation of the other line but you can´t do it safely when something like that is directly in front of your nose and you are not totally sure what the CHP officer wants. Interestingly we would have overtaken the police car and thus we would have changed the lines if we were sure about the intentions of the officer and didn´t thought that he wants to stop us. This would have lead to the correct hehaviour.

And here something strange happened: The police car swerved a little bit in direction of the driving lanes just to return to the breakdown lane. In favour to the CHP officer i assume that he wanted to avoid debris or something like that albeit i saw nothing like that.

End of the story ... the speeding car wasn´t stopped anymore, now we were stopped by the CHP. It ended with a ticket "21809(a)" with the remark that we have nearly collided with the police car. WFT? All three cars were still rolling and if we would have collided with it, it would have been because of the the police cars swerving.

Then we´ve got an instruction by the officer that such behavior like ours would kill officers. We didn´t want to argue with a CHP officer so i didn´t said what i thought: "No ... the bad habit of stopping cars directly at the highway at the emergency lane in conjunction of not observing the traffic behind while stepping on the highway is killing officers. Classic form of a fake correlation". Stopping a car for speeding isn´t an emergency. This is the reason why we use cameras with a nice yellow-orange flash in our German radar traps. You know that they caught you because of the flash and they have a nice photo to send to you for the fine because of the flash even at night.

By the way .. a much better solution for the situation would be cars with their driving wheel on the right side. The milk tank cars in germany have sometimes such a configuration as the drivers don´t have to step on the street when they drive to the large milk cans at the curb side in the east frisian prairie to transport it to the central dairy. Likewise the cars of the street cleaning have often right hand driving. But i assume this solution is too obvious.

Okay ... now we have the ticket and i will wait for the stuff the rental car company will sending to me. I don´t think that any paperwork will arrive by the address on the ticket: There are just the two forenames of the driver and the issuing authority´s address on the ticket ... but that we just saw 10 miles later as we were too upset about the situation when we parked at the emergency lane.

At the end the paragraph of the Vehicle Code states:

(2) If the maneuver described in paragraph (1) would be unsafe or impracticable, slow to a reasonable and prudent speed that is safe for existing weather, road, and vehicular or pedestrian traffic conditions."

What´s safe and what´s not is a highly subjective thing. The perception of "safe" is based on someones driving experience. And as you have to decide in under a second the perception is based on drill as well. We slowed down to roundabout 25 miles ... this this a reasonable speed on a Highway, you can´t stop on a highway as this would provoke rear-end collisions ... on german Autobahns you would be a traffic obstacle at this speed.

After reading about this i´m sure that we have reacted correctly in this situation. Hope we can explain that to the court in Barstow as well.

What´s interesting, too: We observed such situations later on at our travel. This law seems to be seldomly enforced, we saw several situation where the many cars didn´t changed the lanes when the officers were still in their car and had the possibility to stop the car.

A tip for US portals: Add this law to your overview. I´ve read some of them in preparation of the journey (We are guests, we should know the rules) but none of them wrote about this law (just about the law not to pass a school bus with blinking lights. And sorry that i didn´t found the time to read the complete Californian Vehicle Code)

At the end something funny: You are angry about 30 seconds red light periods at the traffic lights? Well ... look at this traffic light at a street at the Merced River.

A long trip has come to an end. Almost 3000 miles are behind me. 14 days .... effectively almost 13 of them in the US. It was a great vacation. And I will do such a trip like this definitely again.

The Hotel in Las Vegas was really nice but there was something different that stunned me: I saw a colibri in the wild the first time in my life. That was really impressing.

But wait ... i didn´t wrote a thing about the two days. The 12th day (yesterday) was the day of the travel from Los Angeles to San Francisco. As we didn´t knew how long the CA-1 took and we had just 12 hours to our flight we decided took the risk out of the journey. So we didn´t drove the full monty of the CA-1, we took the US-101 instead for a large part. It´s a great route to drive nevertheless.

But you can´t drive from LA to SFO without driving at least a part of the CA-1 ... so we diverted from the 101 at the CA-25. It´s a great route ... but depending of your stomach, you shouldn´t or should eat something before. This route is almost as curvy as the streets in the Muir National Park. I assume your should have bags ready for passengers with a tendency to motion sickness.



The further ride was great. Point Mugu. Santa Barbara. and then up the 101 to the airport in San Francisco. We left the Pacific Ocean at Gaviota for a short reunion at Pismo Beach. At the end this last part of the trip was 425 miles long.

By the way: Santa Babara is definitly on my shortlist for a next vacation in California. Nice city, nice beach ... the weather was a dream at that day. Too bad, that we just stopped for a late breakfast there ...



At shortly after 9 pm our aircraft departed almost on time. It was a really smooth and nice flight with the exceptions of some turbulences over Greenland. We arrived shortly after 5pm and and some time later i had boarded the flight from Munich to Hamburg. Since 21:15 pm i´m at home and a really great vacation has found it´s end.

This is the last of the daily reports from my trip. But this isn´t the last article about the trip ... i´ve made plenty experiences to write about them ...

A seven hours trip ... but we´ve made it finally to our hotel in Universal City near Los Angeles. We´ve made a small detour. Instead of driving the Interstate 15 directly to Barstow, we drove the Highway 95 via Searchlight and a junctions near Needles and then the Interstate 40.



That was quite a detour but the landscape was worth it. At the end this trip were 353 miles or 568 kilometres.

So ... this was the last real sightseeing day of this trip. The next two days will be filled with driving to Los Angeles and San Francisco. I´m planing the trip at the moment.



What have we done on the this day: I was in the Valley of Fire again. But this time we left the the park at the other side in direction of the Lake Mead. When we entered the park it started to rain. Nevertheless it is still a great landscape. When you are in Las Vegas you should really visit the Valley of Fire. And a tip: At Rainbow Vista location in the park is a big rock where you can do a step walk onto it ... the view from there is fabulous.



After that we drove to the Hoover Dam, but we skipped it later because of the traffic jam on the route to it and opted of Las Vegas. Apropos Las Vegas ... one of the approaches to LAS goes directly over a shopping center. You can almost count the rivets in the belly of aircraft. I think they wouldn´t approve such a shopping center in Germany.



By the way: I´m here the third time ... but that´s just because of the job (2 times CEC) and it´s central location for sightseeing (this vacation). I don´t like the city or to be exact the Strip.

I don´t like this people clapping with the cards for escorts. In front of the Flamingo Casino 10 to 15 of them were lined. I don´t like this "Oh, we are so naughty" attitude of Las Vegas ... sorry for my harsh tone ... hey, but you can see more tits when you go to a standard european bathing beach (not even the nude bathing beaches).I don´t like this cheap triggering of hormone reactions like the waitresses in some party locations standing higher than their guests to ensure that the guests can get a view to the cleavage. I assume it doesn´t go cheaper. But i assume for most people this is enough.

But at the end: Las Vegas is in the middle of some of the greatest landscapes of this planet and so I have to live with Las Vegas. So ... we will leave Las Vegas tomorrow ... and in 48 hours i will board the aircraft that brings be back to Germany.

This day was a repeat for me ... i was in the Death Valley again .. same route as the last time. But it looked different at many locations. There were flowers at the side of the road. In the desert. I was aware of the possibility but finally seeing such islands of life in the middle of stones is impressing never the less. Life will prevail nevertheless how hard the conditions are ...



We drove to Beatty ... a small village round about 100 miles north of Las Vegas, entered the Death Valley by Hells Gate. After this we visted Stovepipe Wells, Bad Water. I saw finally the Artist Palette ... a location i´ve missed the last time. It´s really a colorful geological formation. As the sign is a little bit washed out, it´s easy to miss in the middle of the artist drive.



I even revisted Zabriskie Point. But the best part was Dante´s View. Such a great outlook over the complete Death Valley. I´ve missed it on my last trip, too ... because i wasn´t aware of the road to this view point. As my digicam cells were absolutly empty at this moment, i have just a photo made by the iPhone.



Given that i have to retake the photo from Dante´s view with a real cam, i will visit Death Valley again in the future. At best with a new DSLR and a 3D panorama head . But that isn´t a problem .... the Death Valley is a really one of the most impressive locations i visted so far.

Okay ... California isn´t really correct. Wait ... the Death Valley is in California ... but Las Vegas is fine for Hotels ... and Las Vegas ... well it´s in Nevada. At the moment i´m on the passengers seat of a car driving on the Interstate 15 between Barstow and Las Vegas and write the beginning of this blog entry ... from the desert ... when you say it this way. We just took the 99 South to Bakersfield and drove from there on the 58 East to Barstow.



Typing is a little bit slow ... i´m looking out of the window most of the time. The landscape is outright spectacular. Since we started this days trip in Oakhurst we saw several different landscapes ... from deep green to desert beige. When there is a CEC2009 in Vegas again i think won´t fly to Vegas ... i will fly to an airport directly connected from Germany (like Denver, SFO or LAX) and take a rental car



There is something i really like and dislike about the US so far: There are really great radio stations ... especially when you like classic rock (i heard a really excellent version of "Careless whisper" so far). You don´t hear such music in the fully formated german radio stations ... especially those in Hamburg. Then there are the spanish radio stations ... i have ignored them ... but it´s just me or is this music similar to bavarian folk music? The think i really dislike are the christian radio station ... with a moderators saysing "... you see how incredible god really is ...". I´m sure such guys slaps their kids at home and sleep their wife in ways unsupported by the bible after their job

And then there are is songs remembering me to this song in a Simpsons episode "Aaaaaand when you not not buy the CD ... Al-Qaida wiiiins". But i assume i´m not the intended audience.



Well, just 41 miles to Vegas now.

Planing is substituting chance by error. It´s the same with vacations. And our error was: Trying to get to the Yosemite National Park by the South Entry. We underestimated the likelyhood that it snows in April in this region.



So we hiked at Bass Lake a little bit and drove through the region. At last we drove into the park by using the the route to Mariposa along the Merced River ... what a great landscape. What a mess that this great scenery is connected with such an underdelivering CPU



The Yosemite National Park (This is on my plans for the next year) surely deserves an own vacation so we shortened a little bit by one day and booked for an additional day in Vegas. Leaves more time for the region around Vegas ... like the Hoover Dam or Death Valley.

So ... we left San Francisco behind and drove to Oakhurst. When we left San Francisco it started to rain for a long time of our travel.



At least the part between Madera and Oakhurst was dry. So was nice to drive through the landscape. It really looks promising for the next few days for hiking.



Oakhurst is a small town near the Yosemite national park. The hotel ... well it´s a step back from the Sheraton Fishermens Wharf ... but we just want to sleep here and it seems to be a good starting point. There is only one annoying thing about this hotel: It´s very clean ... why thats a problem ... when we entered the room it smelled like it has been soaked with a chlorine cleaning agent. After venting the room for a while the smell is at an halfway acceptable level.As i wrote before ... i don´t plan to sit around in the hotel room so it will suffice anyway.



PS: At the moment it looks like we brought the rain from SF to Oakhurst ... it started to rain an hour ago.

Just a lazy day. The next days will be long enough. Yosemite is the next step on our plan. Used the last day in San Francisco for some shopping. So nothing big too report ... at least as long you are not interested about the fitting rooms.

PS: Well ... the SFMOMA was nice ... but the MOMA in NYC was much more impressing. I´m sorry to say that ...

I wrote yesterday, that we have an Toyota Prius as a car. Forget this ... this car stands at the Monterey Airport now. We had to swap it. Somewhere near Gilroy the windscreen of the car cracked. 20-30cm crack on the drivers side. At least Avis swapped the car without questions asked and now it´s one of this SUV, a Hyundai Santa Fe.

Nevertheless it was a really interesting day. The Monterey Aquarium is really must-see albeit it was really loud as it was Sunday and many parents visited the aquarium with their parents:



When you are already in Monterey you should really visit Carmel-by-the sea. A great beach. A nice village. And obviously you should drive back to San Francisco via the Highway 1. A time consuming way to get to SF but it´s a great trip. You drive right at the side of the pacific shoreline.



BTW: One of the difficult things in the US is refueling ... at least when you are accustomed to the european variant without prepaying the fuel.

The first day with a rental car. I´ve decided to take a Toyota Prius, as neither my brother nor I wanted to spend the whole planed cash money for fuel for a big SUV. And ... after all: We drove to Stinton Beach as a Plan B as the queue of parking vehicles for Muir National Monument would be a 20 minute hike to the entrance alone I´m really glad that i didn´t had to steer a SUV along all this curves. It was fun ... for me ... but did you ever sat on the front passenger's seat on such a tour - that´s not so funny . After all .. we made it until Nova Albion near Point Reyes.



We drove to the east afterwards until we hit the Highway 101. Was really a nice day.