The Day of Big Trees

24.08.2017
Ausma writing:

1st and 2nd team wake up in Motel 6 in Medford, Team 3 in motel in Weed. We take a quick sandwich and go to the Rogue Valley Inn motel to have some breakfast. This motel moved us yesterday, because there is a reconstruction and there were no places for us. Some of us have coffee and juice, others cornflakes, and then we go on a long journey to San Francisco.
The first team will try to drive to Walmart supermarket to give back the stoves and pans.

We drive along the road 190 towards the ocean coast. On the way, we are accompanied by fog and smoke coming from a burning forest near coastline. Ocean was gray, with large waves, foggy. As usual, we collect some small rocks from the ocean coast.

We drive through the Redwood National Park – on the edge of the road there are huge sequoias – very large and tall trees – biggest trees in the world. We are stopping everywhere in the road pockets, taking pictures, and flying like children through the sequoias forest. Daumants is very glad that we are in the big sequoias forest, not just seeing some trees as at the start of the trip. Impressively – the forest is in the mist, only at + 15*C outside. We are joking, that acclimatization for Latvia begins after the heat in America.
We drive along the historic 101 road, which is often referred to as the Redwood Road. We go to the Thomas Kuchel Visitor Center, named after a US Senator from California State (1953-1969). There we learn about the Sequoia trees and Redwoods. It is interesting to compare sequoias and redwoods: they are plants of one family. The Gigant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) are more than 3200 years old, 300 ft or 91.4 m high, a mass about 3500 tons, a diameter at the base – 40 feet or 12.2 meters, the seed is like oat flake, but the cone is like chicken egg – they are the thickest trees on world. In turn, Coast redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) are the longest trees on world: more than 2000 years old, up to 370 feet or 112.8 meters; mass about 1200 tons, diameter at foot 22 ft or 6.7 meters, seed like tomatoe seed, but cone like olive.
Soon we arrive at the Redwood Giant’s Avenue, which looks like a snake above and below the 101st road. Again we are in the Redwood Forest. Again stopping, taking pictures and trying to find the thickest and then the tallest trees, apart from the sequoias of redwood. In the roadmap it is written that somewhere there grow the oldest and largest trees in the World. I am not sure if we found it, but the remains we saw were both thick and long.

We visit private museum of Minerals. Ilgonis and Maris as experts buy some items (minerals, rocks, fossils and meteorites), for their home museum, others just visit the exposition.

We ride cars through the old sequoia tree, which does not show any signs of life. Glad to pay $ 8, to capture the moment, how our cars go through this tree. It turns out there is also an alive tree that you can go through for $ 5, but it stays for the next time. Team 1 traveled through that tree – Chandelier tree (height 315 ft, diameter – 21 ft, age 2400 ys) in Leggett.
Time is running on and we drive to San Francisco, still on our way to Walmart supermarket, because we need to buy some food for breakfast.

750 km traveled during all day and we are at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. The sun has just set, but it’s a little light to finally see the bridge without a fog. We take some pictures; the wind is so strong that blows us off the feet, it’s cold.

We go to the bustling stream of San Francisco streets and it was hard to see the sign of Europe’s hotel & hostel on Brodway street, because other advertisements and signage were so bright. Maris has the sharpest sight and sees the letters above the very narrow door. We quickly load and shovel all the belongings from the car, because tomorrow we will transfer the cars back to the car rent. 5352 miles or 8563 km on the roads of USA are done. We drag the bags to the room on the third floor by very steep stairs. The room is full of stuff. The drivers go to look for car parking; the rest are struggling with suitcases. Need to pack for the journey back home.

Good night. This will be our last night in America.

Along Route 66 to Las Vegas

10.08.2017
Daumants writing:

Today we did the planned trip from San Bernardino (part of the LA aglomeration) to the biggest city in Nevada – Las Vegas. In complete we drove more than 300 miles. Traveling mostly took part on the historic route 66. Unfortunately in the middle of our trip the route 66 was closed due to road repair.
Day started with wonderfully refreshing morning swim in one of the motels pools. Already in morning hours we were heated up by the hot south Californian sun. The morning rush in this morning wasn’t so harsh, so we had some time to chill at the motel. At last our group got ready and we went to one of the local cheapest gasoline stations to fill car empty gas tanks.
After we filled our car “stomachs” we straightly hit the route 66, which has lost its main title as the main connector between two coasts of mainland USA already for decades.
On the way to Las Vegas the air slowly heated up from quite bearable 32 degrees Celsius to 45 degrees! The route 66 gave joy to our eyes with beautiful landscapes, and old lovely country side houses. Besides, locals try to keep the road surroundings as they were 50 years ago with old cars, fences and houses.
And then in the evening we came to Las Vegas! What a marvelous city. And the climate is crazy hot, but for us northerners, hot nights is our cup of coffee. We love it!
See ya tomorrow!

To the ocean!

06.08.2017
Atis Edvards un Niks Jānis raksta:

It was morning of August 6. We got up shortly before 6 o’clock a.m. and heated a water for the morning porridge. Today it was planned to travel a great and long distance. At 6:45 a.m. there was our group meeting. It was said that it would be possible to take and use swimsuits. Once again, we filled up our cars with our stuff to the top and we went on a long journey.
On the sidewalk, we tasted some figs that just grove green and fresh in trees. I should admit that it was my first time eating green completely fresh sweet figs. Then I fell to a little sleep, as I woke up, we drove through a green beautiful forest, and the next time I opened my eyes we had reached the Pacific Ocean that loudly rocked and waved, finally we could really look at it. Let’s go further and see it from a different point of view. It was early morning, so people were not there yet, and the weather was mildly warm but ocean’s cold winds made it pleasant and cool.

When we found a nice-looking place, it turned out to be some kind of a cow beach. Wow, the private cow beach possibly is a place for a milk with fish aroma – was noticed by someone in our radio. A few moments later we drove off the main road to the beach, where some of us did swimming. Salvis was the first who run in the Pacific Ocean with his arms wide open. The water was quite cold and unpleasant, but the sensation of embarking and soaking legs was already an adventure. After the beach we ate some bananas and went further. We drove for a long time and tried to stay at least a couple of minutes from each other, we traveled through traffic jams, either lost or separated for a moment but we could hear each other on our walkie talkie channel 11.

We were separated because some stopped on another beach to cool down and I’m sure they were swimming. But we continued our journey and later stopped for a moment at the rest area. Somebody told that Kristaps had said that he had seen a rattlesnake, and that he was asking others if they have seen it. The rumors spread quickly and everyone remained obscure, some went to look. But in fact, Kristaps had only seen the sign, written about the rattlesnakes, and that they usually go out at night. We stopped by self-service machines, someone took a lemonade, someone – coffee, but we with brother found an ice cream machine for a dollar. We inserted one-dollar bill into machine and the refrigerator what was in the machine opened its lid and a robot hand miraculously swept our order from the freezer – it was lifted, moved a little towards the glass and dropped at our feet. You do not see anything like that every day (if you do not live next door by the ice-cream vending machine, of course). The ice-cream at this hot day was good and the price for such a pleasure for a dollar was excellent.

We went on and I was listening to music again, eventually we scanned throw radio stations. Some of the stations stumbled among the mountains, but it was ok. Suddenly one station had a program about the upcoming Solar eclipse, and all of us started listening very carefully right away.

We were still divided into two parts, and again we were looking for a place to dock. At this part of our road everything was full of trailers with American, Californian (just in case you don’t know, its main symbol is a grizzly bear) and pirate-type flags. The beach was nice and this time almost everyone went for a swim in the ocean, we made wonderful pictures, we wet pants and went to our previously booked motel. We had to do laundry and make a soup for dinner. The laundry room was hidden on the second floor, and there was no detergent there, but it turned out to be able to buy it from vending machine at the motel reception, the Tide was hidden between different chocolates and other snacks, very cleverly invented! Others cooked sausages, rice and more for dinner. We put a pile of ice in our cold bags with food supplies, since there was only one small refrigerator located at the reception, then we washed ourselves and went to bed.

Going to Yosemite Valley

03.08.2017
Laura writing:

Departure from the motel is shortly after 8:00. Today the weather is with us, in the morning already + 31°C degrees.
The first part of the day goes by arranging everything we need – the camping mats that Walmart did not have in stock at 23:00 and gas canisters.

Some travelers are concerned with the count of the camping mats for the tent (we will spend the next two nights in tents). Therefore, the excited ones are comforted: “Do a deep breath and take up the form of a bowl”. Without having found everything needed, Salvis’/ Imants’ cars went to Target to look for butane gas canisters but they did not find them, so the road leads back to Walmart, where they bought 2 of another type of camping stove and propane cylinders.

Waze tells us to drive 100km straight. On the road there are fruit trees that are not familiar to Latvians. If you will not try it, you will not find out what is it! It turns out that those are almonds! Everyone got one, Salvis tried out the skin and threw it out – bitter. The almond lies inside the stone :)

Hay grows on both sides of the road. It is not necessary to dry it. A little bit rugged fields with dead brown grass. The impression is not as expected from the USA. Rather Tunisia/Morocco. If a green tree appears, it’s like a miracle – in a brown wilderness. At 11am the temperature is F°99 (to make it easier to understand: 38°C).

Mariposa is a small town on the way to Yosemite National Park, in the middle of nowhere. On both sides there are souvenir shops. Look! This is the American glamour that fits the expectations.

Gleb is not coming with us today – he does not feel well, so both his relatives in LV and the US have arranged for him a plane ticket to Los Angeles to be there for a few days and heal.

Yosemite National Park
Latvian thinking points to “opportunities” where it would be possible to cheat. Also when entering the National Park.
Impressive rocks and a two-lane unidirectional road. Impressive.
Parking is truly overwhelming. There are armies of cars but the park can not accommodate everyone. For more than half an hour we were looking for a place to park.
Lower Yosemite Falls – with an opportunity to come close to the waterfall.
On our way to Mirror Lake we were reached by a bit of rain that cooled the air and made it easier to breathe.
Mirror Lake – gave an opportunity to swim and enjoy the views of the beautiful cliffs.
To get to our camping site at around 18:00, we spent 5 miles in a traffic jam. USA without congestion is unthinkable!
We are going to the 1h far camping site along serpentines, reaching it when it is already dark.
We have dinner and then go to sleep to get started early in the morning.

Agnese comments:
To buy a butane gas canister in California for the instant stoves we had got for ourselves was almost impossible. That is – we managed to get one whole 8oz canister even though we were looking for them in every shop that we visited. We were also thinking of ordering from amazon.com, but it turns out that in the state of California ordering gas online with delivery is not possible at all. There were no such issues with the propane gas canisters – those were available in every shop that we visited.