Tag Archives: ocean

The Day of Big Trees

  By | |
Leave a comment

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.

The 1st day in Los Angeles

  By | |
Leave a comment

07.08.2017
Jānis writing:

Our first stop on the 7 th of August was El Matador State Beach. The weather was perfect for swimming, with overcast sky and chilly winds. However, for the couple of us that wanted to go for a swim it was not an obstacle. No, the obstacle should have been the rocky shores and underwater rocks, as Imants proved without a doubt by hurting his toe on one of these rocks quite badly. The time limit of half an hour prevented any further injuries to group. Here, I feel it appropriate to mention that both Imants and Salvis reported that their cars show that more than 1000 miles have been driven in the USA.

Next up was the Science Center. The center itself contained a lot of interesting rooms and experiments. For example, there were rooms showing the flora and fauna of deserts, rivers and arctics, as well as several experiments involving crash tests, wind turbines and structural integrities. It offered opportunities to see Gemini, Mercury and Apollo capsules.
But, all that aside, there was one exhibit that stood over the rest – Space Shuttle Endeavour. The majestic shuttle made for a truly breathtaking sight. To be fair, several artifacts were shown before the shuttle, for example, the tires, galley, nose cone, etc. and they were all fascinating as well, but nothing quite compares to seeing the shuttle. It was truly inspiring.

Next up, was Griffith observatory. Not much to say here, other than that it is a pretty building and provides an excellent view towards LA. Well, the main reason for the lackluster review is that it was closed. Still, we got a couple of pictures out of it, including our first in front of the “Hollywood” sign. After visiting the observatory we drove down the Santa Monica boulevard towards Santa Monica pier reaching the end route 66. The boulevard had a subtle change from run down houses in the beginning and the middle to the stunning heart of Los Angeles. At the end of the boulevard was the Santa Monica pier, end of route 66. The pier contained several shops, a couple of good ocean views and several attractions.

After visiting the pier the group decided to split up with some enjoying the Sunset boulevard in, well, sunset and others electing to stay in LA. As i was with the group that stayed, I will speak about that. We did two more things. Firstly, we checked out the pedestrian street with it’s shops and shops and dealerships and some cool hedges that were cut like dinosaurs and were part of a fountain. A rather uneventful trip, if you discount Laura finding a shoe shop with a sale going on and myself with Salvis visiting a Tesla dealership. Secondly, we went for a swim in the ocean. The water was warm, the air hot and the waves went over my head by just a fraction. In the end, our swim was rewarded by the sight of Santa Monica pier lighting up for the night and an sunset over the ocean.

At that point it was time to head home. We took a detour through Sunset boulevard as well although we didn’t see much as it was already dark outside. We did get pictures with the sign saying “Beverly Hills” though and did get to enjoy LA in the night with it’s neon signs, posters and all around colorful exterior.

Unbeknownst to us one more adventure awaited us – shopping. As we needed some food we went to nearest Walmart which was closed. There we received instructions (in Spanish/broken English) to the place with the nearest 24/7 Walmart which we mistook for a separate shop which in turn created a problem with navigation leading to us enjoying our night for two more hours before we finally got to our motel and could get to bed.

To the ocean!

  By | |
Leave a comment

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.