After days and days of searching and researching we have booked our next vacation which is going to be a road trip¹ through Washington state. I wanted to do this kind of trip for a long time now and I we think Aroshka is going to be old enough to handle some long rides in the car. But we decided not to get too ambitious on his account, so the trip consists of only 3 locations.

On the morning of Wednesday, June 12th, we fly² out to Seattle, Washington. We rent the car³ at the airport and proceed to drive to a town called Port Angeles, Washington, located on the northern side of Olympic National Park. We are going to spend 4 nights⁴ here exploring the area and the national park.

On Sunday, June 16th, we drive to Mount Rainier National Park. On our way we plan to drive through Olympia, the capital of Washington state. We’re going to spend 3 nights⁵ inside the national park.

On Wednesday, June 19th, we drive to our final destination — Seattle, where we’re going to spend another 3 nights⁶ at one of the Hilton hotels that we booked for points.

We’re hoping this is going to be as fun of a vacation as all our previous road trips of this kind were.

As I noted in my previous post, not being confined to the extents of our resort by virtue of having a rented car and going out to actually explore some nearby parts of Costa Rica was the most fun part of this vocation for me. We made two such excursions, since it’s still hard for Arosha to spend so much time sitting in the car.

Luckily for us two places that we picked out to visit turned out to be vastly different from each other. The whole ecosystem reminded me of our trip to Big Island of Hawaii. On one side of the island there is an eternal summer with very high temperatures and dry climate and only 60 miles away there is an non-stop rain with lush green forests. Costa Rica is very similar in this regard and we got to see both sides of the so-called coin here.

Santa Rosa National Park

In the morning of our second full day in Costa Rica we got into our car, turned on our GPS and headed North in the direction of Santa Rosa National park — the closest destination we could find. Right across the road from Santa Rosa there was another park — Guanacaste National Park, but as we later found out the park was closed to visitors.

Soon after we were at the park entrance. It was very easy to find and especially so with GPS’s assistance. At the entrance we were given a map and a nice explanation of what’s worth seeing in the park by a nice and very polite young guy with very good English. The entrance to the park was $10 per person.

Soon after we came to appreciate the fact that we rented a 4×4, because there is no way we would’ve gotten through to any of our destinations by the so-called road on any other car. It was not paved and it was covered in rocks and in certain places with deep muddy puddles. The ride that was only 12 kilometers long took us not less than an hour.

We did 3 hikes. One fairly long one — 1.6km each way and two shorter ones. The park was not at all what we expected Costa Rica to look like. It was a dry tropical forest and March being the peak of a dry season made the forest look pretty much dead. The temperature was in the 90s so the hikes themselves were quite exhausting, especially with the fact that Arosha expired very quickly and one of us had to carry him as he didn’t want to walk by himself anymore.

We did get to see the canyons at the end of the hike and later on — our third hike — even got onto the shores of open Pacific Ocean. And even though it is called Pacific it was anything but. The waves were just humongous. The beach was deserted and nobody wanted to risk getting into that water, but it was beautiful.

We also saw a whole lot of iguanas. Arosha even tried to catch one — and hit it on the head with the stick as he claims, but luckily for that iguana it was a lot faster than Arosha was. But now every time we mention an iguana he points out he wanted to hit it on the head with a stick, but was unable.

At the end of the day we were quite exhausted. The unpaved road back took a long while, and we were extremely pleased to finally get onto the highway and drive back to our hotel. The only thing is that for some reason our rental car came with no cruise control and it’s really hard to go long distances without it once you get used to such a convenience. My foot was ready to fall off by the time we got back.

Second Excursion Planning

At this point we really wanted to see the Costa Rica that we imagined before the trip — lush green rain forests. However research proved to be very difficult. The information that comes up is often that on various tourist agency sites and lacks any kind of useful information for touring without a guide. There was a number of parks not too far from us, but from what we read they would either be very similar to Santa Rosa and all of them had long hikes that we would need to take to see anything. As we understood it was not really a great option for us with a 2 year old.

One place that was often mentioned was Monteverde cloud forests. But from what I could find online it really is more of an area than a park and the same thing — long hikes. It took us several days to finally come up with a plan for our second, and last trip.

Arenal Volcano National Park

A place that we were aware of before we got to Costa Rica was Arenal Volcano which in fact was located inside the national park. And even though we again couldn’t really find any good information we looked at the map of the route there and seeing as it goes along the coast of a large lake we figured it was worth a drive. We were hoping that maybe if we don’t even get to do a hike in the park we’ll catch some good views along the way. And right we were.

Remembering Hawaii I advised everyone to take sweaters because the temperature could change dramatically with higher elevation. And as once years ago during our trip to Yosemite Alena took the sweaters for us and my parents decided it was too hot for sweaters. And were they wrong or what. As we were gaining altitude we ended up literally driving into a cloud. The mist started to set down on the windows and when we got out on a first scenic view everyone completely froze.

The views were magnificent and they were getting better. The fog was hugging everything around, the forest was getting greener and trees were getting taller. Near one such tree we saw a stopped car and a pair of tourists looking up. From our experience in Yellowstone it was a sure sign of wildlife. We pulled over as well and saw a whole bunch of real wild capuchin monkeys sitting in the tree, eating some exotic fruit. We we already excited — even if we don’t get to see anything else the trip was already worth it.

We kept driving and suddenly we were surrounded by funny furry animals with long noses — about 30 of them. They were all very wet because of the rain, and they were also very hungry. Sadly Arosha has finally decided to take a nap, which didn’t last long, but he did miss all the fun. As we later learned these animals were called coatis.

We drove a little while longer and the forest just became irresistibly photogenic. We passed a small one lane bridge and I pulled over onto the shoulder. We got out and went back to the bridge. This was probably the most beautiful thing I’ve seen during our trip. Bright brown water of a mountain river under the bridge was surrounded by lush green forest that was in turn covered by fog, or the cloud that we’ve never left after driving into it. Such a serene place.

Right while we were walking around a car with some American tourists going in the opposite direction stopped and they informed us that a couple of miles down the road there are 30 lemurs running around. And sure enough, there was another large pack of “lemurs”.

Soon after we arrived to the entrance of Arenal Volcano National Park via a relatively short unpaved road. To our surprise the park was closed for some administrative restructuring, but they were letting anyone in anyhow. On the plus side the admission fee was not collected, but on the down side there were no maps or any explanation of what we were supposed to see. However we ran into a couple of tourists and an information board with a map and it turned out that park itself wasn’t very big and all the trails were pretty self explanatory.

First we drove all the way down to an observation area and observed a volcano which was absolutely not visible because of the earlier mentioned fog. Not even a hint of it. So we decided to take a hike to the lava fields, which we actually have seen a lot of in Hawaii. It was also lightly raining, but better rain then 90 degree heat. I gave my sweater to my mom, my dad grabbed a towel and I was pretty well covered by my hiking hat.

The trail itself was very different from the view that we saw on the bridge along the way. The path was surrounded mostly by tall bamboo sticks which look a lot like oversized grass. I was getting a feeling that I have been shrunk by some magical device and I was walking through grass which now appeared to be gigantic. Arosha was running around trying to find the biggest leaf of fern (paporotnik in Russian) and trying to pronounce this complicated word. He came up with a number of rather funny versions.

We kept walking and walking and kept getting wetter and wetter and we suddenly decided that we’ve seen what lava fields look like before and we can live without seeing them today and just turned around. It was still a fun hike, but we didn’t get to our destination. Also all around us were signs saying something along the lines of if you melt because of lava, it’s your own damn fault, and don’t blame us. Although we heard that Arenal was actually not active right now, so there was a little chance of that happening I guess.

We got back into our car and started driving back with numerous stops along the way. We ran into a pack of “lemurs” again on the way back and Arosha got to see them. He liked them so much that he decided to generously donate an orange he was eating at the time. And then asked for some banana and did the same.

And then we got hungry and after driving and driving decided to stop at a strange German place of all things. Everyone ate some tasty goulash that goes well with cold rainy weather and I ate some bratwurst which tasted pretty well too. Although they do some really funny math when they give you a check, but we decided not to argue too much and pay.

That’s pretty much all the events from this day that I remember. We got back to the hotel after dark, so it was a full day road trip that Arosha handled very well. We’ve seen a lot of unusual things and some amazing beautify that Costa Rica’s nature has to offer.

Conclusion

So all in all, even though we only did two trips I was very glad that we rented a car. We got to see two very different sides of Costa Rica’s natural beauty and it made the vacation much more fun than it would’ve been otherwise. It was a worthy investment without a question. Thus concludes my reporting on yet another one of our great vacations.

Twice in my life I’ve been to Grand Canyon and both times I have been amazed. It is the wonder of nature that left the strongest impression in my mind. I think every person should do themselves a favor and see it with their own eyes at least once. Now there is a possibility that I will get a chance to see it yet again in a not so distant future. It’s not a certainty, it’s only a possibility, but it’s the one that I’m looking forward to becoming a reality.

I decided to look through some old photographs we took during our Phoenix, Sedona, Grand Canyon, Las Vegas road trip that we went on with Alena back in October of 2005. Since our blog didn’t exist back then I picked out several raw photos that I liked the most and decided to post them here.

It is evident to me that my photo processing skills have clearly improved from 2005. Rather I should say that in 2005 they were pretty much at zero — non-existent. I’m thinking of maybe promoting one of these three photographs into my photo gallery section. Which one do you, dear reader, like the most?

We’re back from our vacation and it’s time to write something about it. I’m not sure where to begin best, so I’ll break it up into a couple of parts — states and capitals part of the strip and Shenandoah National Park part. But I will start with something a bit unrelated — photography.

Photography

The unusual start is an introduction to the photos that will be a part of this and upcoming posts. They break up in to two categories — family and general vacation snapshots group that are just that and a group that will later go into my photostream here on the blog and on Flickr — an artistic attempt at landscapes, nature and other types of photography.

Since our plan for the road trip was less ambitions than usual I was done with general shots of the park fairly quickly and instead concentrating of throwing all the conventions of photography out of the window and just experimenting. I took a lot of shots with the sun shining directly into the lens or hitting a lens at an angle that would create a flare. I took a lot of shots with lenses wide open with have very little in the focus plane. I took much fewer HDR shots than usual.

Basically I’ll let you be the judge. I think I’ve come back with some interesting and pleasing shots that I myself like, but as always I would welcome and appreciate any feed back I can get — if you like something, don’t be shy — say it.

States and Capitals

As part of our “goal oriented” travel we’ve set out to “recolor” some of the states on our visited states map that I’ve posted about yesterday.

Our first stop was Dover, Delaware. We checked in into the hotel late at night and in the morning our first order of business was visiting the capitol. The building turned out to be rather modest, but the personnel was very friendly. They let us roam around all over the place, since it was Saturday.

We went through the Senate and Congress chambers and took a bunch of pictures, even some HDRs. A lot of portraits inside, but otherwise nothing really spectacular.

Right after that we went to Annapolis, Maryland. The capitol was bigger than that of Delaware, but nothing made it really stand out in my memory either. The city itself was noticeably bigger and much more busy than Dover. We ate lunch at one of the local places and where on our way.

Our next stop was Washington, DC. Even though we’ve been to this city many times before and have visited majority of its memorials it was before we started our stamp collections. And when I was researching it some time ago I noticed that Washington Monument actually has ALL of the stamp available at the other memorials. So it was a great chance to make a stop and grab all the missing stamps of the places that we’ve been to.

Next was Shenandoah itself, but about that a bit later. Sadly Richmond (Virginia capital) was way out of our way and since we were with Arosha we didn’t want to take any extra detours, so we skipped it and didn’t get a chance to “recolor” Virginia. But we did continue our venture after our stay in Shenandoah, or to be more precise — on our way back home.

If our trip to the park looked like a downward curve the trip home was a mirror curve facing upwards. This allowed us to drive through West Virginia (first for all of us) and make a stop in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

We stopped in a town called Marginsburg in WV, but there is really not much special about any of it. Harrisburg on the other hand was very impressive. I expected to see some small provincial town, but it turned out to be a modern city.

The city lies on the banks of Susquehanna River. We drove along it and saw a lot of huge mansions. Eventually one of the streets opened up and you get a magnificent view of the Capitol Building right from the banks of the river. Our timing was also perfect as the sun was setting down and the green dome of the capitol was basked in golden rays of an evening sun. It really looked breathtaking.

I don’t know if the pictures I took will do it justice, but it was probably one of the best looking capitol buildings any one of us has seen. The whole district around it was very “Washingtonian” — a city that is a museum on its own. We didn’t get a chance to get inside, but otherwise we left happy.

The city outskirts though looked very much different — a completely contrast to the center. Everything was extremely ran down and poor. For some reason a lot of capitals tend to be similar in this way, including Washington, DC itself.

So to sum up — we have visited capitols of Dover, Maryland and Pennsylvania for the first time, stepped on the soil of West Virginia for the first time and filled up our passports with missing stamps from Washington, DC.

Shenandoah National Park

We spent most of our vacation in Shenandoah. We got here on Saturday evening and left on the next Saturday’s morning. Upon arrival to the lodge we were given keys to a pair of interconnected rooms on the 2nd floor of the cottage located right on the edge of the mountain.

In the morning we really saw the view for the first time — huge valley and Blue Ridge mountains on the other side of the valley, right in front of our windows. They couldn’t have picked a better place to build a lodge.

On our first day we went to Big Meadow visitor center and asked for a couple of maps of trails that we could take a stroller on. Our first hike was to Dark Hollow Falls. The road that lead it was a gravel fire-road. It was relatively flat and all the bumps seemed to have put Arosha to sleep. When we go to the falls Alena and I climbed to the top of the mountain to waterfall origins and parents stayed behind with Arosha.

After that we drove to Luray to stock up on some food and water (even though rooms do not have microwaves of freezers we were given one since we were staying for a week) and see what Luray itself is. Several things came to our attention. Even though trees on the top of the mountain were completely leafless the forest was full of color closer to Luray — that gave us a chance to take some colorful pictures. Luray itself though was pretty much nothing of anything.

We made a great decision to come later in the season and stay in the lodge rather than come earlier and stay in town. And even though the drive to town was about 20 miles away from our lodge it would be a huge pain to go back and forth every day. All the trails are in the park anyhow. Plus the road in the park — Skyline Drive, that runs atop the mountain — is very twisty, so my mom was getting dizzy every time we went anywhere.

Eventually we developed a pretty good schedule for every day. Arosha was sleeping OK. Alena would feed him when he would wake up and put him back to sleep in the complete darkness (except for the bathroom light that we used as a night light). Because he didn’t really have a chance to wake up he would fall back asleep pretty quickly. At 6am when he would wake up for good my mom would take him to their room and let Alena get a couple of hours of sleep.

Then we would wake up and eat breakfast, while feeding or entertaining Arosha. He would do his morning nap and we would go for a short walk around Skyland (our lodge). After coming back we would feed Arosha and go for a 2-3 hour hike. It was great.

Some trails were better than others. One day we went on a long trail right around Skyland, but the fire-road turned out to be so steep that it started to get scary with a stroller. Somehow while my dad and I were taking pictures of plans my mom and Alena managed to push the stroller and Arosha all the way back up. That was not an easy feat.

Our favorite hike was probably at Big Meadow. At first we started going right through the meadow trails, but most of them were getting narrow and not nearly wide enough for a stroller. But luckily there was another fire-road running right around the meadow and into the woods. At one point Alena spotted a buck with antlers crossing the road. A grabbed my 200mm lens and ran after him into the woods. I didn’t end up catching up to him, but stumbled upon another one buck with 2 females. I guess his antlers were bigger, because the other one was alone.

Sadly I didn’t get any good pictures worth adding into the photostream, but I did get ones that are good enough as proof. When I got back to the road Alena informed me that a coyote just crossed the road, but I did completely miss it. Sad.

Speaking of animals, that’s pretty much all we saw. We were really hoping for a bear or a bobcat, but I guess they weren’t as anxious to meet us. Forest was full of chipmunks and squirrels with super fluffy tails. Also on our very last morning I looked out our window and saw another buck eating grass. I took a couple of pictures of him. When I looked out 30 minutes later there was another different one. This one seemed much younger, judging by the antlers.

For dinner we would always go to the lodge dinning room. To our luck they had a pretty good chief and we were very happy with their cooking for the most part. In the last couple of days we didn’t want to wait until 5:30 (dinning room opening) so we want to a tap room that actually used the same kitchen. Ate some good burgers there.

Overall even though the trees were naked in most of the park the forest had a nice tranquility to it. The weather was great — absolutely blue sky, temperature in the 60s and very little wind. Even though it wasn’t unusual it was very relaxing and calming. We had a great family vacation.

Arosha

And the best for the last. Aroshka turned 3 months old on November 8th. If to be counted from the very beginning of his existence — it’s been a year. He was great. He cried, but not too often, he ate well, he slept well and he did a lot of “hiking” with us.

It’s amazing how kids grow right in front of your eyes. He has changed so much — not appearance wise, but behavior wise. He is following everything with his eyes, he likes looking at faces and toys and he was extremely fascinated by a ceiling fan.

He smiles a lot and seems to be trying to laugh. He makes tons of very funny noises and says a lot of his own words like “guk” and “agu”. When I talk to him he often starts to smile and then turns his head and hides his face, like he’s shy. When he gets tired he starts to talk in a different tone of voice and it sounds like he’s complaining. He talked to his giraffe a lot like that.

Alena and my mom were worried a lot, because it was pretty much on them to keep him entertained, fed, happy or to make him sleep. But I think they shouldn’t have worried as much. Arosha did really well on his first trip.

Not so long ago we booked ourselves a vacation and never got around to posting about it. The vacation actually starts in 2 days and I wanted to leave some notes before it starts. The main objective of the road trip is Shenandoah National Park in Northern Virginia.

We’re going to be taking our car and driving down there along with our newest family member. There are going to be 5 of us this time around. We’re going to be staying in lodge located inside the park — Skyland Resort, which was generously paid for by the company I work for. Continue Reading

And now onto the very last stop of our trip — San Francisco. I will start with saying that usually I loath spending more than a day on a city and much prefer to spend my vacation exploring some park. The maximum that we did before was probably several hours walking around downtown before heading into the nature.

San Francisco was a big exception in all of this. I really loved it and I would happily spend more days there then we did as there are so many things that we didn’t get a chance to explore. Where do I start?

Right upon our arrive to our Hilton hotel located on the edge of Financial District and Chinatown, and half a block from Transamerica Pyramid we were given a pair of adjacent rooms on the 24th Excecutive Floors. I just love free room upgrades thanks to our Diamond Hilton HHonors standing.

And I must also go ahead and thank Brian for pointing our the error of my ways of originally booking a hotel outside the city. Staying in the heart of things was definitely the right choice.

Right after checking in we got back into our car and went to check out the most famous (at least to me) San Francisco landmark — Golden Gate Bridge. Apparently the day after all the area around it was closed off because of some major triathlon competition and people swimming to Alcatraz. Sadly the light conditions were far from perfect so the photos came out rather mediocre, but we worked with what we were given and that’s that.

At first we hiked around the southern side of the bridge and took some shots from several good points of view. The place is just crawling with people thought. So many tourists. I was happy to discover that the bridge has 2 great walkways which present a completely unobstructed view of the city and the bay. If I lived here that would probably be my favorite place for walking with a tripod.

We were able to get only to the first tower though since the bridge ended up being closed around it. We didn’t know why. We decided to come back, get into a car and drive across it and check out Sausalito — the town located on the other side. We got stuck in bad traffic. By the time we got to the first tower though we realized what was going on. The area on the pedestrian walkway was closed off and full of police. There was a guy on the other side of guardrail, holding on. I guess they were trying to talk him out of jumping.

Sausalito itself wasn’t very interesting — full of touristy shops, overbooked restaurants and not much more. After a short walk we decided to get back to the city, but what should’ve been a 15 minute ride turned out to be a painful 3 hour crawl, for the same exact reason as the way here — people are just too nosy and everybody must stop and take a look at a suicidal guy.

On the way back to the hotel we accidentally ended up driving right through the crazy part of Lombard Street. When we were heading up on the hill that leads to that crooked part everyone was slightly freaking out — especially Alena and mama. It really does feel like the car is going to start flipping back over itself any second when you’re climbing that. I’m not certain if it indeed is the steepest road in the city or not, but there are plenty that do feel the same way. We started our next day with the trip back here to take pictures in better light.

After that we drove around the city a bit going through some of the “featured spots” (per Gowalla) — Apple Flagship Store, Union Square, Contemporary Jewish Museum, Moscone Center, Twitter Head Quarters, SFMOMA among other things. In the end we ended up at Golden Gate Park.

That’s approximately when Mark called. We ended up meeting with him soon after on the western entrance to the park. I was really looking forward to finally meet him — after all, we’ve been exchanging correspondence with him for almost 3 years now and this was the first time we could talk face to face. And I think we ended up having a great time. We got to know him, he got to know us. Hopefully we didn’t turn out to be too scary, crazy Russian relatives.

The first place we ended up going together was a synagogue that is built on the land donated by Mark’s grandfather — Jacob in the name of Avram Lanis, Jacob’s father. Avram Lanis also happens to be my great-great-grandfather. It’s an interesting and a strange feeling seeing a building built in his name. Some short time ago we didn’t know anybody, but our branch of the family that started from him. Now we know that his descendants are living all over the world — many parts of Russia, Israel, all over United States and who knows where else.

Then we hopped into Mark’s car and went back to our hotel. We left the car and went for a walk around the city. We were going along the shore starting from the Ferry Building approximately. I was hoping to reach the Fisherman’s Wharf, but my dad apparently had different plans in mind. He didn’t want to see the famous places that everyone else sees, but wanted to see small empty streets that are only known to the inhabitants of the city itself. This always happens to us.

Anyhow, we ended up getting a dinner in Little Italy and we ready to turn in for the night. Everyone was tired and after all we had a plane to catch early next morning. We said our good-byes with Mark and hope to see him in our area some time in the future. I think it was a great day.

And in conclusion I will say that San Francisco has some special character that only a few cities do. We happen to be lucky to live in one of such cities, but you can be sure that we’ll visit San Francisco again. There are still so many things that we didn’t get a chance to do this time around. We’ll be back!

P.S. There are many more little details that I left out or forgot. One such thing is that I was really impressed by the number of types of public transportation San Francisco has. The most nostalgic one to me was the trolleybuses — I haven’t seen any since Tashkent. And yes, there are still many more things that I forgot to include in this post.

Сан-Франциско, этот город на холмах, мне очень понравился. Что-то в нём есть такое особенное, не похожее на другие большие города. Творения природы лично мне гораздо интереснее исследовать, чем творения рук чековеческих. Однако Сан-Франциско не успел наскучить за те 3 дня, что мы в нём провели; более того, я совсем не против когда-нибудь посетить этот город снова.

Остановились мы в Хилтоне, расположенном прямо на границе китайского квартала в финансовом районе города. Место оказалось очень живописным — рядом с отелем был парк где мирно проводили свободное время группки китайцев, по вечерам мы слышали китайскую музыку, ну и все магазинчики в округе тоже принадлежали китайцам.

Как-то сложно писать обо всё последоватльно, поэтому напишу лишь о том, что запомнилось.

Golden Gate Bridge

О существовании и цвете этого знаменитого моста, который на момент своего открытия в 1937 году был самым длинным висячим мостом в мире, я знала до нашей поездки. Был очень интересно посмотреть на него вживую, а так же прогуляться по специальной пешеходной дорожке. Чего я не ожидала — так это того, что в районе моста будет так ветренно! Еще я не ожидала, что кто-то решит спрыгнуть с моста как раз в момент нашей по нему прогулки, но именно это и произошло (поэтому гуляли мы по мосту чуть меньше чем рассчитывали — часть пути была перекрыта полицией).

Lombard Street

Вот это улица так улица — кривая и крутая! Когда мы сьезжали по ней вниз, мне было страшно (хорошо хоть Данька не разгонялся слишком сильно)! Машинам на этой улице можно парковаться только под углом 90 градусов (иначе, думаю, небезопасно).

Public Transportation

Несмотря на то, что мы передвигались либо на своих двоих, либо на машине, общественный транспорт Сан-Франциско впечатлил — и в первую очередь своим разнообразием. В этом городе есть метро, автобусы, трамваи, троллейбусы, а так же канатные трамваи, главной целью которых на сегодняшний день является привлечение туристов. Наибольшую ностальгию у меня вызвали троллейбусы, которые когда-то для меня были неотьемлемой частью передвижения по Минску (кстати, троллейбусная сеть Минска — вторая в мире по величине и уступает в размерах только Московской).

Golden Gate Park

Этот парк расположен на побережье Тихого океана. По форме он похож на прямоугольный Central Park (по площади он на 20% больше Нью-Йоркской достопримечательности), и является 3-м самым посещаемым парком в стране (на первом месте находится Central Park). По парку мы гуляли не очень долго, и мне больше всего запомнилась огромная ветряная мельница. В этом парке мы встретились с Марком — еще одним звеном той части семьи, связь с которой была потеряна, а потом так неожиданно налажена опять. Марк произвёл на меня очень приятное впечатление. Он показал нам некоторые старые семейные фотографии, а потом отвез к синагоге, которая построенна на земле когда-то пожертвованной его дедом.

The Synagogue

Как я писала выше, земля, на которой стоит эта синанога, была подарена дедушкой Марка, Яковом, в честь его (Якова) отца — Аврума Ланиса (который так же является прадедушкой д. Бори). К сожалению, синангога в тот день была закрыта, но Данька перелез через забор и сфотографировал мемориальную дощечку, которая и повествует о данном деянии Якова. Было приятно прикоснуться к части истории семьи таким вот необычным образом. После синагоги мы поехали вместе с Марком в центр города, оставили машину в гараже нашего отеля, и прогулялись по окрестностям. По ходу мы все вместе поужинали в неплохом итальянском ресторанчике. Вобщем, хорошо провели время.

В целом, как я уже писала, город мне понравился. Мне очень жалко, что мы не дошли до лежбища морских львов, которое находится на Fisherman’s Wharf (мы туда шли, но потом сменили направление) — ну ничего, в следующий раз обязательно посмотрим! Еще я бы хотела сходить в японский ресторан в Калифорнии (в этот раз в связи с беремнностью сырую рыбу я есть не могла). Еще в следующий раз надо будет обязательно покататься на канатном трамвайчике.

Улетать было грустно, но любой отпуск когда-нибудь заканчивается. Калифорния как штат показалась мне очень неплохим местом для жизни, и я думаю что это был наш далеко не последний визит на западное побережье.

On Friday, April 30th, we started the final leg of our journey. However we had to make some adjustments to our plans because of the snow. To get to our planned destination of Lake Tahoe we had to cross Sierra Nevada mountain range. And since it was snowing heavily in the past days all roads including interstates had a tire chain requirement in effect, and we had none.

However the situation worked out to our advantage. I was worried that we scheduled to little time for San Francisco and Silicon Valley area, yet we had to so many places to see and so many people to meet. So we canceled our hotel at Stateline, Nevada and booked on at downtown Cupertino instead.

Sacramento

We left Yosemite and took course towards Sacramento. It was a bit of a hook, but we had important plans for Sacramento. As we mentioned earlier we found a part of our long lost family. A lot of them still live in California and one of my Dad’s second cousins, Clare, lives in Sacramento. Also we like to visit state capitals as we can and visiting capitol buildings, and that’s what we did.

We meet with Clare in the old historic part of the town for lunch and had a good time sharing family stories. It’s so weird that we all “started” from a far town in a Siberia (even though most of us have never been there), had such different paths and ended up meeting in this country.

Afterwards we took a short walk around the old town and have said our good-buys to Clare took off in the direction of capitol. The building itself was pretty impressive and looked no worse than the main one in DC. We were lucky enough to get a great state stamp of the format that we’ve seen at some other capitals. We also had a chance to go by their famous governor’s office, but the governor himself refused to come out and meet us. Oh, well.

Cupertino & Silicon Valley

After Sacramento our trip took us to Cupertino. The ride was pretty much uneventful and we got to our hotel rather quickly without spending much time in traffic. The hotel turned out to be very nice and cozy. The service was great and as requested we got rooms on the top floor. Cupertino itself was not what I expected. The town was very green (lots of trees) and seemed like a place I could totally live at.

We were meeting our friend from Tashkent here who we haven’t seen for almost 20 years. Now she lives in the area with her husband and 3 daughters. We decided to meet for dinner at a local Outback that was 1 exit away and is located right across from Apple’s campus. During dinner we tried to catchup, but 20 years is a long time. And after dinner I ran across the street to see something on the Apple’s campus, but it was too late and too dark.

The objective was the next day was simple. Get to San Francisco, while stopping at all the famous, at least to me, places that Silicon Valley has to offer. And that’s what we did. We started with Apple campus. Drove around Cupertino to make sure that indeed I could liver here, and yes, I still could.

On our way to Google’s campus in Mountain View we stopped by a computer museum where we actually saw the very first Apple computer built on a piece of particle board or something like that. There were a couple of mainframes there and some other things, but I expected more from it.

Google campus is more like Google town. It’s huge, with a lot of buildings. There are volleyball courts and there are bicycles laying all over the campus. Just pick one up and ride to where-ever you need to go. I could totally live here as well. There weren’t many people around, but I imagine on a work week day it’s packed.

And finally on our way to San Francisco we drove through Palo Alto, checking in into Facebook HQ and visiting Tesla Motors showroom and HQ. We also drove through the campus of Stanford University, but we didn’t really stop and walk around. Overall Silicon Valley is a large number of small towns that feels more like a single big city.

Если в Sequoia National Park мы останавливались прямо внутри парка, то в Yosemite цены кусались посерьёзнее, и мы остановились за пределами парка (правда, совсем недалеко от одного из вьездов) в месте под названием “Yosemite View Lodge”. Гостиница, вопреки нашим опасениям, оказалась очень приятной — прямо за окошком у бурлила горная река, на которую можно было любоваться выйдя на небольшую терассу присоединённую к номеру. Река была довольно шумной, но так как шум был равномерным и “естественным”, спать она никому не мешала. Еще в номере был газовый камин, но мы им практически не пользовались.

Приехали мы в гостиницу под проливным дождём местами сменяющимся градом. Конечно, для водопадов такая погода только плюс, но нам хотелось солнышка и тепла. Немного солнышка мы увидели на следующее утро, а вот с теплом был напряг практически всё время.

Yosemite — парк очень красивый, но одного визита туда лично мне хватит надолго (например, в Yellowstone я уже не против сьездить прямо сейчас). Насколько я понимаю, больше всего парк знаметнит водопадами и гранитными скалами, которые находятся в Йoсемитской долине — наиболее посещаемом месте парка.

Yosemite Falls, состоящий из верхней, средней и нижних частей, является — ни много ни мало — самым высоким водопадом Северной Америки, и от верхушки до основы насчитывает 739 метров. Среднюю часть водопада я лично не разглядела, а вот на верхнюю и нижние части мы полюбовались вдоволь. Мы видели еще пару больших водопадов (например, водопад под названием “Фата Невесты”) и огромное количество маленьких водопадиков. Думаю, летом воды в них поменьше, а некоторые вообще пересыхают.

Вообще гуляли мы по парку без машины довольно долго — часов 5. Думаю, если бы не холодина, то прогулка была бы продолжительнее. Мы пытались разглядеть гранитную скалу под названием Half Dome, но верхушка её всё время была прикрыта туманом.

К одной из точек парка — зеркальному озеру — мы добирались на автобусе, который отходит от visitor center. Что характерно, отражениe гор в этом озере я увидела только когда смотрела Данькины фотографии!

На следующий день по плану у нас была поездка на озеро Тахо, но мы решили её отменить всё из-за той же плохой погоды. Вместо этого мы раньше срока направились в сторону Сан-Франциско и провели ночь в одном из маленьких и таких уютных городков Силиконовой Долины.

Sequoia National Park встретил нас грудами снега по краям дороги, серым небом, величественно-спокойными вечнозелёными деревьями и холодным воздухом, которым несмотря на это было приятно дышать.

Позавтракав, мы отправились изучать гигантских жителей парка. Раньше я почему-то думала, что секвойи представляют собой листевенные, а не хвойные деревья. Так же новостью для меня было то, что растут они в горных местах, а не в каких-нибудь тропических лесах. Вообще секвойи являются самыми большими в мире деревьями по общему обьёму древесины. Они так же являются долгожителями древесного мира и могут существовать несколько тысяч лет.

В небольшом музее, который мы навестили в первую очередь для печатей и рекомендаций рэнджеров, было приведено нескоько интересных сравнений. Больше всего заполмнилось одно — секвоя под названием “Генерал Шерман” весит примено как 10 китов. Еще меня удивил тот факт, что лесные пожары полезны для секвой (думаю, в разумных пределах). Дело в том, что у них очень плотная древесина и толстая кора, и они, в отличие от их менее стойких соседей, обычно не погибают, а только слегка обгорают во время пожаров. Отсутствие конкуренции на ограниченные ресурсы на многие годы вперед с лихвой компенсирует ущерб, нанесённый гигантам огём.

Из-за неважной погоды и снега, некоторые места в парке были закрыты. Так же очень многие тропинки, по которым летом можно было бы прогуляться, не были расчисчены, и для их исследования требовались лыжи или специальные снегоступы. Тем не менее, мы посмотрели на главные достопримечательности парка — “Генерала Шермана”, “Генерала Гранта” и некоторые другие именованные особы.

Генерал Шерман, если я не ошибаюсь, является самым большим деревом в мире по обьёму древесины. Размеры его, несомненно, впечатляют. На одной из табличек приводилось стравнение, что 6-футовый человек (это как я) чувствует себя перед генералом примерно так, как мышь перед 6-футовым человеком. Что ж, не знаю мышью ли, но кем-то маленьким я себя точно почувствовала. Диаметр ствола генерала в самом толстом месте достигает 11 метров!

Интересно что шишки и соответсвенно семена сейквойи совсем небольшие. В музее я подержала баночку с огромым количеством семян (не помню уже сколько тысяч) — она была очень лёгкой, а содержимое своим видом навело на мысли об овсяных хлопьях. Громадная шишка на фотографии сверху на самом деле выросла на сосне Ламберта.

Возле одной из лесных тропинок лежал огромный, почерневший от времени спил секвойи. Я попробовала было посчитать годовые кольца, которые очень хорошо видны если подойти поближе, но очень быстро сбилась со счёта. Генералу Шерману, между прочим, где-то от 2,300 до 2,700 лет.

Кстати, в парке водится разная живность, в том числе медведи. Нам не удалось увидеть косолапых хозяев леса собственной персоной, зато в утро перед отьездом мы видели медвежьи следы прямо возле главного офиса гостиницы (по словам очевидцев, медведь там прогуливался предыдущим вечером). В этот раз нам повезло мельком увидеть койота, оленей (хотя этим нас уже давно не удивишь), и послушать трудолюбивых дятлов.

Когда мы уезжали из Секвойного леса, погода была очень нестабильной — то снег пойдёт, то дождик, то в туманище вьедем такой густой, что хоть ножом режь, а то и солнышкко выглянет ненадолго. Существовала большая вероятность снегопада в ночь перед отьездом — тогда нам пришлось бы задержаться в парке чуть дольше чем мы планировали, потому что после снегопадов некоторые дороги закрывают, а для остaльных нужны цепи. Нам повезло, и выехали мы вобщем-то без проблем (хотя иногда волновались о состоянии дороги). Вообще очень чувствовалось влияние высоты на погоду — чем нижем, тем лучше.

Memories are starting to fade and yet we still have a lot of writing to do, which brings me to the second part of our trip. The major difference for us was that while the first several days were spent in brutal summer sun the following days we have seen very little of it.

The road was taking us back west. We were also moving north and what is probably more significant — up. We made a trip from the lowest point of -200 feet below sea level to over 6500 feet above it. The temperature drop and the surrounding flora and fauna change was dramatic. From over 100 degrees in Death Valley to water freezing temperatures in the mountains. Sand and desert to magnificent forests.

We arrived to Sequoia National Park after the dark and we could only see the silhouettes of the trees. The last 20 miles of the road that was supposed to take us to our lodge was so narrow and had so many twists and turns that in most places we couldn’t go above 10 miles per hour. A sleepless coyote greeted us for a few seconds before disappearing into the dark of ageless mountains and trees. We were getting closer to the kingdom of ancient giants with which Christ himself seems young in comparison.

I for one heard of these trees long ago and couldn’t wait to see them in person. Then a sign appeared on the side of the road — Entering the Giant Forest. And we started seeing trees unlike the others — extremely thick trunks of reddish color lighted by the headlights of our car. Everyone was pointing each new one out that we would come upon and wowing, except for my poor mom who was starting to feel really sick from the twisting road.

Soon after we arrived to Wucsachi Lodge where we had a pair of rooms reserved for the next 2 nights. They screwed up and set us up in the different parts of the lodge, but there was nothing we could do at that point. We were all tired, freezing and I was feeling very sick from all the sneezing and a running nose that was plaguing me starting from a day before. We just went to sleep.

In the morning we put several layers of sweaters and jackets on and took on exploring this magic place. We were very happy to learn that pretty much all points of interest were actually withing 5 miles from our lodge and we wouldn’t have to do the crazy drive over and over again. In fact, we didn’t have to go down that route a single time, since there was another road leading out of the park that was much straighter and was leading north in the direction of Yosemite National Park, our next destination. But more on that later.

The sky was gray, the sun was nowhere to be seen and we were surrounded by mountains of snow that were way over 6 feet tall, judging by a convenient measuring device called Alena. But since most of the sun would be blocked out by the forest either way we were determined not to let it ruin our day nor our photography, for I brought my trusty friend, the tripod. And if you combine the tripod with multi-exposure shots you end up with pretty decent photographs.

We started our tour with a stop at a Giant Forest Museum. It didn’t have much inside, but we did learn a couple of interesting pieces of information. For example the biggest cones that could be found in the forest come from Sugar Pines, and Sequoias in turn have one of the smaller cones. Also if you put Sequoia on its side it can go from one end of the football field to the other and can weight as much as 10 whales. It also turns out that fires are good for them, since they kill off the competition and Sequoias can take much more than all the little trees around.

One such tree was only a few miles away and is named after a civil war general — General Sherman Tree. The thing with Sequoias is that you absolutely can not tell the scale of it from the photograph. That’s why I tried to place people in all my Sequoia pictures — so you, dear reader, could gain at least the slightest level of appreciation for these giants.

General Sherman Tree is not the tallest (“only” 275 feet) nor it is the oldest (estimated to be “only” 2,300 to 2,700 years old), but it is considered to be the the largest tree in the world — such measurement is done by the volume of its trunk. It’s 11 meters in diameter and its circumference is 31 meter. Yes, just read that again, stand back and try to imagine that.

Needless to say we were nothing short of amazed by these trees. And touching it it’s hard to imagine how many things happened in the history of mankind, while this tree was alive and growing. If only they could talk.

On the same day we drove down to Grant Grove and Kings Canyon National Parks. There were several overlooks on our way, but the day was so foggy that we couldn’t really see much. We did see General Grant tree and many other famous trees.

The scary part for us was the fact that they were predicting snow fall during the night. Usually that results in road closures or a requirement of having chains on your tires. If the roads get closed, we get stuck up there in the mountains with nowhere to go and our trip was on tight schedule. In the morning thought we got lucky — nothing stuck and there were spots of blue sky visible even. However right after breakfast it all started to change rapidly, so we decided to load into the car and pretty much haul ass. After all, Yosemite was awaiting.

За 3 дня до отлёта в отпуск я заболела (скорее всего заразилась на работе). К счастью, температура была совсем небольшая — 37 C максимум — но зато нос забился совершенно и чувствовала я себя в целом плохо. По мудрому совету Дани на работу я эти 3 дня не ходила, и к субботе чувствовала себя немного лучше. Прогноз погоды на неделю отпуска тоже был не очень радужный (холод, снег, дождь), поэтому вечером перед отлётом настроение было среднее.

Вылетали мы из JFK на самолете авиокомпании Jet Blue. Мы стали стараться покупать билеты именно из этого аэропорта, потому что добираться до него гораздо быстрее и удобнее чем до LaGuardia или Newark.

До Лос-Анджелеса мы долетели без преключений. С арендой машины была небольшая дилемма — автомобиля, который мы планировали взять, в компании на тот момент не оказалось, поэтому пришлось выбирать из того что было. Мы остановились на Chrysler 300 — более дешевой версии нашего с Даней железного друга. Машина досталась нам по хорошей цене и верно прослужила всю дорогу, хотя как только мы выехали за ворота Fox Car Rent компании, то поняли что машина попахивает мочой. Мне это на тот момент не мешало, ибо нюх отсутсвовал напрочь, но д. Боре и Дане было неприятно. Выход из положения они нашли следующий — на одной из заправок купили ароматизаторы для машины, которые забили неприятный запах. Через пару дней ароматизаторы перестали работать, но и запах мочи тоже пропал. На будущее мы решили, что перед тем как брать машину в аренду надо её не только хорошенько осмотреть, но еще и обнюхать.

В Лос-Анджелесе мы с Даней были впервые. Мои представления об этом городе не были особо лестными — смог, пробки, перенеселённость — и после нашего краткого визита они не изменились. Аллея Славы, по которой мы прошлись туда-сюда, показалась мне неинтересной, на улицах не было “гламурно” выглядящих людей, а для того, чтобы увидеть знак Hollywood, пришлось изрядно покружить по разным дорогам. Выезжали мы из города в пробке (правда, не такой плохой), и как-то хотелось скорее вырваться из мегаполиса на природу.

По пути к месту нашей первой остановки на ночь — небольшому городку под названием Yucca Valley — нам встретилось несколько “плантаций” ветряков. Выглядели они очень футуристично; завораживал взгляд тот факт, что многие из них крутились в разных направлениях. Про Yucca Valley особо рассказывать нечего — маленькое, чистенькое местечко, где приятно остановиться на ночь, но жить, пожалуй, скучновато.

В воскресенье мы отправились исследовать Joshua Tree National Park. Эти интересные деревья мы с Даней впервые увидели в 2003 году по дороге из Лас-Вегаса на Гранд Каньон (д. Боря как раз писал о них статью и попросил Даню сделать парочку фотографий). В Аризоне деревьев Джошуа нам встречалось совсем мало — там в основном мы видели юкки, являющиеся их более мелкими родственниками. В южной же части Калофорнии занятой пустыней Мохаве деревьев Джошуа много.

Своим названием Joshua Trees обязаны Мормонам, которым это дервья раскидистыми лапами напомнили библейского Иисуса (но не Христоса), вознявшего в молитве руки к небу. Еще любопытен факт, что у деревьев Джошуа нет годовых колец. Это затрудняет точное определение их возраста (вообще при благоприятных условиях они могут жить сотни лет). Корневая система этих деревье очень большая — наверное, это одно из необходимых условий выживания в пустыне.

Вообще “лесом” скопище Joshua Trees назвать для человека, выросшего в Беларуси, сложно. Деревья растут на довольно приличном расстоянии друг от друга, и в целом лес в пустыне заметно отличцается от леса в других климатических зонах. Когда мы гуляли по Joshua Tree парку, то невольно вспоминались кактусовые “леса” Аризоны. Кактусов, кстати, там тоже хватало, и некоторые из них даже цвели. Из животных мы там видели только ящериц, хотя я уверена что живности там гораздо больше (но, скорее всего, более активны они по ночам).

Нагулявшись по Joshua Tree парку мы поехали в Долину Смерти — самую низкую точку Северной Америки. По пути мы проехали через Mojave National Preserve, где Даня и д. Боря получили печати в спецпаспорта.

В Мёртвой Долине мы были поближе к вечеру. Первой остановкой для исследования местности и фотографий послужила Badwater Basin. Она расположена на 86 метров ниже уровня моря. Было жарко, но терпимо. Так как я очень боялась обезвоживания, то на прогулку вышла с литровой банкой воды, которую примерно за 1.5 часа всю и выпила.

Badwater представляет собой эдакий солевой бассейн — в некоторых местах стоят лужицы воды, но в основном землю покрывает слой слегка влажноватой соли, на первый взгляд очень похожей на снег. Я не удержалась и потрогав соль на текстуру, слизнула пару крупных белых кристалов, прилипших к пальцам. Что могу сказать — соль она и есть соль!

Мне очень понравилось что соль не лежала пластом как песок на пляже, а образовала своеобразные ромбовидные фигуры. Всё же не зря говорят, что природа стремится к порядку. После захода солнца температура заметно уменьшилась. Думаю, что если бы мы приехали на это место в полдень, то полтора часа мы бы не отгуляли.

Ночевали мы в воскресенье в гостинице расположенной на территории парка — Furnace Creek Ranch — месте довольно приятном, хоть и не самом дешевом (мы снимали одну комнату на 4-х). В понедельник мы заехали еще в пару интересных точек Долины Смерти — Devil’s Golf Course, Artist’s Drive and Palette, Golden Canyon.

Дьявольское поле было усыпано глыбами окаменевшей соли. Ходить по нему надо очень осторожно, ибо если упадёшь — мало не покажется. Солнышко, кстати, палило сильно, и мы стрались печься на нём интервалами не превышающими 10-15 минут. Даня и д. Боря прикупили себе прикольные солнцезащитные шляпы, которые пришлись как нельзя к месту.

Стоит заметить, что несмотря на жару мы видели довольно много цветов. Конечно, они не были такими пышними как в более влажных районах, но была в них своя особая застенчивая прелесть.

Палитра художника представляет собой разноцветные скалы. Очень красиво!

По золотому каньону мы прошлись совсем немного — и тропа там каменистая, и солнце кусалось. Не хотела бы я там оказаться без машины и воды!

После Долины Смерти мы отправились в Sequoia National Park. Путь был неблизким, а Даня как раз простыл за день до этого (скорее всего я его заразила). Мы останавливались в некоторых особо живописных местах, но вообще стрались нигде долго не задерживаться чтобы добраться до парка затемно.

Затемно, к сожалению, доехать не удалось, а последний кусок дороги приходился на горы и был таким извилистым (заняло час чтобы проехать 20 миль), что Даниной маме стало плохо. К счастью, на следующий день всем стало получше, и, одевшись потеплее, мы отправились исследовать новые терротории.

Where to begin? So many places, so many events, so many pictures. The vacation was great. Even thought we might have gotten a bit luckier with the weather it didn’t slow us down a single beat. In fact it probably made things more interesting. I guess I’ll start from the beginning.

We got to Los Angeles without any hick up, which is somewhat unusual. We got our car which ended up being the bare bones 300 and went in the direction of Beverly Hills and Hollywood. I never thought much of Los Angeles area and it kind of fell in line with my expectations. Big flat city which felt dirty, uncozy, overcrowded and didn’t seem to have any kind of character.

We took a short walk along the Walk of Fame, caught a glimpse of Hollywood sign, LA downtown skyscrapers and were ready to get out. But as I expected it wasn’t so easy. Every freeway, every turn we took we ended up getting stuck in traffic. It got really frustrating, and that’s coming from someone who makes a 70 mile commute to work each way several times a week in New York. But luckily for us “the worst” part of our vacation was behind us and a lot of amazing things were still to come.

Our first overnight stop was in a small town called Yucca Valley which lays near Joshua Tree National Park, the first park on our way. We spent the night in a nice, quite Best Western and in the morning were ready to go and explore the park. One thing to mention is that on our way there we drove through huge areas of land occupied by hundreds or maybe thousands of wind turbines. I’ve seen batches of them here and there, but never so many at one place. And all of them were hard at work, generating as much power as a small nuclear plant would.

Joshua tree looks-wise to me is something of a mix of a normal tree and a cactus, although that’s probably the most biologically incorrect definition. We saw some of them in our previous travels, but never in such quantity — the park had a real forest of these southern creatures. Besides the trees themselves the park had several nice overlooks and some interesting rock formations. I also managed to get my first sunburn right there and then. Luckily for me it wasn’t too bad and stopped hurting the day after.

Our next destination was Death Valley National Park, which incidentally turned out to be the hottest place of our trip. But there is nothing surprising about that — a lot of its land lies below the sea levels. This makes it the lowest place in the northern hemisphere and the second highest temperature ever was recorded here. It also is the driest place because of this, but a bit more on that later.

The road to Death Valley goes through Mojave National Preserve, where we made several short stops. It basically is just a large desert which has it’s own beautify, but not a lot of stuff to see.

One funny thing that we stumbled upon there goes something like this — imaging going through a lonely desert road with no cars and nothing around it. Desert and sand. And then in the middle of one of those sand fields you see a rest room. It’s one of the stereotypes you keep hearing about this country and it is true. It’s like when you hear about people taking a hike into the wild wild forest only to find a sink or something in the middle of it.

The thing that we had to be on constant lookout for was gas. Most areas around here are completely void of any signs of civilization (except for the random toilets) and when your tank starts running under a quarter full you will fill up anywhere. I generally avoid antique gas stations with mechanical pumps, but not here. One such gas station was located in a tiny town of Amboy along our route, which also seemed to be some kind of Mecca for bikers.

What I was hoping for was to get to Badwater Basin before the sunset. Badwater Basin is the actual place with the lowest elevation, elevation of 282 feet below the sea level, and is located in the southern part of Death Valley. And we did manage to get there just in time.

Usually during the summer this place is absolutely dry, filled with salt formed into different shapes by the sun. However on our hike through the salt fields you could still feel the presence of the water which was here not long ago. It felt more like walking on wet snow. And it looked like snow as well — white mass with visible crystals that looked like snow flakes. Sunset was the best time to take a hike at such a place. Not only it presented gorgeous views, but the temperature was also bearable. The next day the heat was at 100 degrees Fahrenheit and we just wouldn’t survive here for as long as we hiked for.

After the sunset we drove to our lodge in a town with a friendly name of Furnace Creek which is located about 20 miles north of Badwater. Furnace Creek Ranch turned out to be a nice, cozy place and reminded all of us our stay at Bryce Canyon. A bunch of one story cabins, several eateries and a lot of tired travelers.

The next morning we started with a breakfast and an acquisition of a pair of nice outdoor hats for my dad and myself. I wanted one for a long time to cover the face and the neck in the outdoor sun, but never could find something that felt comfortable and didn’t make me look like a complete idiot. I’m actually happy with the purchase, although I’m not sure when I’ll get a chance to use it the next time.

We had several destination in Death Valley mapped out before we had to leave. First one was a place called Devil’s Gold Course — another friendly name. But it actually looked amazing. Hard to believe the work of nature. The earth was ravaged by heat for as long as the eye could see and then there are huge mountain peaks reaching all the way up to 11,000 feet on the edge of it.

And then a short detour on a course called Artist’s Drive. The hills and mountains there are made up of so many colors that it in fact does look like an artist’s palette. A couple of stops near sand dunes, a drive through a point called Stovepipe Wells and we were on our way to our next destination — Sequoia National Park, but more about that later.

We have booked¹ yet another one of our mega-road-trips. This one is going to be our first official² visit to California. California is where we’ll spend 90% of our time and about 10% we’re going to spend in a neighboring Nevada. We spent several days looking for the best route, picking out the hotels and lodges and reserving³ everything.

On early morning of Saturday, April 24th, we fly⁴ out from JFK to Los Angeles. We rent⁵ a car at the airport and proceed to check out the city and its neighborhoods. Then we drive out east in the direction of Joshua Tree National Park and spend our first night⁶ in a hotel located in an adjacent town of Yucca Vallley. Continue Reading

Here’s our trip video compilation. These short clips were taken with the use of iPhone 3GS and I’m very glad we were able to do it. Some of these things just can’t be captured fully enough with photos alone.

Be sure to click the “HQ” button to see it in high quality. There are also captions in English included. If they don’t come on automatically do turn them on.

В четверг (23 июля) мы отправились из Grand Teton национального парка в Колорадо. Путь был долгим и все утомились — особенно Эльдар, который был за рулём. По дороге мы сделали пару остановок чтобы запечатлеть красоты парка на прощание, а так же чтобы позавтракать и заправить машину.

Ужинали мы дома у гостеприимных родителей Эльдара. Мы сидели в очень уютной беседке, которую они сами построили совсем недавно на участке земли, прилегающей к дому, ели вкуснющие бараньи рёбрышки, приготовленные д. Гусейном на гриле, пили вино и просто дышали свежим воздухом. Было правда очень хорошо — мы с Данькой уже как минимум пару лет мечтаем о том времени, когда мы переедем куда-нибудь из шумного, многолюдного Нью-Йорка, будем жить в своём доме, а по выходным будем кататься на велосипедах.

В пятницу мы втроём поехали в Rocky Mountain National Park, где Данька получил очередную печать. Мы так же сьездили посмотреть на медвежье озеро, которое мы уже посещали пару лет назад, когда гостили у Эльдара. У нас ушло минут 30 на то, чтобы обойти озерцо по периметру (с остановками). Мы несколько раз натыкались на бурундучков, которых очень много в тех краях.

В пятницу вечером мы снова собрались дома у д. Гусейна и т. Нели чтобы отпраздновать день рождения Эльдара. Опять очень уютно и по-домашнему прошел вечер. Опять я размечаталась о собственном доме (хотя, несомненно, с домом намного больше хлопот, чем с квартирой). Единственным не очень приятным моментом были комары. Я была в платье, и мои ноги искусали просто ужасно. Я даже не осознала этого до следующего дня, когда многочисленные укусы начали жутко чесаться.

В субботу мы долго спали (в квартире Эльдара, который, кстати, уступил нам свою кровать, за что ему большое спасибо), потом сходили в кино, где посмотрели частично Brüno и полностью The Hangover. По поводу фильмов хочу сказать, что Brüno мне понравился больше, и что Sacha Baron Cohen однозначно слегка сумасшедший.

Субботний вечер завершился настольной игрой, в которой мы строили железные дороги, и ужином в той самой уютной беседке. Уезжать было очень грустно — по многим причинам.

Напоследок могу только сказать, что за последние годы нам с Даней очень везло как с выбранными маршрутами, так и с компанией (будь это его родители или наши друзья). Отдыхать хорошо — а хорошо отдыхать еще лучше!!!

Second part of our road trip was dedicated to exploring Grand Teton National Park which is located directly south of Yellowstone. We left out most of Wednesday (excluding the small drive to reach it in the morning) and an early part of Thursday for this task.

We started the day off by eating a breakfast at Grand Village and driving south to our next lodge — Flagg Ranch Resort, picking up 2 last Yellowstone stamps on our way. Check-in was quick, but we were quite shocked when we got to our cabin. It was completely infested with mosquitoes. About 40 of them at least. We tried killing them off, but they would just not end, and they kept biting us in the process. Alena especially.

I was really angered by this, so I called the front desk. I was informed of the fact that they can not spray mosquitoes because they are located inside the national park and that I can have my money back. Luckily after that they connected me with a manager, who switched out our cabin. Quite honestly we expected to see the same thing, but the other room was good. I guess somebody left the door open in the other one, hence the problem. Either way I would think twice before staying there again.

However for all the time that we wasted there we were handily rewarded. We got into the car and drove off in the direction of Jackson Lake. Right when we got onto the main road I noticed that there was a traffic behind us. I don’t remember any construction being there, when we passed that piece of road an hour ago, I thought to myself, and then it clicked. “Turn around!” Eldar made a U-turn and we started looking.

People were cautious. Everyone was taking pictures, but nobody was getting out of the car. And they had a good reason not to! There was a grizzly bear right by the side of the road! We couldn’t believe our bear luck. We took another a million photos yet again, and made several video clips. He was not 2 meters away from us. This encounter made it all worth it. And if it wouldn’t be for the problems at the lodge we would’ve left long time before that and would’ve missed everything.

After that we made a bunch of stops at all visitor center collecting the stamps, and took some photos of the mountains from the outlooks alongside the road. Our next point of interest was Jenny Lake, where we were planning to take a 2 mile hike around the lake and another half a mile to Hidden Falls. There is a ferry running for those who want to avoid this 2 mile hike, but we enjoyed it a lot. We did take the ferry back.

Now for all the falls we’ve seen inside Yellowstone this one impressed us much more. It wasn’t the fact that it was bigger or wider, but we were standing right at the bottom of the follows starring right at them. The others we saw from quite a big distance and it was OK, but this was certainly impressive. A big river crashing down from the top of the mountain right at your foot. Well worth the trip. The only annoying thing were swarms of blood thirsty mosquitoes all over the place.

At this point we drove back up, ate a nice dinner at Flagg Ranch restaurant and turned in for the night, for tomorrow we had a long drive ahead of us, back to Colorado.

Thursday morning we made another pass through some outlooks to take shots of the mountains while they were lighted by morning sun from the east. We also stopped by Jackson Lake Lodge and I imagine it would be a hell of a place to stay at. The views from there were magnificent as well.

Soon after we left the great parks of Wyoming and set out on our way. We took a slightly different route back and the views where great for the most part of the drive. On the way there we were driving mostly through huge plains and here we were surrounded by ever changing mountains. I don’t remember anything more about the drive back, but the fact that we placed through a “town” called Muddy Gap. Must be a nice place to live at.