Dialog - Seite 61

Not having made any plans for this day, we took the car and started driving from Fresnp towards the Sierra National Forest. We stopped at Millerton Lake and wanted to go for a hike there, and undertaking we abruptly ended after encountered a tarantulas on the hiking trail. We decided to drive towards more mountaineous regions and thought Mono hot springs sounded interesting (especially because we'd missed out on Mono Lake before). The road there turned out to be even more of an adventure than we had anticipated from the very thin line on the map. In the evening, we even found a Kaiser Pass Road Survival Guide on the internet!

Trying not to get caught by a snowstorm coming up over the west side of the Cathedral Range, we decided not to go see Mono Lake but instead to make it over Tioga Pass Road before it closed and into Yosemite NP. Once we had climbed to the top of Tioga Pass, we left ice-cold winds, fog and first snowflakes behind us and dove into a dark-blue-sky, sunny Yosemite, where we stayed for the rest of the day, stopping at all kinds of scenic locations.

On our way from Las Vegas to our stopover in Mammoth Lakes, we took the tour through Death Valley, turning west after Pahrump, passing Death Valley Junction, Furnace Creek, Scotty's castle and - after a short detour through Nevada - over the White mountains down to Big Pine and US-395.

At Grand Canyon West; and the Skywalk glass walkway more than 1'100 meters above the canyon floor - the first time you set your foot on the glass is really awkward and you just hope it will touch ground soon (which it does, of course) - after that, it is actually manageable to stand there and look straight down.

En route to the Grand Canyon, we crossed Hoover Dam from Nevada into Arizona (and thus from Pacific time into Mountain time zone).

"What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas!" - so goes a famous quote. On the flight towards the U.S. I had watched "The Hangover" - and it didn't get that wild for us:-) Las Vegas is absolutely stunning and it overwhelms you when you get there. You do get used to the glittering, blinking, advertising-everywhere-everything after a while thougn and it's absolutely worth a stay, even if you're not planning on gambling or getting drunk! We had a room for the weekend in the TI Hotel and Casino.

This was the longest of our road trips, leading us from Santa Maria through Santa Barbara county southeast through Malibu, crossing Greater Los Angeles Area (with almost 18'000'000 inhabitants one of the most populous regions in the U.S.), finally turning northeast on to I-15 heading to our day's destination, Las Vegas. This last part gave us a feeling for the wide open areas in the States.

We had planned for two overnights in Santa Maria, so we went out exploring the region, starting with the Guadalupe-Nipomo Dunes and spending a lazy afternoon at Avila beach (about 15 km northeast of more well-known Grover Beach).