Merry Christmas ...

As planned, we spent the holidays with C's family up in the Central Coast area. We showed up at his mom's place on the 22nd, in case she needed us for preparations or to run errands for her. We were the first guests to arrive this time, although C's sister arrived later that night with her kids and the dog ...

I spent the holidays here two years ago too, but this time was a little different, for many reasons - most of them sad. For my part, I didn't really feel in the mood. It's just so different here from what I'm used too. It's too warm here, too casual, not dark enough, not cozy enough. On the day of Christmas Eve, we went into town to fetch some prepared food C's mom had ordered, and nothing there made you think that the holidays were coming up. Although I guess there was probably a little less traffic than usual. Something that was reflected in the commercants' grumpy mood. We walked all around downtown to try to find gift tags and cards, but couldn't find anything seasonal. "Maybe you'll find them at Target", people said.

The American tradition says you're supposed to watch this movie each Christmas. (The Americans will know what I'm talking about.) Well, I tried really hard, but didn't make it through. I'll take A Wonderful Life anyday over it ... We then did a round on the ranch, delivering Danish chocolates to the neighbours and spent a while with them, having cranberry cocktails and chatting with C's childhood friends.

It was nice to have the kids around on Christmas Day. They were excited and fun to watch. The downer for me though was that everything is super casual here. C's brothers and sisters don't even dress up for the Christmas dinner. But, Americans don't get a lot of vacation days. So, I guess, when you're on holidays you're really gonna want to relax and hang out. And that's what we did. Alot!

I read a couple of novels and started the third one. Will maybe finish over the New Year break, who knows.

... when you're having fun

Days fly fast now. Since I finished school I've been killing time taking care of correspondance, e-mails, paperwork, going to campus everyday. It doesn't feel as if I've gotten a whole lot done, but time flies fast. Sunday night we had a Farewell dinner with Anu from C's lab at a Thai restaurant. She's so spirited and lively, I think she will be greatly missed. Tuesday we made another trip to Fashion Valley to finish the last Xmas purchases (or almost). Turns out that we still have some presents left to buy for C's nephews and nieces, as we haven't been able to find what he had in mind for them. As for me, I haven't been able to find what I had in mind for C either ...

I actually stayed at home on Monday, cleaning the house (that had been very neglected during the last few weeks) and Tuesday we did some heavy cleaning too, rented a carpet cleaner and shampooed all the carpets, (American homes tend to be carpeted, except for the kitchen and possibly the bathroom.) and washed the windows and blinders in and out. Now, we are not going to be spending Xmas at home, but anyway, it will be nice to come back to a sparkling clean house.

We offered ourselves a nice dinner at the Fishery as a reward for the good results of my coursework and the publication of C's article. When we came back from dinner we could hear the surf from our house. Pretty impressive, considering that we are whole eight blocks from the sea!

The Rootbeer Float Experience

We spent the weekend in Temecula hanging out with P (C's sister) & R. Most of the time we did nothing, that is we just hang out. Made a short trip to the mall on Saturday afternoon, then went out for dinner in a Mexican family restaurant - according to R the most authentic mexican eatery in Temecula - and had their fabulous Seven Seas Soup.

Today, I managed to drag them out to the Old Town of Temecula. I've never visited that neighbourhood before and it was kinda fun. It's crammed with interesting, quaint, little shops, chocolate stores, candle stores, food stores, art galleries and antique stores. We toured up and down the main street until all the funky, antique stuff got a little old ...

Ended the tour with an authentic rootbeer float at an old rootbeer brewery. Wow, that is such a weird drink, or treat, or what shall I say, but somehow pleasantly strange and surprising. Now, we have vanilla ice-cream in the freezer at home already, and I am thinking I will conjure C up to getting a couple bottles of that root-beer to make a cocktail at home ...

One more of those authentic all american essentials I can mark on my checklist now ...

A day of satisfaction

I finished the quarter with straight As finally. Found out today, as I was doing my registrations, that my grades had been registered. So, as much as I feared that Computer Architecture class, I did manage to get a high score on the final exam. Well, I guess I should have known, that I would probably perform much better on three hour finals than I did on the numerous 10 min quizzes we had through the quarter.

Anyway, it was a lot of work, it sure was. Now, maybe I will feel more confident next time. I've been whining about how hard these classes were all winter, how smart my fellow class mates were, and how it just had to be a mistake that they had actually let me in. But maybe it wasn't a mistake after all, not if I managed to get the highest scores on all my exams. It's still gonna be a struggle though. I'll pass up to the graduate level now and have assignments that require more research work and will bring along new frustrations ...

C had a great day too. His paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science came out, and it was highlighted as a special feature and cited in Science Daily and a University news release .

To celebrate the end of exams and the end of worrying about grades and requirements, I went out with a girl from my class tonight, for a drink and a movie. We saw Brokeback Mountain.

Searching for the holiday feeling

Nothing here reminds me much of Christmas. But we did put up white lights in our garden that we admired while we drank mulled cider. I finished wrapping up the Christmas presents that I was sending back home, and took them to the post office. There is still something missing though, not quite sure what it is ... Snow, gingerbread, pine trees, ligths?
Luckily still, a number of San Diegans have put a giant blown up snowman in their gardens or on top of their roofs. It takes a little getting used to for me, but who knows, maybe this is what will do it for me this year ...

Jingle Bells

Christmas shopping is coming along. We went down to Horton Plaza after work yesterday and got some more gifts out of the way. I have to ship all the gifts in time, so I better get going. Since we were at Horton Plaza, we did a movie as well: The Constant Gardener, a John le Carré thriller where poor Ralph Fiennes in the role of a gentle British diplomat ends up at the center of a major corporation conspiracy ...

A as in A+?

Yay hooray, I got an A in Operating Systems. Went to my professor's office to check out the final and he told me I got an A. So, my efforts payed off. At least my grades have been constantly going up since the beginning of the quarter. My last homework was the best, my last project got a full score plus extra credit and I scored more than ten points better on the final than the midterm. The prof actually claimed I had the highest score.

On the other hand, I had to tell my professor that this class completely ruined my first Thanksgiving in America, just so that he was aware of the suffering involved. But wow, I never thought I was the kind of gal that would ace in operating systems. I hate operating systems. Don't I ... ?

Party Time?

There was a lab party for C's group yesterday. Big house in La Jolla, greek food from a caterer, chocolates, lots of people (some of whom I've actually learned to know, by now), piano banging, and at the end: C's boss playing the guitar to the awful singing of the lab members.

I am finally beginning to relax enough to be able to talk to people. I, like, know I should be relaxed because my finals are over, but I am probably still a little anxious about the outcome. It's quite critical that I get fairly good grades in my course prerequisites, so that I can move on to the graduate versions of the classes.

So, I am eagerly waiting for the results. Got one actually last week already, or the day after the final. Nailed that one with an A+, one of the top 3 grades in the class, but this was by far the most accessible of the classes I was taking this quarter, so it doesn't really reassure me, as far as the other classes go ...

Shopping and Surfing

Sort of beginning to realize that I'm sort of on vacation now. The plan was to finish work early on Friday, go do some shopping and then movie and dinner. When it came to it though, we didn't have the heart to do it. It just didn't seem right to leave campus before dark somehow!

On Saturday however, we woke up with the best of intentions. We need to do Christmas shopping and so many other things, and there is just no excuse not to anymore.

So, first of all we went to Charlie's Best Bread to have a little breakfast and coffee. Then, off to Fashion Valley for Xmas shopping. We spent the whole day there, nothing less. Filled the car with shopping bags. Then squeezed in a movie.

Yesterday we decided it was time for some outdoor activity and took to the beach. Me to try on my fabulous new wetsuit. C to check if he could actually put me on a surfboard. The sea was a little rough for my taste but the tide was out and there was some safe learning space out there, not too deep. Once I got over my fear of the whitewater, I made a dozen rides on the board. Lying down of course, not standing. And swallowing a lot of sea water in the process. But it was all good. And fun. I did feel tired though, afterwards.

We went grocery shopping then and bought ourselves a cute little rosemary Christmas tree. Then went and rented a DVD for the night, March of the Penguins. Check it out!

Finals finally finished

I hope this was my toughest quarter, because it was really hard. I have basically done nothing but study for the last two months. I have spent every night and every weekend working on homeworks, programming assignments, group projects, reading and preparing for quizzes. I had completely forgotten that school implied so much work! I've been out of school for a very long time, and my brain has adapted to a very different rythm from the one students are used to. (Plus, I must say, that students here are *really* smart!)

So, I've spent the whole quarter trying to get into gear. Developing efficiency, learning to prioritize when getting everything done is not possible, gathering speed when reading course material and taking tests. The first quiz I took was over before I started writing the first problem. I got a 1 out of 10 on that one. But the beginning of the quarter seems like another life already. And I have learned tons since then.

I now know how a computer works, how a processor is designed, know how to put together an arithmetic logic unit out of logical circuits, can write binary code, assembly language and translate from one to the other, and know how to evaluate the performance of a CPU. I know what the operating system does and how, understand the functions of the kernel, know how to handle processes and threads, do priority scheduling and ensure synchronization for multiprogramming with locks, semaphores and condition variables, implement memory management, sharing, paging and virtual memory, understand file systems, disks, protection mechanisms and security policies. I now have a basic idea of programming languages paradigms, the pros and cons of functional, imperative, object oriented and logic programming, I know how to program in C, C++, Python and SML, and I (finally) know how to write an interface in Java, how to implement it and how to extend and inherit from classes. And aside from all this, I now know my way around Linux, how to use emacs and makefiles and how to use CVS in UNIX.

So, I have definitely added to my knowledge, and I am sure these concepts will be very helpful during the rest of my studies. I just wish that learning all this hadn't been such a painful, debilitating experience. But, it's over now (for the moment). I passed my last final yesterday. Now I will have winter break for a month.

First Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving is probably *the* major holiday of Americans. I hadn't realized that, but at the beginning of the week already, campus started to feel less crowded than usual. People were flying home, to wherever that was. On Wednesday, only a handful of people showed up for class. We woke up really early on Thursday however, to do the drive up to C's mom. We got a good headstart and thus didn't run into any bad traffic on the way. Made it in just within five hours, with a little stop at a fruit stand for a snack. All of C's siblings were there for Thanksgiving this year. That's a lot of people!

It was mostly uneventful. We had lots of good food, of course. I was not feeling very sociable though, frankly I was too absorbed by the upcoming finals. I spent all Friday for instance reading Silberschatz's Operating System Concepts. I was almost glad when we took off today, so that I could continue to work on our Nachos project 3 and the Python programming assignment and prepare for the quiz on decorators and write up the homework about network file systems for operating systems. I don't think I will be really able to relax until this quarter is completely over ...

Three hundred and sixty five days

In the midst of my midterms, we took the time to halt for a moment and celebrate our first anniversary. C arranged for us to spend the day and the night at the historic l'Auberge Del Mar. I had an exam in Operating Systems during the morning. As I walked out of the exam, around noon, we prepared ourselves to leave campus and C drove us to a secret (to me, at least) destination, which turned out be the neighbouring beach town of Del Mar. We had a room waiting for us at this old, atmospheric spa/resort and spent the whole afternoon doing nothing together. Had champaign, rested, went for a sushi snack on the terrace across the street, walked on the beach. We had reservations for dinner at J.Taylor's restaurant and it was succulent: We had Carlsbad & Blue Point Oysters, Cured Hamachi with organic greens, rack of Colorado Lamb with spiced pepper jam and smoked tomato-rosemary glacé, Duck with figs and russian potato gratin and warm Chocolate Volcano cake ...

After dinner, we lay in the jacuzzi for an hour, what do you think ... It's off season, so we basically had the place for ourselves. The morning after, after a somptuous breakfast in our room we drove back to school and real life and all that. But, what a great break we got there!

Raccoons

Our first Nachos project in my Operating Systems class was due tonight, and we made it! We will see if it was right, but at least it seemed to be running. It spun off threads and waited on them to join, and created locks, semaphores and condition variables for use in critical sections, and did priority scheduling. We were done by nine, and C was waiting for me outside to walk me to the car. By the car, out on the parking, a whole family of racoons was sitting: Mom, Dad and two kids. They stared at us suspiciously. We had caught them at digging through tree bark and soil that had just been spread over the beds. We stopped and looked at them for a while, they were so pretty. Their eyes and their fur glowing in the moonlight. They looked so soft and cuddly, I could have wrapped myself up in them. They looked at us too. The young ones seemed a little startled and were trying to hide behind their mom, but when they spotted C pulling something out of his pocket they got all curious. They were probably hoping for us to have some food. Actually, they would hardly give us space to get into the car, once they realized we might be carrying something eatable ...

Drive-in Movies

I went to my first drive-in yesterday. We got home early, packed some cold lemon chicken and salad for a picnic, warm clothes and blanket, and took off to Santee to see the new Wallace and Gromit movie at the one out of two drive-in theaters of the San Diego area. We spread out in the bed of the truck to watch the movie. It was quite atmospheric. I could definitely do this again. And then, we will try to catch a double feature ...!

Done with the first class

Classes are hitting hard! I had four classes yesterday, the last one finishing at 8pm. That kept me busy. And we're not even into homework yet! Plus, the campus is enormous, so just walking back and forth from classes probably took up one and a half hour of my day. Luckily we had dinner ready when we finally got home at nine. Ate the leftovers of C's lemon/rosemary chicken from the night before.

The good results of the day are though that I managed to get one of my core classes of this year waived, by passing an informal exam with the class instructor. I'd love to take the class though, eventually, it's on one of my favorite subjects 'Algorithm Design', but it takes weight of the requirements I have this year, as it's a 4 unit 'homework loaded' course. I think I have enough with all these technical undergraduate courses that I'm taking extra.

Bowling

I did the 'all American thing' last night as I went for beer and bowling with C's lab members. What a stupid game! For starters I couldn't even hold the ball, or it would fall out of my hand before I made it to the alley or it would get stuck to my fingers as I meant to throw it. Half my throws ended in the gutter of course. It was a real embarrassment.

Things got a little better after a couple of beers, and as more people arrived and more girls entered the game. A little less self conscious in the second round, I did manage to throw a strike and got some decent scores, at least compared to my team mates. But things went downhill again in the third round. Don't know, but something just seemed to prevent me from taking this game seriously. I think I need to live here a couple more years first ...

Passing the Driver's Test

I had been dreading this day for a while. I got my first Driver's Licence some twenty years ago. (Yes, say and spell 20!) However, the state of California does not accept out of state licences and requires you to pass the test all over. I wasn't looking forward to studying the Traffic Code again to be able to quote that 'at 35 mph, it takes about 210 feet to bring a car to a complete stop' and that with a Class C licence one can 'drive a 3-axle vehicle if the Gross Vehicle Weight is less than 6,000 pounds' and 'tow a boat trailer provided the GCWR does not exceed 26,000 lbs. when the towing is for recreational purposes or repair, is not used in commerce or contract carrier operations, or in business, is not for hire, and doesn't require an oversize permit'.

However, when I finally took myself down to the Department of Motor Vehicles I fairly easily passed the written test on the traffic code. I then had to wait six weeks for an appointment to pass the driving test. C's been training me in parallel parking, especially as I'm still a little uncomfortable with the size of our pickup truck, being used to my cute little Corolla. So, I felt ready today when I went to my appointment. But maybe I was wrong! After the test I was appalled to find myself only 4 errors from not passing the test. I went from 'burning stop signs' (a whole four times I did not make a "complete" stop in front of the stop line before proceding a little further from where I could see the coming traffic) to 'speeding' (I drove a little open stretch with no sidewalks or pedestrians at 39 mph whereas it qualified still as residential area and the real speed limit was 35). I also made three right turns without looking over my shoulder. Bad, bad, bad.

I am a legal driver now, but well, I will have to be extra careful from now on. Actually, I have sort of turned into a backseat driver in the process, I see violations of the traffic code everywhere. And each time C drives me to or from work, I use the opportunity to fail him on a fictive 'driver's test' ...

Arizona to California and Route 66

It was hot when we woke up. We stuck our heads out of the tent and we saw airballoons. Six of those were flying in the skies above us, with appropriate hisses and sighs. Flying in airballoons is one of those typical Sedonian activities ...

Our agenda today was simple: Drive home. But we wanted to take some backroads instead of the freeway. The backroads however turned out to lead us into real back country. Following the old 66 route at parts, we went through mountain range after mountain range, by narrow winding roads. Had some pittoresque scenery and surprises, like the old miners town of Jerome, on several levels, carved into the mountain. We also passed charming Prescott.

As we crossed the Colorado river again, into California, the scenery changed. On the California side there was an endless checkerboard of farmers' fields that we had to zigzag through. In between, the weirdest little hillbillie communities ... Towards the Salton Sea, the land turned more desertic again, and in the no-mans-land just south of Anza Borrego (some secret military activities going on there, testing, bombing and what do you know ...), to our surprise we suddenly drove into sand dunes.

The last strip, through San Diego's East County was new to me too. Probably lots of camping/hiking possibilities there, for later ...

Then, finally, we were back home. Our flat was in order, our mail was waiting, and we were back into our daily rut. After a fantastic tour of the South West!

Quirky Sedona in Strange Arizona

It's time to head home now. My eyes are saturated from all the beautiful sites I've seen. We are leaving a day earlier than we planned, in order to make the return drive more bearable, by splitting it into two.

C made us this feasty breakfast this morning, with eggs and bacon and apple pancakes with syrup. On our way out of Grand Canyon we stopped at yet another viewpoint, Cape Royale. Staring into the canyon again, I was moderately impressed. Also, the visibility wasn't great. However, as it kept getting worse, we realized there was a forest fire on. The national forest service had provoked one, as part of their yearly renewing of the forest. And now we were standing there at the edge of the canyon trying to catch sight of the opposite rim on the south side (with difficulties). It sort of made me chuckle.

But it didn't make everybody laugh. I cyclist approached us to ask to get a ride in the back of our truck. He had set off this morning on a days biking trip through the woods to one of the rimpoints. Access to it had now been closed by forest guards, and the cyclist didn't sound too happy about that. A lady we crossed was even less happy: She informed us that she had come 3000 miles to visit the canyon for 2 days, and she was more than slightly inaccommodated by the forest guards decision to set the canyon on fire while she was visiting!

We gave the cyclist guy a lift down the road, so that he wouldn't have to sweat so much getting back to his site. We then drove out of the park, through the forest and past Jacob Lake again. As there is no straightforward crossing of Grand Canyon possible, we of course had to make a detour on the 89 bis to the East and go all the way down to Lees Ferry just below Glen Canyon Dam (Lake Powell), past the colourful Vermilion Cliffs. It was a very pleasant drive for me, as I so much enjoy the startling colours of the rugged Arizona landscape.

To make a long story short, the road took us through Williams, where we got some ice cream, to cool off, Flagstaff which looks lovely, with lots of things around to explore: Sunset Crater, Wupatki National Monument and ski slopes! Past Flagstaff we went through Oak Creek Canyon down to the hippie/new-age town of Sedona which prides itself with being the Most Beautiful Place in America. We were there just in time to stroll through the main street and take a look at crystal shops.

A lady C. kindly starting conversing with tried to sell us a bungalow with access to a nudist jacuzzi/spa and we just barely escaped from her. This time, all campsites in the vicinities were full, including the 4 sites in the cute little Oak Creek Canyon, so we ended up finding a spot in the national forest land just outside Sedona. It's not really a forest actually, just protected desert land with a few brushes here and there. We camped in a spot with stunning views to all directions, but only after C had scared the hell out of me talking about all the critters we could run across there.

We did come upon a tarantula on the road. That didn't exactly make me feel all that relaxed, but after making ourselves confortable in the bed of the truck, sipping red wine with salami, I began to feel alright about sleeping in the wild. Wasn't even seriously shaken by the howls of the coyotees in the vicinities as we heard them tear apart a rabbit they caught ... We enjoyed the full moon for a while and talked about the wild west before we crawled into our little tent for the last time this trip.

Quirky Sedona in Strange Arizona

It's time to head home now. My eyes are saturated from all the beautiful sites I've seen. We are leaving a day earlier than we planned, in order to make the return drive more bearable, by splitting it into two.

C made us this feasty breakfast this morning, with eggs and bacon and apple pancakes with syrup. On our way out of Grand Canyon we stopped at yet another viewpoint, Cape Royale. Staring into the canyon again, I was moderately impressed. Also, the visibility wasn't great. However, as it kept getting worse, we realized there was a forest fire on. The national forest service had provoked one, as part of their yearly renewing of the forest. And now we were standing there at the edge of the canyon trying to catch sight of the opposite rim on the south side (with difficulties). It sort of made me chuckle.

But it didn't make everybody laugh. I cyclist approached us to ask to get a ride in the back of our truck. He had set off this morning on a days biking trip through the woods to one of the rimpoints. Access to it had now been closed by forest guards, and the cyclist didn't sound too happy about that. A lady we crossed was even less happy: She informed us that she had come 3000 miles to visit the canyon for 2 days, and she was more than slightly inaccommodated by the forest guards decision to set the canyon on fire while she was visiting!

We gave the cyclist guy a lift down the road, so that he wouldn't have to sweat so much getting back to his site. We then drove out of the park, through the forest and past Jacob Lake again. As there is no straightforward crossing of Grand Canyon possible, we of course had to make a detour on the 89 bis to the East and go all the way down to Lees Ferry just below Glen Canyon Dam (Lake Powell), past the colourful Vermilion Cliffs. It was a very pleasant drive for me, as I so much enjoy the startling colours of the rugged Arizona landscape.

To make a long story short, the road took us through Williams, where we got some ice cream, to cool off, Flagstaff which looks lovely, with lots of things around to explore: Sunset Crater, Wupatki National Monument and ski slopes! Past Flagstaff we went through Oak Creek Canyon down to the hippie/new-age town of Sedona which prides itself with being the Most Beautiful Place in America. We were there just in time to stroll through the main street and take a look at crystal shops.

A lady C. kindly starting conversing with tried to sell us a bungalow with access to a nudist jacuzzi/spa and we just barely escaped from her. This time, all campsites in the vicinities were full, including the 4 sites in the cute little Oak Creek Canyon, so we ended up finding a spot in the national forest land just outside Sedona. It's not really a forest actually, just protected desert land with a few brushes here and there. We camped in a spot with stunning views to all directions, but only after C had scared the hell out of me talking about all the critters we could run across there.

We did come upon a tarantula on the road. That didn't exactly make me feel all that relaxed, but after making ourselves confortable in the bed of the truck, sipping red wine with salami, I began to feel alright about sleeping in the wild. Wasn't even seriously shaken by the howls of the coyotees in the vicinities as we heard them tear apart a rabbit they caught ... We enjoyed the full moon for a while and talked about the wild west before we crawled into our little tent for the last time this trip.

From Yosemite to Grand Canyon (with detours)

I was kind of upset to leave Bryce Canyon and Utah. Southern Utah is so beautiful that we will have to devote a whole big trip to just that area some time soon. And we were a little disappointed not to get the moonlight pictures of the arena like we wanted ...

We had covered a lot of terrain in only a couple of weeks. After our Labour Day visit to C´s family in Central California, we traveled from Yosemite Park all the way to Grand Canyon. From one of the oldest and most famous national parks in America to another. Yosemite was declared a national park in 1890 and gets 4 million visitors a year. Grand Canyon has had the status of national park since 1919, receives more than 5 million tourists each year, and is considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. Maybe it´s no wonder if after all this sightseeing I was beginning to feel a little "blazée".

We took a last peak at Bryce Canyon before we left the park and headed south to Arizona again. We passed a number of undescriptive little Utah townships, but in between them the nature was always awsome. Utah has an amazing concentration of national parks too: Zion, Bryce Canyon, the Arches, Canyonlands, Capitol Reef, Cedar Bricks. And the north rim of Grand Canyon is also straight out of Utah. We were gonna visit the North Rim, the quieter, less crowded side of the canyon.

The Grand Canyon is a dramatic 1500 m (5000 ft) deep, 446 km (277 mi) long, and its gorge is up to 29 km (18 mi) wide. Composed of diverse plateaus, towers and hills, it should definitely be one of the world's most stunning destinations. It has fascinating, ancient geological history and must leave anybody in awe. Somehow, however, when I first caught sight of it, it just didn't do all that much for me. My first thought was: "Okey, it´s really big!" But where to take my impressions from there wasn´t clear to me. In the context of all the things we had seen during the previous days, the canyon didn't appeal to me in the same way or give me the urge to stay, to come back or to fantasize on it. It was just there. It´s a crack. In the ground. And it's grand.

I don't know how we always do this, but coming down, we passed Jacob Lake thinking that we might have to spend the night there, outside the park, or camp in the wild in the national forest covering the north rim. We were told the campgrounds had been fully booked two months ahead in time. We thought we might tempt our luck all the same, and what do you know, there was one site available, due to a precipitated departure. We put down our tent and went to explore the rim.

As it happens, the campground was basically at the rim of the Grand Canyon. We followed the rim up to the viewpoint called Bright Angel Point. Walking back we stopped at the atmospheric Grand Canyon Lodge, which indeed offers stunning views of the canyon from its solarium. We hiked back through the pleasant forest. Temperatures were fresh. We did not feel compelled to explore any more and used the time before dinner to get a shower. There was a a campfire with campfire stories after dinner just a hundred yards from our campsite after dinner. Not that we felt like participating. I was ready to head home ...

The Magic and Moonlight of Bryce Canyon

We could easily have spent more time in Zion, but we wanted to make it to Bryce Canyon on this trip as well, so we took off in the morning. We've decided we are gonna come back here later anyway. We took the Zion-Mount Carmel highway through the tunnel that gets you out on the East side of the park. The higway offers some spectacular views of the mountains of the park, and it would probably be really interesting to take this route into the park.

Our next destination was Bryce Canyon National Park. It is only about 90 minutes drive from Zion. The whole countryside in this part of Southern Utah is very pretty, and it was not always clear to us whether we were indeed driving within one of the numerous national parks or not. When we arrived in Bryce Canyon (it's actually not a canyon, but more like an amphitheatre) we first picked a campground. We then took a shuttle to the furthest point of the canyon, Bryce Point.

One can walk the rim of the canyon from one end of the other. That makes about 5.5 miles (ca. 9 km) walk. One can also descend into the canyon and walk in the wonderland af hoodoos. A "hoodoo" is a pinnacle or spire-shaped rock left standing by the forces of erosion. They form when ice and rainwater wear away the weak limestone. They take all sorts of form in Bryce Canyon. And they seem to take all sorts of colours too, or hues of red, orange, yellow and white, between sunrise and sunset.

We walked along the rim from Bryce Point to Sunset Point. It took us a good part of the day. We ate our lunch pack across from Inspiration Point and shot a million pictures as new angles appeared with every step. When we came to Sunset Point, the sun was beginning to lower and the rocks were changing to a glowing colour. We decided to venture down into the canyon before it would get dark. We took a trail that lead us to the bottom of the Navajo Loop, then from there the Queen's Garden Trail up to Sunrise Point.


The place where we descended is called Wall Street, and it zig-zags down the red face of the canyon through switch backs. I got the impression I was in some primitive arabic kingdom, so otherwordly was the atmosphere. We descended between the narrow walls of enormous hoodoos and in places passed through holes in the rocks. The scale of the whole thing now came apparent to me. We tracked through all this relatively fast because shadows were catching up with us. We finally came up of the canyon again at Sunrise Point. That part was not as steep as the descent down Wall Street, but somewhat a climb still.

From Sunrise Point we walked back to Sunset Point, to complete the trail along the rim. We were just in time to admire sunset. Our campground was just across from Sunset Point, so we walked backed to the campground, prepared a cozy little dinner, then picked up our headlamps and returned to the canyon in the dark to see the full moon cast its light on it. We would gladly have captured it on photo had we been able to figure out the right settings for our new camera ...

The Colours of Zion

The campground here is almost as packed as in Yosemite. They also get close to the same amount of visitors per year, or around 3 millions. There are 2 campgrounds for the park, but both are just at the entrance of the main canyon. Inside the park itself then there is only shuttle service and no private traffic aside for a short strip that then sides off into a tunnel that takes you out of the park on the east side. We would take that road to go to Bryce Canyon once we left this place.

We spent the day hiking in various parts of the canyon, then walking along it or riding the shuttle to get to the different parts. We hadn't really walked much now for a couple of days, so the exercise was welcome. We first rode to the Court of the Patriarchs from where there was a good view of the three peaks called so. We then cut to the other side of the canyon and hiked along it in the hillsides up to the trail of Emerald Pools.

We had a little luncheon there while we thought up a hiking plan. Some of the trails had been cut off due to rock and mud slides in the spring. We decided to take the trail up to the Lower and then the Middle Emerald Pool. It was a steep hike, but no really strenuous aside from the fact that the sun was hitting hard. Some of the drops were a little scary though. But the trails generally good, if you just played it safe.

From Emerald Pools we continued alongside the canyon up in the heights, then descended to a foot bridge to cross the river at The Grotto. From there we walked mostly along the river. The park is packed with creatures, and aside from the splendid grasshopper I caught in photo, we also saw a number of wild turkeys and I very briefly caught view of a mountain goat as it stormed through the bushes right in front of my eyes, startled by the strange sounds C was making at it.

At Weeping Rock it looked as if we had come to the bottom of the canyon. In fact, the canyon made a swift turn there. We gathered ourselves a bit. We had been walking for some six hours and both of us were starting to get a little weary. So, we jumped on the shuttle bus until the next stop at Angels Landing. The canyon walls there were quite overwhelming. Not to C though, and I saw sparkles in his eyes as he probably made plans of climbing all of this. We actually spotted a team of climbers close to the top of The Organ.

I had to get C out of there before he would begin expanding on some crazy ideas! We took the shuttle further, and this time all the way to the bottom of the canyon, from where we walked the Riverside Walk to the Narrows . The bottom of the Narrows is where the canyon gets ... narrow! One can walk up the Virgin River from there, with the side effect of getting really wet, crossing, wading and swimming through the river in parts of the canyon. One can also hike down the river from the other side, a 16 miles hike that takes 10 to 14 hours.

But that was not going to be for now. Although one could say that we had already "walked the shit out of" Zion Park by now! We had been walking all day. And now we took the shuttle back again, to walk only the last part back. A good day of walking!

California - Nevada - Arizona - Utah

We woke up early this morning. We had a long drive ahead of us, because we were traveling all the way to Utah now. That's a long way! We had stocked up on food and made sandwiches for the road and were ready to go. Back on the 395 we drove down Owens Valley, past that bizarre, pink, dried up Owens Lake. (Since the 40s, its water sources have been funnelled to provide Los Angeles with water. There's still an ongoing debate about it ...)

We were going to cut through Death Valley on our way to Utah. From Owens Lake, we thus started climbing towards the Inyo Mountains. The landscapes changed pretty soon. We did a little stop at a red lava canyon that reminded me of home. A Bonnie-and-Clyde looking couple that had pulled up their car there made me a little eerie. From their appearance I could have believed they had just finished dumping a body when we drove in.

Death Valley contains some of the hottest, lowest and driest locations on earth. In fact, the second hottest temperature ever recorded in the world was 134 °F (56.7 °C) in Death Valley, in 1913. Death Valley also contains the lowest point in the western hemisphere, at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level near Badwater. This was a good day to try the air conditioning system in the car.

We hadn't planned to make a halt anywhere on the way, but just before Stovepipe Wells we pulled our car up and went for a little walk in Mosaic Canyon, a canyon with some narrow polished walls made of marble and limestone mixed with colorful mosaic patches of agglomerated fragments. It pretty soon became pretty unbearable except in the shade. Still, this was not a particularily hot autumn day. Just past Stovepipe Wells we drove past the sand dunes, then through the oasis of Furnace Creek (the site of some luxury hotels) and before Badwater we started climbing up from the valley again.

Just above Badwater there is a fantastic viewpoint to admire the badlands. It was crowded with French tourists though, three busloads. Kind of strange to come upon so many people all of a sudden in the "desert". For pictures from Zabriskie point, click here. We will have to make another visit to Death Valley to properly get to know it. We definitely will.

As we came out of Death Valley we were only short ways from the Nevada border. We had originally planned to spend a couple of nights in Las Vegas or in the vicinity to see Red Rocks, but we were not gonna have the time to do that so we would just drive through. Otherwise, we had now business in Nevada, and as we entered Nevada it pretty soon became clear to me why. Very soon we were just driving through the ugliest piece of country that I had ever seen since I entered the United States.

I am sorry, but I just couldn't find anything good to say about the land we drove through. Just to give you an idea, one of the towns we drove past was named Phrump! The highway took us basically right through Vegas, where we were stuck in heavy traffic for a couple of hours. Not the most pleasant part of our drive, certainly! As we approached Arizona, things started getting a little better though. We cut actually through the North-Western corner of Arizona's pretty, red desert lands.

Then we entered Utah, drove past the booming town of Saint George with its impressive backdrops, and finally came to our destination of Zion National Park, and guess what, got one of the three remaining camping spots at the park´s campground, just before they ran out of space. The setting was fantastic, red peaks all around us, as we were basically at the entrance of the canyon that the national park covers. So, we got a little taste of the landscapes awaiting us before the sun went down on us ...

Tempting to climb Alabama Hills

We woke up early, determined to do some climbing. I was quite annoyed by my mediocre performance the previous day at Mammoth Lakes. But despite how short it was, my feet were still swollen around the ankles. I guess it could have been repercussions still since the walk we did around Saddlebag Lake. But I felt as if I was turning into an invalid ...

We took a little drive first up towards Mount Whitney, or as far as the road takes you up Whitney Portal. There is a cozy campsite up there, alongside the canyon, with a little stream running through. The views from there were not as good as from our campsite though. As we came back down we took a tour of the alternative campground, the free one at Turtle Creek campground. It was pretty primitive, looked alternative indeed. They must get some good characters there ...

The rock formations in Alabama Hills are amazing. I am sure one could climb there for months on new routes. For some reason they haven't gained the popularity of places like Joshua Tree, although Alabama Hills is at least as pretty if not more. Well, maybe it's more out of the way. But, luckily for us, there was nobody in sight. The campsite had been quiet too. Now that we were out there, there was nobody else. A number of the rocks have bolts on them, anchors or topropes. C had kindly spotted out a place that had a couple of 5.6s and 5.7s. He fixed a toprope for me, and then, me eager to make up for the day before, I climbed the 5.6. It went quite well actually, once I got going. My ankles swelled up really bad while I climbed, especially my right foot which doubled in size, but I managed to make most of the moves relying on my left foot mostly.

I then climbed a couple of 5.7s and found them easier than the 5.6. I really liked this rock. It was a little flaky, but real sticky and lots of dishes in it and funny little nibs coming out of it. Every now and then I completely forgot to be scared of the heights and forgot about the pain in my toes and my ankles and my feet and my arms as I was hanging on to the rock and sort of just had fun climbing that wall. Here's a photo of the face. I know, it doesn't look like much, but if you look at this from this angle (it's the face in the shadow), you see that it's actually quite vertical ... There was one more route I was tempted to try, but when I began to study it it looked a little more technical than I had hoped, well, C did it, somewhat easily, but I didn't know how to tackle it, and it was a 5.8 anyway, so we moved on to another wall.

We went to check out The Fin, which is sort of a landmark in Alabama Hills. (It made the cover of the climbing book we had too.) It is pretty, and offers fantastic backdrops of Mount Whitney. C really wanted to try it, and there was one 5.7 route on it in case I wanted to try too, but I was too scared (it's so high and steep) and C was not comfortable doing the 5.9 bolts either, so, we want to look for yet another one. Found a neat one with several routes of increasing difficulty. I started on one, but very soon on the first crux gave up when I couldn't stand on the toes of my right foot anymore due to the inflammation in my ankle. I was sort of disappointed, because the climbing spot was very inviting, but at least I had done three routes and this is really only the second time I climb, so I was somewhat content.

C climbed two routes on it though, and he enjoyed them a lot. So, next time we come here, I will make sure to take advantage of this perfect training place. Anyway, it was a hot sunny day. We drove down to Lone Pine again, to get provisions for the long drive we had coming up. Treated ourselves to ice-cream, since we were there. The whole trip so far, C has been leading me on on a root beer float, one of those american cultural institutions I haven't exploited yet. I had kind of been hoping that we would find one of those in Lone Pine, but alas, they didn't seem to have an A & W, so that was a no-op.

I like Alabama Hills, maybe we should halt our trip right here ...

Freezing in the forest, soaking in the Sierras

When we woke up this morning the flyer of the tent was all icy and the ground was frozen. Luckily we had made the thermos bottles last night to keep us warm because they did. Anyway, it was still kind of cold and chilly as we got up. And we decided to treat ourselves to breakfast again, in the Reds Meadows resort which was only a couple of miles away. It is, by the way, also a pack station for mule trips, in case you were interested in that kind of traveling ... The pancakes this time were just as filling as those we had in Tioga Pass, although the Mulehouse Café wasn't quite as cozy and friendly. We ran into a guy fixing his backpack who said he'd hiked down there all the way from Yosemite. He had been walking for sixteen days.

When we got up of the valley the morning views were so nice that we thought that merited a stop at the Minaret viewpoint. The views were awsome. We spotted a forest fire across the valley. But C sees a forest fire each time he takes a view from a viewpoint ... at least in summer, during fire season. The first thing on the agenda now was to check out some climbing spots. We thus went through Mammoth again, then took a loop around the Mammoth Lakes that took us up to Horseshoe Lake.

Horseshoe Lake is another strange place, kind of eerie. There is a large area just off the lake where all the vegetation is just bare and dead. The reason for this is carbon dioxide poisoning, as it happens Mammoth Mountain is releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide out of its South flank, near Horseshoe Lake. (Mammoth mountain seems indeed to be an active volcano, and it had a minor eruption about 600 years ago.) The concentration of carbon dioxide in the ground three reaches over 50%. Thus camping is prohibited since 1995 and even picnics on the ground are disrecommended, to prevent asphyxiation. It is estimated that the total discharge of carbon dioxide gas at Horseshoe Lake range from 50-150 tons per day. About 170 acres (0.688 km²) of trees have died. The beach at the lake is still strangely beautiful, maybe exactly because of the contrast, the stark colors and the strikingly bare trees.

But all this was not the focus of our tour of Mammoth Lakes. Our mission was to find a climbing spot. It's crawling with good climbing spots in the Mammoth area, but we had spotted a place that seemed to have some good top ropes. It was just off the Horseshoe Lake in fact, about ten minutes walk. C put up a rope and I put on my shoes (the ones I got at R.E.I. not so long ago, and look: first time I tried them on a wall). The climb seemed very accessible and I got on it, got over the first hurdle but then just got completely stuck. I tried several things but nothing seemed to be working and I got somewhat annoyed.

The granite seemed in fact very different from the granite I had climbed in Joshua Tree last year. Even if the surface looked rugged, it was extremely slippery up close. My shoes were hurting my toes a lot. I probably got them too small when I bought them. What didn't help was that the air was still very cold. While in the sun it was bearable, but as soon as the sun left the wall my limbs and fingers started getting a little stiff. So, even if I otherwise like the wall and liked the setting, I eventually gave up on it. I belayed C then, as he tackled it (and it wasn't frankly easy for him either) and he went up, checked out another approach as well, but then sort of had had it too, with the cold.

So, we walked back, ate a little lunch, then took the direction of highway 395 again. It is a marvelous drive: the rugged Sierra granite mountains on one side and the colorful volcanic mountain ranges that enclose Death Valley on the other side. I think you call this whole area Owens Valley. Just after Bishop, we came to Keough's Hot Springs. There is a number of hot springs in the Eastern Sierras, so it seemed natural that we try to find a place to soak in, just like we do up home when we travel. In Keough's Hot Springs they have a pool with a hot pot. We had to check that out!

The bath and the showers were good after all the road dust. After the bath we continued our drive through Big Pine and Independence before we came to Lone Pine. Lone Pine is famous for its annual film festival that pictures westerns from the golden age of the '20s and the '30s, many of which were shot in the surroundings. Just up off Lone Pine is the Whitney Portal, from where hikers usually climb Mount Whitney (elev. 14,495 feet, or 4.419 m), called "the highest mountain in the contigueous 48 states".

Below Mount Whitney and the Sierras are Alabama Hills. Somewhat like the Joshua Tree park, Alabama Hills are a wonderland of golden granite boulders of odd formations. Maybe we would get some climbing done here! As it was getting late we scouted for a place to camp and ended up in the National Forest Services campground that lies sort of hidden in a lush, old riverbed, with splendid views of Mount Whitney, the plains of Owens Lake, the Sierras to the west, the Inyo Mountains to the east and between them Alabama Hills. Actually, this must be one of the most pittoresque campgrounds we have come upon. We trotted up to a hilltop with our aperitif to watch the sunset, and it was awsome.

(For some impressive full circle views of this area, take a look at
this site)