Sunday, June 04, 2006, 18:13

We’re about thru the first half of the Great Wild Tame West Trip. On the way from Oregon to San Francisco, we are crossing Nothern California, will pass through Sacramento soon.
Navjit and I started the trip in Los Angeles, on may 20. We stayed at Lumi’s place. Lumi is a friend from college, she was a great host and she and Sean made a great start for our trip.. we had a private tour of the Universal studios, tickets to the premiere and after-party of “the break-up” – lots of fun. We experienced different faces of L.A. I liked Burbank a lot, nice houses with garden n stuff, but also just a few minutes away from business centre.. nice. After Malini arrived, we went to a Romania-Uruguay football(soccer) game, on the Memorial Coliseum. Was great fun to watch my national soccer team at that spot, with this bunch of people.. even though we lost L..
After this warm start and Sunnia’s arrival, we went on to Las Vegas, where we stayed for one night at the Aladdin resort, gambled a bit J, and then went on to the Grand Canyon. The Canyon is as impressive as expected, and it is true, you have to SEE it to appreciate it – pictures won’t do.. then up we went, with ever-changing spectacular landscape, thru Arizona and Utah, halt in Salt Lake City, beautiful mountain panorama + lake. Next morning (our time = noon..) onwards to Yellowstone. Snowy mountains, rain, no signal.. but bisons, deer, elk, the spectacular yellowstone canyon – nice.. onwards to Seattle through montana, idaho and washington, again beautiful landscape. Seattle – rainy, rainy.. chilled that day, saw the da vinci code movie, climbed the surprisingly tiny space needle. Olympic park – beautiful drive up to hurricane ridge, black bears and black tail deer spotted on the way, great panorama upstairs, as well as at Lake Crescent further west. Then drive down to grant pass, overnight, and now we are heading to san francisco to meet dean and then selin. On we go..

Wednesday, July 12, 2006, 02:38

Yeah… on we went.. but writing didn’t keep up. In retrospective… we met Selin and Dean, headed south on the West Coast, made our first (and fortunately only) drive-through to San Diego, stayed in San Diego for Sunnia’s birthday (she turned 21), then back to LA to drop Sunnia & Aamer, who went back to Atlanta :(, Neha joined us :), then up to Las Vegas, we gambled a bit more blackjack, of course we lost, stayed at the Stratoshpere hotel with its crazy stuff at the top, then for another day to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon, then back to Vegas, where Burcu joined :), we took off to Mammoth Lake next to Yosemite through Death Valley, the hottest place (literally!) in the US, and indeed it was, great scenery too.. Yosemite in a day was a bit too fast.. but waterfalls were nice.. the nicest places though were in my opinion the ones outside the park.. the frozen lake, snowy mountains.. coooold creek.. beautiful.. the last part got more chaotic.. we were all tired.. went to Monterey/Carmel on the coast.. and down the coast again, reached LA at night and flew back to Atlanta.. boy.. one month.. 8000 miles… 13000km.. I am still amazed.. the Wild Tamed Vast West is wonderful.. incredible scenery, changes all the time, you don’t get bored driving.. places with a lot of character people-wise too.. not to mention that it ticked some significant stuff off my “world tourism list”..

loved it.

Pictures ( with comments in romanian : ) are here.