Föhr - New Years trip 2014/2015

Currently I'm on a New Years trip to Föhr, an island in the North Sea. I go there almost every year with a group of friends, it's quite fun and you never have to worry what to do on New Year's Eve. We took several long walks, had  lots of hot and cold drinks. Now it's already the end of our trip and we're going home tomorrow. Not sure if I'll go again next year because I'm dreaming of spending New Year's Eve 2015/16 in Sidney.

Boarding the ferry to Föhr.

The sun shines on the small islands in the North Sea.

In Wyk at the boardwalk.

Hot chocolate with rum, called "Tote Tante" (=dead aunt).

Beach walk

Beautiful sunshine on New Year's Eve.

Cool table at a burger place.

Trip to Nieblum. Lots of houses with satched roofs.

That one looks a bit like a Hobbit house.

Walk from Nieblum to Wyk, the view was amazing and the weather was perfect. Lots of wind but also very sunny.

I was always behind our group because I couldn't stop taking pictures. 

London's calling - September 2014

London's calling

tbc.

Oslo -> Hamburg, Day 28, Friday

tbc.

San Franciso -> Oakland -> Oslo, Days 26 and 27, Wednesday and Thursday

tbc.

San Francisco, Day 25, Tuesday

tbc.

Oakhurst -> Castle Air Museum/Atwater -> San Francisco, Day 24, Monday

tbc.

Oakhurst -> Yosemite National Park -> Oakhurst, Day 23, Sunday

tbc.

Camp Nelson -> Sequaia National Park with General Sherman Tree -> Fresno -> Oakhurst, Day 22, Saturday

tbc.

Pahrump -> Death Valley National Park -> Camp Nelson, Day 21, Friday

tbc.

Flagstaff -> Grand Canyon National Park -> Hoover Dam -> Las Vegas -> Pahrump, Day 20, Thursday

After a good nights sleep in a comfy bed we got up for breakfast and finally met our host Dave. He was a nice guy who mainly seemed to make a living from renting out rooms in his house via airbnb. Not such a bad life though I guess having strangers in my house all the time wouldn't be my kind of thing. He told us that he owned a hawk and even allowed Marco to hold it. Quite an exciting way to start the day!

We then had to leave because we had quite a lot on our agenda that day. First a quick stop at the Meteor Crater that was created about 50.000 years ago by a huge meteorite, than the Grand Canyon National Park, the Hoover Dam before we'd finally arrive in Pahrump where we had a reservation for the night. The Meteor Crater was another great experience, though not a cheap one, we had to pay 18$ each. Approximately 50.000 years ago a huge meteorite with an explosive force greater than twenty million tons of TNT struck the rocky plain. The result of that was the excavation of a giant bowl shaped cavity. In less than a few seconds, a crater was carved into the once flat rocky plain. During it's formation over 175 million tons of limestone and sandstone were abruptly thrown out to form a conitinous blanket of debris surrounding the crater for a distance of several kilometers. Large blocks of limestone, the size of small houses, were heaved onto the rim (okay, I admit it, I stole parts of the last sentences form the craters' website http://meteorcrater.com/ but couldn't have memorized it all otherwise). It's the best preserved meteor crater on earth and I'm glad that Marco insisted we should visit it even though we were a bit short of time that day.

We headed to the Grand Canyon National Park then. Originally we had planned a hike down to the Colorado River but unfortunately we didn't have enough time left for that. It's definitely something I'll do next time I visit the Grand Canyon! Though I'm pretty sure it'll be extremely exhausting. There were signs at the beginning of the trail that recommended an intake of 1000 calories per hour during the hike if I remeber it correctly! Instead of hiking we drove to several view points along the South Rim which offered great views indeed and made up a bit for the missed hike. We were lucky that day because the weather was fine, not too hot and also there wasn't any rain. A friend from twitter had warned me before that the call the Grand Canyon "the big hole" because during the so called Monson-season (which I didn't even know it existed in Arizona!) it kind of fills up with rain.

We had to leave the National Park way too early but we wanted to see the Hoover Dam before it got dark and we still had to cover a distance of several hundred kilometers to get there. The drive brought us back to Nevada and through spectacular mountains that looked amazing in the late afternoon sun. The Hoover Dam itself was gigantic and even driving towards it was an experience. We had to pass a security checkpoint before we were allowed to actually cross the dam but of course the have to be extemely careful there, any damage to the dam would have an enormous impact on the area. Getting out of the car we were almost blown away by the hot wind. I had never experienced something like that before, it was very windy but the wind didn't have any cooling effect. It rather felt like someone had directed an extremey hot hair dryer directly at me! We didn't have wifi there and therefore couldn't check the temperature but it must've been at least 40 degrees Celsius! The Hoover Dam is an impressive piece of architecture and also very beautiful with a huge lake surrounded by steep mountains. We were a bit scared by the massive overflow hole. If someone ever fell down there while the water was running, they'd drown pretty quickly.

The rest of our days' journey led us past Las Vegas and we both decided that despite the late hour it would be great to drive down the Strip again and so we did! It was distinctively more fun to experience it from a climatized car than walking down the pavement in the heat and we both weren't sorry that we didn't get out of the car. We enjoyed the many lights though and were even treated to an eruption of the vulcano at the Treasure Island Hotel and we saw the fountain again at the Bellagio.All in all a pretty succesful detour!

We were rather tired when we finally arrived in Pahrump and had to remove lots of small insects from our room before we were able to sleep there. It was not that it was dirty there, the room was actually very nice, but even when we only opened the door briefly just to get our luggage in, lots of bugs, moths, etc. took the chance to get in. I really don't like insects and while Marco wasn't bothered that much I tried to hunt them all down and mostly succeeded and then finally went to sleep.

Fotos will follow.

Torrey -> Capitol Reef National Park -> Hanksville -> Arches National Park -> Moab, Day 18, Tuesday

We slept a little longer today due to our late arrival last night and finally met our host Bob properly. He showed us around the house and explained to us the fossils he had collected in the mountains. He was a bit weird but very nice and friendly at the same time.

We continued our trip, unfortunately without properly seeing the Capitol Reef National Park. As our preferred destination was Arches National Park, we had to cut our visit to the other park short. We passed a smaller city called Hanksville where due to Bob there is a facility (NASA?) where scientists do experiments for a Mars landing. We didn't see any traces of it though.

We then got to the Arches National Park which is a great location, my favorite National Park so far. We drove to several view points where we took shorter hikes. The first trail led us through a smaller canyon where we had an amazing view of the red rocks. It was unbelievably hot again though so after that I felt a bit like collapsing from the heat again and needed a break in the car and a lot of water. Luckily that helped quickly and I was able to further explore the park.

Another trail led us around the Balancing Rock, where there indeed was a big round shaped rock balancing on top of another. Due to wind and rain over thousands of years the softer materials of the rocks gets washed out and leaves the harder parts in quite interesting structures. That's also why there are so many arches in the park, they have been ctreated over the years and also unfortunately sometimes collapse as the process never stops. In the 1991 a part of the famous Landscape Arch had collapsed (a park visitor was lucky enough to capture the moment with his camera) and since then the trail underneath it is closed to the public. Thankfully the people resting underneath the arch had heard a loud cracking noise and managed to flee before the rocks came down.

We also visited the Window Arch that's not in danger of collapsing and were allowed to walk under it. It was huge, quite impressive! Our last stop in the park was the Landscape Arch. We took the trail up to it even though another thunderstorm was coming. We made it to the Arch and took pictures but then I turned around and almost jogged back to the car as it had started to rain. That was a good decision as the rain had gotten harder and you never know how a thunderstorm develops in the mountains. The park rangers were already waiting at the parking lot telling people to leave.

In the end it wasn't too bad and we even saw a beautiful rainbow before we left the park. We then drove to Moab where we had dinner at an Italian restaurant and then reached our place for the night.

View from the bed

The house in the middle of nowhere where we stayed

More fotos to come!

Update - Catching up

I'm sorry that I had to abandon my blog during my trip. I was already two days behing in the end and then the app which I used to compile my posts crashed (and wasn't comfortable to use anyway) so I got frustrated and gave up. But as I'd like to keep this as a diary so that I can always come back and read about the awesome time I had, I'm planning to subsequently finish this travel diary. Also my next trip is coming up in September (London's calling!), so the previous trip needs to be completed by then.

St. George -> Zion National Park -> Bryce Canyon -> Middle of Nowhere ;-) -> Torrey, Day 17, Monday

We started the day with freshly made waffles as apparently Monday is waffle day at our hosts' :-) After that we said our goodbyes and drove to Zion National Park, this time to the main entrance and not to the part where we went hiking the previous day. It was really crowded there but the shuttle buses that go through the park run pretty frequently so we didn't have to wait very long.

We got off the bus at the starting point of the trail to the Narrows. We had to share it with lots of people, among them a large summer camp girls group. There were lots of squirrels who weren't even one bit afraid of all the people. They ran around in between the hikers, probably hoping that someone would feed them. The trail was very easy to walk at first, it went along a river and wasn't very step. The hard part came only later when the trail mostly vanished into the river and then eventually there was only the river left. There were lots of small rocks in the river which made it hard to walk there being barefoot. Some people went into the water with their shoes on or even with walking sticks which made it easier. I crossed the river twice and then gave up as I was afraid to fall into the water with my camera. If I had continued my way through the water, the river would've become more and more narrow until eventually the walls on both sides would've almost touched.

We then decided to walk the trail to the Emerald Pools instead of Angel's Landing as Marko is a bit afraid of heights. The hike took us up into the mountains and we had to walk under a tiny waterfall. The view was amazing thanks to the trees only parts of the trail were in the sun, so the heat wasn't too much of a problem. We saw lots of lizards along the trail and as we were about to leave the park, there was even a longhorn.

When we finally left the park, we took a short detour to Bryce Canyon on our way to Torrey. Unfortunately it was already getting dark, so we couldn't see too much anymore. Still we could see two big thunderstorms in the distance. It later turned out they were more than 200 kilometers away.

It was already 10 pm when we headed to our next destination in Torrey. Unfortunately we hadn't checked in advance how far away it was, it turned out it were 200 kilometers which meant three hours through the night. The route lead us right through the mountains and would've probably been beautiful during the day but as it was, it was pitch dark. We passed one small village during our drive and the rest was literary the middle of nowhere. It's unbelievable that you can drive distances of several hundred kilometers in the US without passing any cities or villages or even other cars. That wouldn't be possible anywhere in Germany. The only encounters we had were with deers, one crossed the street directly in front of our car but we (and the deer) were lucky enough to avoid a collision.

That night certainly wasn't fun, we were both really tired and were also driving almost directly into the thunderstorms we had already seen from Bryce Canyon. Shortly before we arrived in Torrey we got into heavy rain and hail but then were lucky enough that our destination was located directly between the two thunderstorms. I was so happy when at almost 1 am we arrived in Torrey. The house of our host Bob was totally dark but after thankfully he was still awake and let us in to a lovely and clean room.

Zion National Park, view from the trail to the Narrows

One of the many fearless squirrels along the trail 

People wading in the water

Hanging garden, there are tiny bits of water coming from above that allow flowers and other plants to grow there

Hiking trail to the Emerald Pools

There's a small waterfall coming down the wall

The Emerald Pool

Cactuses in the mountains

Best possible view

Las Vegas -> Lake Mead National Park -> Valley of Fire National Park -> St. George -> Zion National Park -> St. George, Day 16, Sunday

We started our day very early and got up shortly after 5 am because we wanted to be in St. George in time at 12 pm to watch the World Cup final Germany vs. Argentina. Only a lot later we realized that due to the time difference of one hour between Nevada and Utah we could've slept an hour longer...

Even at this early hour it was still (or already) 30 degrees Celsius outside. We saw a couple of people on bicycles, using the relatively moderate temperatures for their exercise. We drove through the Lake Mead National Park which was really beautiful with an immensely huge lake. Unfortunately we were only able to make a quick stop at the Valley of Fire National Park with its red rocks but at least we saw a few glimpses of it. We continued our journey through a small part of Arizona which was amazing, the road lead us right through the mountains. There were large rocks on both sides of the Freeway, pretty cool. Judging by what I've seen of Arizona so far I definitely like it. It was only a short preview though, we'll cime back to Arizona later on our trip and our destination of the day was in St. George/Utah. That means we've been in three states in one day, Nevada, Arizona and Utah, rather impressive. 

We arrived in St. George well in time before the game so that we even had time to go to the local supermarket before it was time to settle in front of the tv. Our hosts Bob and Rose, an elderly couple, gave us a warm welcome and showed us to our room. It was nicely furnished and had a great view of the mountains near Snow Canyon. Bob had already set up the tv for us and we spent very exciting 120 minutes in front of it. The game was an emotional roller coaster as both teams were fighting hard. Germany gradually got the upper hand but it was still 0:0 after 90 minutes. Finally Mario Götze scored the most important goal of his career and we won the cup for the fourth time!! It we're very long minutes though until the game was finished, I was hardly able to keep still. When it was over I cried actual tears of joy, what an amazing day!! Too bad that I wasn't in Germany, I would've loved to join the parties in the streets that took place in every city. 

It was almost 5 am before we headed to Zion National Park which wasn't too bad as it still was pretty hot outside (43 degrees Celsius!) but also the sun was gone which made it a bit more bearable. For today we had planned a hiking trail at the Kolob mountain which would've taken about four hours back and fourth. As it was already 6 pm when we got there we only walked about half of it which was an experience already. The trail lead us up and down several steep hills, I was already completely soaked after a short while, it was still so hot! It was a real wilderness, as someone living in a big city I'm so not used to that. I didn't really feel uncomfortable but also not a 100% comfortable. There were lots of bugs, flies, lizards and, what was pretty cool, an actual skunk! We didn't manage to get a foto of it though as it vanished quickly. We made it back to the car before it got dark and then for once had an early night.

Lake Mead National Park

The landscape already starts turning red

Valley of Fire National Park

Hello Arizona!

An amazing scenic route!

The view from our room in St. George

Zion National Park