US Road Trip 2017

Bucket list. Strange term. A list of important things you would like to do in your lifetime. But why bucket? If these things are so important, they should be put in a treasure chest or jewelry box, not a bucket. I imagined a bunch of notes, perhaps post-it’s, thrown in a bucket. Looking it up, it turns out the term was coined after “to kick the bucket”, to die, by a screenwriter for a film called “The Bucket List” about two dying men making a list of things to accomplish before they kick the bucket, or die. I like it better now. But still. On the internet, some people said they had jumping in Crater Lake on their bucket list, and I thought: “Yes! Here is a monumental thing to do in life.” A crater, man. Imagine that. Actually jumping into it. I looked Crater Lake up on the map. It is in Oregon, it’s really round, and the pictures on google look great. It’s not a meteor crater, but a volcanic crater (just as cool) and it is HUGE, approximately 8 by 10 km across, and with a maximum de

From Redding we go north to the point where the Sacramento River is blocked by the Shasta Dam and thus creates the big Lake Shasta, the largest reservoir in California. The dam was built immediately after the Hoover dam (1937-45) by the same Chief Engineer, who was bent on achieving a better survival rate among the workers the second time (600 died building the Hoover dam). And he did succeed.    The dam is huge (183 m high). We see a fish down there (it is P who discovers it, of course). It must be very big since we are able to see it at all - later we see people standing on the lawn and they are just little specks. The Sacramento River as it continues from the dam. We take a tour of the dam, and here we are going down about 100 m with an elevator from the top of the dam (M looks a bit concerned). Inside the dam there is a long tunnel with amazing acoustics - sound bounces clearly off the opposite wall and returns to you in about half a second. The huge

We leave Red Bluff to go to Lassen National Park. That sounds Danish - and it is. The park is named after blacksmith and pioneer Peter Lassen, who found a cutoff trail for emigrants travelling west to California in the mid-1800's. He advertised it greatly, understating its length and dangers, leading to much suffering of the people who took his trail. (He was shot a few years later in good old Western style.) The park includes Lassen Peak, an active volcano and one of the world´s biggest lava domes. We drive through a savanna-like landscape with vast expanses of dry yellow grass and green oaks. Again we realize the vastness of America and California. The road is straight as an arrow and seems to go on for ever. Then the landscape becomes more mountainous and the road bends, and we notice that we are gaining altitude. The temperature steadily decreases and we drive through increasingly forested areas. Instead of oak trees we now see almost exclusively pine. Finally, at an altit

We leave San Francisco and the weather clears up. From Napa to Calistoga, we drive through the wine region, Napa Valley. We make a couple of stops at vineyards, the last one in Calistoga. The wine country An old railroad depot converted to house shops and a deli. An irresistible smell of grilled burgers attracted us. Quality burgers for the boys. Our hotel in Red Bluff is amazing and we enjoy seeing a clear blue sky after SF.

We planned how to get into San Francisco from Oakland in great detail. After a white-knuckle high-speed drive on the freeway (they are rotten drivers here and nobody sticks to the speed limits), twenty minutes of looking for parking by the train station, figuring out how to buy the tickets (relieving my wallet of $25), and standing up in a cramped train, we finally arrive in San Francisco. We are greeted by an overcast sky, icy winds, large crowds of tourists, and a run-down and dirty city. We head down towards the waterfront and in a glimpse we realize that we may be on to something here after all – the water shines fluorescently green and blue under low-hanging clouds and out there lies Alcatraz, the high-security prison island (the mere name Alcatraz being full of mystery and adventure) ominously circled by pelicans. Turning our heads, we marvel at the huge suspension bridge crossing the bay and admire the towering skyscrapers of the financial district reaching into the clouds.

We left our very nice motel in Fresno, and set off for Yosemite National Park. It was very hot, about 100 F, and we hoped that it would be a bit cooler in Yosemite for our camping.  On the way, we made a stop at Walmart Wonder World to shop for food and supplies for our camping. We got a couple of air mattresses for me and H (after all, we are not teenagers anymore) – I was too stingy to get a pump, though, and these things can be easily inflated by mouth.  It was quite a long drive to our campground in Yosemite, and we stopped to marvel at the view at “Tunnel view”, where you can see both El Capitan and Half dome on each side of the the Yosemite valley. Tunnel View We entered Yosemite valley, and had a look at the steep mountainside of El Capitan and the impressive waterfalls ejecting from the mountains high above the valley and turning into a mist on the way down to the valley floor. We then drove on to the Crane Flat campground, which turned out to be located abou