Coping with public and private transport since 2001
After over four years of dutiful work, my trusty Asus V6800 (or V6V) laptop suddenly threw errors at me during startup. With a SMART status of BAD, it instructed me to go buy a new HDD, as the likelihood of failures would increase dramatically in the near future. So I did. I grabbed myself a Samsung 160GB 2.5″ HDD, and
Continue readingMoving further down south along the coast from Los Angeles, one may find a huge urban area driving on the 101 southbound. That is, until one reaches another San, which is San Diego. This town with 1.3 million inhabitants is also the home of Sea World San Diego, which is the original Sea World. Here they feature shows with dolphins,
Continue readingAye matey’s, raise the anchor, clean the decks, we’re going whaling! Oh well, whale sightseeing then. A short drive from Santa Maria to Santa Barbara brought us to the Condor Express, a twin engine hydro propelled catamaran operated entirely for the whale watching business. It a 75 foot long vessel equipped for the scientific and touristic spotting of all kinds
Continue readingRight after our spectacular day in San Francisco, we were forced to leave town to head towards Los Angeles. We have been planning on doing so via the renowned Highway 1. This is said to be the most beautiful road in the entire United States. It turned out to be the best road ever, albeit curvy, steep and really slow.
Continue readingOur only full day at San Francisco was planned full to the brim. First, we started off with the Painted Ladies, 5 original imperial style houses painted in pastel colors sitting in a row next to a big park which made for a very scenic view. This featured a long drive by trolley bus and San Francisco’s most famous way
Continue readingAfter a night with a very loud air conditioning system, we got up and prepared for the trip to the best anticipated city of our trip: San Francisco. Getting out of the Yosemite region is about as hard as getting into it, long and windy roads lead you eventually to an Interstate leading to SF. Entering the Bay Area is
Continue readingToday we’ve got a full day to explore the wilderness of Yosemite National Park. And there’s lots of it! Like Grand Canyon NP and Zion NP, Yosemite NP has its own free shuttle bus system. It runs on hybrid drive buses with diesel-electric power, which are on a 10 minute schedule. Great for hopping on or off! We started our
Continue readingParting Ridgecrest was easy, after a cosy breakfast watching soccer with two other couples (I guess there were not more guests at the hotel) we left and headed for the second National Park in the USA, which also is the biggest in the lower 48 states: Yosemite National Park. Home of two valleys where Giant Sequoia can be found, and
Continue readingWhat stays in Vegas… doesn’t leave Vegas. It is as simple as that. So we left. Checked out, tugged al baggage to the car and drove off. Destination? Ridgecrest. Our main goal for today was not Ridgecrest, as one might have guessed; it is Death Valley. The lowest and hottest point of North America. Today it was a mere 43
Continue readingSleeping in our lush hotel in the kingsize bed is quite nice, I can get used to that! The only thing is that the constant ringing and plinging and zinging of the slotmachines is getting to you after about 15 minutes… Having bought a full day pass to the buffet at the Luxor we had breakfast and git ready to
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