Roadtrippin with "Bruno's Crew"

Okay, I have to admit that it's been a while since the last update of my blog. The reason is that I joined a roadtrip which has been one of the best decisions in my life so far!


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Bruno's Crew, border crossing, knocking at stranger's doors, bonfires, beaches and bi***es, Nutz and Cleo, AniTize, "I'm just killing", a bald eagle, Schultz!, cheese, stickers, Holier Eggs, river tubing, "Vegas, Baby!", frequent stops, no plans - just options, ticket for parking, revolution cafe, people's cafe, piercing, win and lose, skull with improvements, sunglasses, hitchhikers, flags, disco balls, special pudding, free National Parks, squirrels and doggies, sunsets, the world's largest spruce tree, elks, mosquitoes, hot springs, pancake, Hershey's chocolate, 4,500 km/2,800 mi of road and five different U.S. States.

But let me start at the very beginning:

Back in Vancouver and still staying with Krista, I enjoyed Canada Day on July 1st - the national independence day - which is celebrated patriotically here - so much different than our National Day in Germany! There are huge parades, parties, concerts and show events all over Canada. We went to a dance show at Burrard Inlet which was great and quite entertaining. In the evening we watched the fireworks, also very impressing, but I have seen better ones in Germany (I really suggest going to "Rhine in flames"/"Rhein in Flammen" - THAT is spectacular!!!). Anyway, I really enjoyed that day, even though I have been too tired to stay up with the others till late at night.

The next day I joined a barbecue with some great guys I met in a bar some days before. They told me about their current roadtrip and their adventures on the way. They started in Las Vegas a month ago (on June 9th) and made their way along America's West Coast north to Vancouver where they intended to stay for a couple days. The stories they told me were so amazing that I felt the urgent wish to come along with them. Fortunately, they had a spot in the van to offer because one of the guys (Anders from Sweden) were jumping of the other day to fly back home. All that took no longer than a few minutes and suddenly I found myself as part of the roadtrip crew!
On that particular barbecue we talked about the details and decided to meet up on July 4th to start or better to continue the trip.

Before I go on with my story, let me shortly talk about the crew itself and the way we were travelling. This helps to understand my following descriptions.

1. the people: Rob from Vegas who owns the van, Isabell from Switzerland, Fabien from France and Robert from Sweden; and of course Nutz and Cleo, Rob's dogs, one is old and crazy and the other one cute and crazy!
2. the van: a 1996 Dodge conversion van called "Bruno" with a skull (I guess from a cow) at the grill in the front, three disco balls inside and a lot of flags hanging around; throughout our trip we did a lot of improvements on the skull - we added sunglasses and a cap to it

3. the rules: there were no rules! We decided not to make any plans on the trip but to make up our minds spontaneously about where to go and what to see. All expenses for gas and food came out of "Bruno's bank", a small wallet in which each of us put a certain amount of money whenever that was necessary.

With you knowing these basics, let me move on:

July 4th
We started at July 4th and talked about where to go next. The only condition we had was returning the van to Rob's home in Vegas with the beginning of August. As we didn't make any plans (we called it "options"), there have been a bundge of options for us where to head (Seattle, The Rockies, Vancouver Island). We finally agreed on moving on to the U.S. to experience the "Independence Day" on that day. As we had a friend, Cathy, living in Seattle, we asked her to stay at her house for a night which was fine for her.

Before crossing the border we said goodbye to Robert who intended on going on his own trip through Vancouver Island to do some Wwoofing (more details on http://www.wwoof.org/). So we dropped him off at the Tsawwassen ferry to Nanaimo on the Island. Then we moved on to the USA.

Naive as we were, we thought it would be easy to cross the border to the U.S. which proved to be a completely false consideration. I can not tell if it was because we were in some way hippieish looking or because we had a basil and an oregano plant in a pot in the front of the van - anyway we were asked to get out of the van and into the office to be questioned about our purpose of visiting the USA.
Murphey's Law followed us into the Department of Homeland Security as we were treated like criminals by an officer who seemed to be very frustrated about her job (if not to say: she was a bitch - and you can bet on me not appologizing for my words this time!). I have never experienced anything like this before. It took us an hour to get through this process of questioning: What are you doing in the USA? When you intend to leave the U.S. and where to? What is your current job? How much money do you have with you? Are you bringing any weapons or firearms into the country? Where will you stay while being in the USA? How long are you about to stay? (This has been asked to Rob who is obviously a U.S. citizen!!! How ridiculous is that?!?! He answered: "Well, probably for the rest of my life!" Hilarious!!!)

Dear Sirs and Madames of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, I completely understand the purpose of these questions and I also accept the way of securing your borders from the millions of terrorists out there (like the Asian father with his four year old son who were about to visit the USA for celebrating the Independence Day). I only ask you to have a closer look on some members of your staff, especially when they start to ask stupid questions and treat harmless visitors with disrespect. Because this will have a negative effect on the people's opinion about a country that describes itself all over the world as the best place to visit and live in!!!
Thanks for your attention.

We arrived at Cathy's place in Seattle late in the evening. God, she is such a sweet lady! She totally managed to make it up for the border crossing. We had a great meal with couscous and veggies, talked till late at night and went to the grocery store at 03:00 in the morning to get some ice cream! Needless to say that we didn't celebrated the Independence Day.

July 5th
The next day we went on to visit the Olympic National Park. We took the Kingston ferry to the other side of the Puget Sound that separates Seattle with the Olympic paninsula.
It has been a windy ride but with a beautiful scenery on Mount Olympus surrounded by forrests and water.

That day we had some difficulties in finding a place to stay or to build up our tents. When it started to get too late for us to move on any further, Isabell just spotted three people standing around a bonfire. She suggested to simply drive on their property to ask if we can spent the night there. That's exactly what we did. Of course, they were quite surprised. We told them who we were and that we couldn't find any place to stay. Finally we were overwhelmed by the spontaneous hospitality of these people. They invited us for the night immediately and we spent the rest of the evening sitting around the fire and talking about our roadtrip.

July 6th
In the morning the guys we stayed with woke us up and this time surprised us by prepairing a deluxe breakfast with fried eggs, pancakes, bacon and coffee!!! For me, this has been one of the best experiences on our trip.

Additonally, they suggested to go to Dungeness National Wildlife Refuge, a sandy 5-miles-stripe that stretches into the sea between the State of Washington and Vancouver Island. There are no words to describe it, just have a look on the pictures.

The sand is beautiful and the wood along the beach is just amazing to see. We stayed there for some hours before moving on to Hoh National Forest in the east of the Olympic pansinsula.

We didn't enter the forest as we didn't want to pay the entrance fee. So we found a path between the trees that led us to a beautiful spot along a small river where we tried to refresh ourselves - the temperatures were pretty high at that time.
Later at sunset we watched the sun go down on the most beautiful beach I have ever been to - Ruby Beach.

We spent the night on a camp ground near Kalaloch by sneaking in late in the evening and taking a spot for our tent without paying for it. Hihi! Wir sind schon Schlingel!!! ;)

July 7th
After getting up early to avoid being detected by the camp ground staff, we spent half of the day at a cafe next to Crescent Lake watching the sad Germany-Spain soccer game. The bartender told us about the wolrd's largest spruce tree near the lake which should be worth to see. So we drove there and tried to hug the tree trunk which of course has been a ridiculous attempt (see picture).

After that we jumped into the Lake to cool down ourselves. Refreshed as we were we drove along Highway 101 and took a small road we heard of to Pacific Beach. This is a long sandy beach on which it is possible to drive with the car - what we did!

Isabell and I went jogging along the beach. We met some young folks there who were celebrating the birthday of two of them and who invited us to their bonfire. We spent the evening with ultimate frisbee and drinking vodka.

After that the guys headed back to Seattle where they come from. We decided to take out our sleeping bags and slept on the beach without building up the tent. We had a clear night with thousands of stars!

July 8th
This day has been pretty uneventful. Bruno needed a cleaning, which took us a couple hours. The evening came quick and we found a camp ground near South Bend to sleep on. And this has been the first and only time for us spending money on acommodation.

July 9th
Next day, next beach! This time it was Long Beach we were visiting. While Fabien and Rob were driving Bruno high speed on the beach, Isabell and I were reading books on two camping chairs Rob took with him.

Later that day Astoria was waiting for us - no, Astoria is not a girl, it's a small and beautiful town in north Oregon.

Rob has a friend - Justin - living there who invited us to stay in his house for a few days.

Justin is lead singer in a band called "AniTize". We were glad to enjoy several songs of him...I absolutely suggest to listen to them: http://www.myspace.com/anitize.
We stayed up till late at night, listening to and making music and meeting some of Justin's friends and family members.

July 10th
We woke up late that day and made blueberry pancakes which were delicious! Then we invited Justin, his girlfriend and his parents to a picture slideshow of our trip which took us a while - we had around 1,500 pics at that time!!!
Immediately after that we drove to the Astoria Column - a tower with an amazing view over the town, the surrounding landscape and the huge Columbia River that runs into the Pacific Ocean.

Justin's parents invited us to jump on their motorhome to show us the Astoria Jetty bank, a long dam of huge rocks stretching into the ocean.

Even more impressing than Jetty has been the motorhome itself - a fucking house on wheels!!!

July 11th
Time to say goodbye to Justin. We moved on down south in shitty weather though warm. On the way we picked up J.D. - a hitchhiker (the first out of three in total) who wanted to go further south. He even spent the night with us at an abandoned house with a sign that says "for sale". Before that we visited the Tillamook cheese factory and ate some free cheese which is in no way comparable with European cheese...means: not good! ;)

July 12th
Our next stop has been Newport, a small town at the coast with a cool bridge where our hitchhiker got off. Then we went into that small and unique bookstore where I refilled my travel library and had some really good coffee.

From coffee to beer: we visited the Rogue Brewery in Newport after that and drank- surprise, surprise - a beer!
That night has been the second time on our roadtrip that we couldn't find any spot to camp. Our knight in shining armor came in the middle of nowhere. In a forrest not far from our main road we found a house with a huge property around it. So what we did was knocking at the door and a man - obviously the owner of that spot - opened with an expression of surprise on his face. Well, understandable, since it was late in the evening! We told him a similar story as we did with the other guys in Washington. I expected a denial or even worse. But suddenly he got a bright face and laughed, telling us that this has been one of the weirdest things that happened to him so far. He also told us that it's no problem at all to build up our tents on his property.

July 13th
This day has been "Sweet Home"-Day. What does it mean?! Well, we had a look on the map to decide where to go next. That was when Isabell's finger landed on a small town called "Sweet Home".

It's a matter of course that we wanted to find out what's so sweet about this place. So we went there and swam in the nearby Foster Lake before camping in a small path besides the road.

July 14th
Our exploration of Sweet Home really started that day. We tried to get back to the visitor center to inform ourselves about possible hikes, since I suggested to do some sports as a contrast to driving in the van all day long.
On the way we stopped at "Sweet Home Choppers" (http://sweethomechoppers.com/). Isabell really wanted to go on a ride with a Harley Davidson, so we did what we always do: we asked...and Isabell ended up on a Harley ride around the lake - with Butch! She was so thrilled that day!

Finally in the visitor center, we were told about a pretty hike to the top of Iron Mountain near Sweet Home. This has been a 2.4 miles hike to the top with a beautiful view over central Oregon.

The day ended in the town of Bend with a cool couchsurfer named Travis.

July 15th
Still being in Bend, this has probably been our laziest day on the roadtrip. We slept in till afternoon, took care about our laundry, cleaned the van and decided where to go next.
Finally we ended up being in Ross - a discount retail store for clothes where we did some cheap shopping.

July 16th
One of my personal top three days of the trip! We went to Smith Rock, a beautiful (and hot) spot around several rocks with a small river running through the stones and causing a tiny stripe of green along its waterside.

This area is famous worldwide for being one of the top climbing spots, offering thousands of routes. Unfortunately, we didn't have much time for me to climb to the top. But the hike I did made it up for that.

Moving on south we picked up our second hitchhiker - a crazy, calm and spiritual looking guy named Scott who wanted to go to Ashland.

By that time we had the idea of visiting the Umpqua Hot Springs - a tip Travis gave us when we said goodbye.
So the five of us finally made it there. We met some other travellers who showed us the path to the Hot Springs. High up at the edge of a stone wall along a river several small bassins were waiting for us to jump in, each of them with a different water temperature - some of them even hotter than in a jacuzzi. The only thing that disturbed this great evening were the hungry mosquitoes which were almost eating us alive. The morning my entire body was covered with approximately 30 mosquito bites!!!! Must have lost half of my blood that day! ;)
We camped near the Hot Springs and tried not to get bitten any longer.

July 17th
We hurried up to get the hell out of this place as a swarm of mosquitoes awaited us in the morning to eat the remaining parts of our tortured bodies.

Our next destination had been Crater Lake National Park, a huge lake situated in an extinguished volcano.

We drove around half of the lake's size and finally headed to Ashland, Oregon, where Scott jumped off. It has been late that day and we decided to first have dinner at midnight in a park in Ashland (by the way: a small and relaxed city with a lot of young folks due to the university).
Then we agreed on going on further to reach the border of California that night where we camped near the Highway along a small road - again with stars all over the sky!!!

July 18th
After getting up in the morning we were looking for a nice spot to have breakfast. Finally, we found a quiet place near the clearest river I have ever seen! Of course, we pulled out our snorkeling stuff and swam in the cold water. How refreshing!

Now being in California, we made our way back to the coast to the town of Crescent City where we just stayed for a few hours. It's not really worth visiting.

All the more we were excited to see the Redwood National Park, a huge area of forest with one of the largest trees on earth. Once again we felt that mankind is tiny compared to mother natures creation!
In the evening we built up our tents near Redwood Forest at College Cove, Trinidad.

July 19th
Frenchy's birthday (that's Fabien's nickname)! Congratulations, buddie!
Since we were near to the beach we decided to go there - which proved to be a good decision. This small piece of beauty along the Pacific Ocean was just awesome.

I climbed some of the smaller rocks that emersed out of the water and enjoyed the amazing view.

After building a small sand castle with Isabell, we drove further on to the town of Eureka where we met a friend of Rob in the Lost Brewery to have some beer. Unfortunately, this guy couldn't host us (as we were hoping). So we had to find out what to do next: staying in Eureka would have meant sleeping in the van; moving on were another option but with no guarantee to quickly find a place to sleep.
Anyway, we decided to do the latter and unexpectedly found a place to sleep soon after leaving. Luck wasn't on our side for long. Soon after building up the tents a ranger drove by and after asking us what we were doing there, he made us leave immediately. Really tired we desperately tried to find another spot and finally found a place to camp near Blue Lake.

July 20th
Time to leave the coast again. Next destination: Paradise.
On the way we stopped at a town with the funny name of Whiskeytown just to realize that this town consists of one old and abandoned building. The lake next to it seemed to be a better destination for us - especially because the temperatures approached the level of 100°F/37°C!
No wonder that the lake was too warm to speak of a needed refreshment.
After arriving in Paradise near Chico, we met our hosts Mike and Adam. Isabell knew them from her last trip through California and they invited us to stay as long as we wanted.
We spent the evening at a small river in a canyon and again slept under a star covered sky.

July 21st
I used the next morning for rope jumping into the river which was quite fun.

After that we made our way back to Paradise to grab the stuff for river tubing on Butte Creek (you use tubes to sit on and swim along a river with rapids). That was really fun, even though each of us occasionally got hit by a rock under water or rolled up side down in one of the rapids. We spent nearly five hours on the river, made frequent stops to drink bear and spotted a bald eagle which we disturbed when eating a huge salmon.
Exhausted but happy and with one tube damaged we went back to Paradise.

July 22nd
This day has been really lazy. We tried to recover a little bit from the previous day, went to the farmer's market in Chico and finally ended up having a drink and partying in one of the clubs.

July 23rd
We said goodbye to our hosts and hit the road again.

Next stop: Upper Lake at Clear Lake where we met Rob's brother whom he hasn't seen in nine years!!! We had tons of pizza that evening, showed him our then even longer picture slideshow and found a camping spot along a road to build up our tents.

July 24th
The next morning we found some bones (probably from a deer) that we used to do more improvements to Bruno's skull - we even added a bone Mohawk which gave Bruno the perfect look!!!
Our excitement started to grow as we were hitting San Francisco!!!
Before arriving, we stopped at Muir Beach to have a great view on the Ocean, the surrounding landscape and San Francisco at the horizon.
We entered the city over the famous Golden Gate Bridge which for me wasn't that spectacular. It's a bridge, you know, so calm down! ;)

Since Rob and Isabell have been to San Francisco before, they showed us a really cool cafe in the Mission District, called Revolution Cafe where we tried to find people to host us for the following nights. When we nearly lost all hope, Hilarie came out of nowhere, called us and invited us to her house which was not that far away. So we spent the night talking with her about our trip, about her interesting life and finally went to bed in the early morning.

July 25th
The next day we decided to split up to explore Frisco a bit. So Isabell and I made our way to The Globetrotters Inn, a nice hostel in Downtown. At that time I still intended on going back to Frisco after we finished the roadtrip in Vegas and that hostel seemed to be a good place to spent some additional nights. After doing some shopping in Downtown and having great Sushi, we went to Fisherman's Wharfe/Pier 39, a touristic place at the northern waterfront of Frisco. If you like one souvenir shop next to the other and a huge crowd of tourists doesn't bother you, then this is a perfect spot to go. I, for one, had the feeling to get as fast out there as I could.
We finally took the bus and the tram to Haight Str and Ashbury, an alternative neighbourhood similar to Vancouver's Commercial Drive I described already.

There we met up with Rob and Fabien as well as with two brothers, Eli and Brendan, with whom we got in contact over couchsurfing. They were on a trip all the way from New York, where they live, to Vancouver. We had a great afternoon in the people's cafe on Haight Str before heading off to Dolores Park for dinner and a beer in the Revolution Cafe. No one replied to our couchsurfing requests, so we had no place to sleep. That was actually the first night that all of us slept in the van.

July 26th
We were waking up because of the sound of a parking ticket that is fixed underneath the wiper. ;)
To cut a long story short: it blew us away - 55 bucks!!!!!!!!!! That has been a slap in our faces and a painful deduction out of Bruno's bank.
We took it easy!
Trying to forget that little desaster, we went to Haight Str to meet Brendan and Eli once again. Isabell finally and after long and deep considerations got her next ear piecing. Brave girl!!! :P
We spent another night in Bruno not before making sure to park in the right spot.

July 27th
This day we walked all over Haight Str, a pretty nice area with lots of small shops, bookstores and cafes. We went to a park to play basketball and visited the Golden Gate Bridge because Fabien wanted to take some pictures at sunset.

This night we spent with Renzo, a guy from Peru who lives and works in Frisco. We got to know him because he really wanted to join our roadtrip but unfortunately couldn't come with us due to him moving out of the apartment.

July 28th
We drove along the west coast south to hit L.A. to meet up with a friend of Rob.

On the way we picked up the third and last hitchhiker, a Bavarian who travels the US with his girlfriend. We just took him a couple miles passing by Pidgeon Point Lighthouse which is a hostel at the same time - pretty cool!

We spent the night right next to the entrance of an abandoned army naval base.

July 29th

We got up early to use the day for arriving in L.A.

We stopped at a nice cafe near Cayucos, watched sea elefants at the coast and had lunch at Spooners Cove.

In the evening we finally arrived in Los Angeles, El Segundo to meet Nate and Janie.

July 30th
Venice Beach has been our next stop, a nice beach with a shopping street right next to it. A lot of crazy people running around there and of course many tourists.

In the evening we drove to Garden Grove to meet Brad and Nici who wanted to go with us all the way to Vegas. And that's what we did. We had an overnight drive to Las Vegas and arrived there late at night after a long, boring and especially hot drive.

July 31st
After dropping off Brad and Nici at their hotel, we made it to Rob's house and watched the thousands of lights of Vegas from his rooftop.

Finally we got to bed at 4:30 in the morning and got up in the afternoon.
At night we went to the Strip in Vegas to visit the Casinos. I played roulette for the first time and won 50 bucks! Heyhey!!

At 6:30 am we went to bed.

August 1st
Shopping in Vegas! And then finally, we did what I was waiting for the whole trip: The Grand Canyon!!! And again we decided to make an overnight drive to arrive at the entrance of the National Park at 6:00 in the morning. As you might have noticed, these days or better these nights haven't been of much sleep.

August 2nd
Because of arriving at the National Park that early, the Ranger's office wasn't open already, so we just drove through without paying the entrance fee!
After almost colliding with a deer on the road, we finally got to the upper level/platform of the North Rim with an amazing view into the valley. Shreds of clouds were laying in the Canyon as still sleeping. Huge rocks emersed out of them and stretched far into the sky. There has been absolute silence, no birds singing, no traffic sounds, no voices - just the overwhelming presence of nature! It is impossible to describe this experience and you can not imagine the incredible beauty of the landscape when you haven't seen it with your own eyes.

After moments of enjoying the scenery, we had breakfast at the rim and watched the clouds waking and rising up to finally give us a total view on the Canyon, the Colorado River running through it and the South Rim.

When it got warmer, we went to see the Royal Cape and the Angel's window, both view points for the two different directions of the Canyon, each of it a contrast to the other.

We watched one of the most amazing sunsets that day I have ever seen and set down on a small platform to have dinner.

Another small platform seemed to be a good spot to take out our sleeping bags and to fall asleep under the stars, with thunder in the east.

August 3rd
Sunrise at 05:30 a.m. woke us up and we drove to Imperial Point, the highest viewpoint at the Canyon, with an altitude of 8,800 ft/2,630 m(!!!) - the Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany is just 900 ft/300 m higher!

Enjoying another view on the valley - it seems that the Canyon changes its face at every time of the day and at every different spot you go.
Strengthened after breakfast we decided to do a hike along the rim. So we drove to the visitor center at The Grand Canyon Lodge and chose the Transept Trail to hike for about 1.5h.
Our trip to the Grand Canyon ended at Angel's Point - again a viewpoint - where we jumped into the Canyon.

No, just kidding!!!  (or as Fabien would say: "I'm just killing!") ;)
After lunch we headed back to Vegas where we arrived in the evening. We went to the Strip one more time and walked around the city till 03:00 in the morning.

August 4th
This was when everything became kind of stressy - Isabell and Fabien decided to take a rideshare (similar to the German "Mitfahrgelegenheit") back to San Francisco. Isabell had her flight back to Switzerland on August 6th and Fabien wanted to shoot some more pictures before flying back to Vancouver. The rideshare started at 6 a.m., so we had to hurry up with the shower, packing our stuff and changing photos.
So we all drove to the meeting point of the rideshare and we said goodbye to Fabien and Isabell which has been very emotional. After all we had spent one month travelling together, we laughed together, we discussed with each other, enjoyed every single minute together, relaxed together. These kind of experience we gained keeps us bond for probably the rest of our lives.

At this time writing this update, Isabell is back home in Switzerland and told me how hard it is for her to get back into her former daily life. She is still trying to keep on dreaming - and so am I!!!

But let me finish my story: Rob, his friend and roomate Shain and I spent the remaining hours (my flight back to Vancouver had been at 01:40 p.m. that day) at Lake Mead near Vegas where we had lunch and finally said goodbye at the airport.
I arrived in Vancouver in the evening after a short stop at the airport in Seattle.

This is the end of my phenomenal one-month-roadtrip along the west coast. There are no words to express what we have seen and experienced. We met so many great people on our way, experienced an incredible hospitality, have been to beautiful and amazing places and did a lot of crazy things. I didn't regret any second of this trip. Now being back in Vancouver it seems like a dream and I slowly start to realize how much I miss the road, Bruno, Rob, Isabell, Fabien, Nutz and Cleo and the way we were living!!! I'm sure this trip will have a revival in some years...or maybe earlier! Who knows?!?!?! ;)