From W to East: Yellowstone

Every time we get used to one place, we feel comfortable and at ease with the people around us, it is time to leave, but knowing that our life for now it is like that. I contacted two host for the next part of the travel and we started to drive towards their place. One of our hosts it is found in Twisp, a small town in Washington State. Once you cross the mountains of the east you find yourself in a much hotter environment. The temperature rose easily to 39•C. The nature gets drier and the grass is a gold yellow. I was surprised how dry it is because I always thought the north of Us should be greener and lush, thinking that it is much more north on the latitude but just looking at the Atlas I realized it is actually close to the same level as the Balcans. In Twisp, Debbie was waiting for us. She is a 40 something years old women, recently separated after another failed relation ship. She decided to move from Portland to this small town and start over although she complains that in such a small town it is quite difficult to meet man. She also left the type of business that she was doing in the last years which is buying old house, renovating them and after that reselling at a higher price. It seems that for a while it worked for her like that but now she feels tired and wants to buy a piece of land and start farming maybe. She is an emancipated women trapped in a society where you have to choose between love and success. Also Debbie started a life plan and a rejuvenating diet and she feels quite happy with herself although I could read in her eyes that this maybe is not the path that she desired in life. Anyway, she showed us Twisp, had dinner together and showed us great hospitality by offering us her own bed and she slept on the couch. Next day we walked to the butcher, bought some meat and cabbage so I could cook a Romanian dish and in the evening she and Jan went to the small theatre of the town where they enjoyed a play. I wanted to do a bike ride through the area so while they were doing that, I took the bicycle and hit the road but the big problem in USA is that they do not have a good infrastructure for cyclist so it is actually quite dangerous to go on the road with all the cars speeding next to you and no proper road for cyclists. The same night, we have been invited by a friend of Debbie to come to her house and watch the rain of meteorites. It was amazing to sit in the grass, with no lights around and watch this phenomenon. After almost two hours we went back to her house to sleep while she spent the night in the field. After two pretty relaxing but host days, usually at this time of the year the afternoon tend to be pretty hot and suffocating even up north, we started driving towards Colville. Almost at the border between Idaho and Washington State you find the small town of Colville, made mostly of farmers’ houses and woods.

Through Couchsurfing we contacted Angie and her family that live in a farm. Arriving there was not difficult and one of her daughters Clarissa presented us the farm and the multitude of animals they own. I have never lived in a farm and never took care of animals, so for me being close to this kind of life it is quite difficult. I know I am a town girl but it is not just that, the fact that I do not understand animals and their needs makes me very frustrated and afraid. Coming to the farm helps me understand and appreciate all much better. Angie is in her late forties; she is at the second marriage and has 4 children: two twin daughters from the first marriage and two from the second marriage. She is a very strong women guiding her life according to the needs of her children although some of the ideas she is preaching are a bit far from free thinking. She is not the adept of any church but believes that if you follow what Jesus Christ said you will reach heaven. She is following the the bible but without the interpretations that one priest or another gives. We have been very well received in their house, with a very friendly and open environment.


The kids have been great and during our 3 days stay we ate delicious dishes hand and home made. I enjoyed a lot the fresh night air and the family spirit but after these days it was time to continue with new energies our trip around US. Being on the road in USA is great because you get to watch the spectacular landscape that unfolds in front of you. Early in the morning we decided to start driving towards Glacier National park, one of the main attraction of North America. Glacier National Park is located in the U.S. state of Montana, bordering the Canadian provinces of Alberta and British Columbia. Glacier National Park is dominated by mountains which were carved into their present shapes by the huge glaciers of the last ice age; these glaciers have largely disappeared over the last 12,000 years. We’ve been in and out of the park for 2 days, Jan having the opportunity to walk to the main glacier while I had rested in the picnic area. When we started this new part of the travel I have promised myself I will enjoy much more and I will worry less and I will just take life easier. Glacier National Park has some spectacular views and its really worth the while but the most beautiful yet to come is Yellowstone. To be able to reach Yellowstone you need to cross about 700km of deserted hills . The landscape is beautiful especially when its cloudy and the sun goes through the clouds and makes shadows on the earth. These lands are inhabited also by some tribes of Indians. Its so uninhabited that you do not see people for 15-30 km. The lands in general are not cultivated because of the climate with strong winds and the dryness of the land.
It took us about two days to reach Yellowstone, one of the most visited parks of United States and probably one of the most beautiful.
Yellowstone was the first national park in the world, and is known for its wildlife and its many geothermal features, especially Old Faithful Geyser, one of the most popular features in the park. It has many types of ecosystems, but the subalpine forest is dominant.


We decided to take our time in the Park, visit everything slowly and enjoy its beauty. The thing we do have in this travel is time and this place is amazing. We needed 3 days in order to fully visit all the main attractions of the park and it was worth. The first two days we were mainly in the north part and we slept on the east entrance. The temperatures dropped dramatically in the night to -5 degrees. We have been surprised unprepared by such low temperatures but we were lucky we did not have to repeat such cold. Besides the gazers with the colorful hot waters, in Yellowstone you can find a large variety of wild life, from elks to grizzly bears…but we did not have the opportunity to see any grizzly but we did enjoy the close presence of wild bison. The best gazer was GREAT FOUNTAIN GEYSER
Temperature 202°F Interval 8-12 hours. Duration 45-60 minutes. Height 75-150 feet. Great Fountain Geyser is one of the grand geysers of Yellowstone.




The activity of the gazers is due to the fact that the park is located on top of a mountain volcano that might erupt at some point because it is just dormant, its caldera would include almost all the park. Caldera's are large basin-shaped volcanic depressions more or less circular in form.





The second day in the park and also our sixth day camping, we decided to go to Jackson , Wyoming, where a host from Couchsurfing was expecting us. Dan seemed to be a nice guy, he was living in a nice house in this very touristy town and shared his place with two more guys. He also plays the piano very good but something made him weird. The same evening that we arrived he looked normal, had dinner together and while at dinner he started to present us his life story. He told us he is originally from Texas, that he comes from a family with strong religious background. That he has actually been a member of a Christian sect all his youth, doing things that right now seemed horrible for him. His family is made of strong believers but they moved here because the sect decomposed due to the fact that the new lider of the sect wanted to follow mainstream Christianity. He did not really tell us the name of this sect but he definitely entered into some more personal details, explaining to us the fact that besides the general brainwashing, he has also been sexually abused by one of the members of the sect and that right now he was dealing with his past. All this could be taken as fare and square but the behaviour he had during the next two days made him a very psychically labile person and we ended up leaving his place faster than programmed. The same night that we arrived there, we decided we cannot sleep in the house due to the amount of dog hair that was everywhere and that made both me and Jan feel uncomfortable. Jan has a chronic allergy to almost anything and I think that for him sleeping in this kind of environment would not be healthy, and for me…well I do not mind a few dog hair here and there but I do mind the immense quantity that was in this house. The same night, Dan left with a friend for some drinks. He called this girl (that he said is a friend but the next day he was calling her fat and ugly and desperately in love with him) and next morning we find the girl at his place, with no car and very angry that he left with her car and dumped her in the bar. We did not really understand the situation but later in the afternoon we went to pick him up from a park fair where he was modelling for two old local artists. While in the car he was rambling about how great guy he is ( he always expressed these great opinions about himself) and how he things one of the lady artists, well in her 60s is dead inlove with him and that he is going to have a cougar. (Noun. A 35+ year old female who is on the "hunt" for a much younger, energetic, willing-to-do-anything male. The cougar can frequently be seen in a padded bra, cleavage exposed, propped up against a swanky bar in San Francisco (or other cities)waiting, watching, calculating; gearing up to sink her claws into an innocent young and strapping buck who happens to cross her path. "Man is cougar's number one prey").
As you might think, all that i am telling you can seem funny at first sight and innocent but little by little it was being built a scary portrait of this guy that seemed to be or schizophrenic or bipolar but he definitely had some problem. The same day he convinces us again to go with him to another place in order for him to meet some friends. We accept because we wanted to do something fun that day. We arrive to this ski resort place that had the gondola open for free and on top of the mountain there was a restaurant. Little by little the weather was changing dramatically and soon after we arrived at the top of the mountain and we took a seat with his friends on the terrace of the restaurant, a strong wind started to blow and soon a very strong storm came that made even the gondola stop. It was really scary outside and I honestly thought that we will have to get refugee on top of the mountain for the whole night. Finally the wind and the rain decrease a bit in intensity and the gondola starts working again so we take the chance and go down but it was moving so much while going down that they stopped it at least 4 or 5 times. When we got to the car Dan decided to go with a friend of his and we left with our car towards home. Again he did not come back that night. We started to feel that he has some problems because no one gave him the car, he could not drive so we think he had some DUI ( driving under influence of alcohol). The third day was the maximum. In the morning we came to the house to have breakfast and as early as ten o’clock he started to behave very strange, I thought he is on drugs( something very powerful) but later he admits he has been drinking a whole bottle of Rom that same morning. He was screaming nervously than laughing nervously, changing thoughts and words and having no coherence, throwing his stuff through the house. At a certain point both me and Jan felt this cannot go good and we need to get away from there. We packed the little things that we had around and as soon as one of his flatmates came to the house we told him we will go and that he is in a very bad condition. The guy was ok with it also adding that it seems to be a common behaviour lately. Probably Dan was dealing with his past but not in the most advisable way. I do not think he is a bad guy but I do think that he got beyond the limits of common sense and that we do not need this kind of things during our travel. I felt better being out in the fields camping than close to his house. This kind of people consumes the energy of the people around them and by having this behaviour they just spread bad vibes.
After doing some shopping in town for the next few days, we started the road back to Yellowstone because we still had some things to visit and honestly that evening was the most relaxing I had after the weekend we have spent in the proximity of Dan.



We could take our seats outside and I read all the afternoon while Jan walked a bit around. The landscape was nice, close to a river and in the night the whole ski was inundated with stars. The more you spend time in the nature, the more you realise how many things we lose or we do not know or appreciate anymore because we live in the city. Next day we woke up fresh and with more energy than ever and we finished our visit in Yellowstone with wildlife watching ( a herd of bisons).



From here we will be crossing the plains of Midwest towards Ohio, where Amanda and Mark are waiting for us!

Seattle and Bellingham, Washington state

Going back on the road gives me a feeling of relief. Looking outside the window of the car and enjoying the views it’s like seeing a documentary from a comfy couch. When the road is going and everything runs smoothly and there are no stress factors I feel that life on the road is the best thing it can happen. You are always the stranger in the city, no one knows you, and you can always be and feel as the person you want to be without social boundaries. I love that. After Oregon we went on the west coast on US up north into Washington State, crossing little towns like Astoria, with Victorian houses, peaceful and cloudy as all the coast of US. The climate changes from the coast to inland… from 14 to 25 degrees Celsius in just a few miles. I love the cloudy weather. I don’t know why but it gives a feeling of drama, as if we are on the edge of a powerful storm and there is nothing that can make it stop, still the storm never comes. We had no rain in the last 2 months and that is great because when we camp outside I would not like to get wet.

What I noticed is that in US no house is made of brick or stone as in Europe most of the dwellings are made of these materials , and although the winters are not milder it seems that America abounds of woods so people find it easier to build everything with timber. The last hundreds of miles we crossed deep woods of conifers, spread all over the states. Both Oregon and Washington are bear countries. The Olympic peninsula has pretty beaches full of trees brought by the fast rivers that come from the mountains and end in the ocean. The houses are beautiful and the air is clean but it seems me and Jan we suffer from some sort of allergy to the pollen or other things in the air because we always complain of pain in the nose or skin rashes. While being on the peninsula I saw many warnings about vampires…it seems they filmed here the Twilight series and people are fascinated with the story. I am most fascinated with a childhood TV series called Twin Peaks and actually it is here in Washington State that they filmed it. After 2 days on the peninsula we took the ferry to Seattle where another host was waiting for us. Carol and Jeff are a middle aged couple, in their 60s , an autumn love as they met 2 years ago and decided to spend their time enjoying life, which I think people should do , we should always be in the search of love and companionship. We were received in their beautiful home in Mercer Island and got a beautiful room just for us. Immediately we felt welcomed and the same Friday night as we arrived, we had dinner and then went to a classic English dances night. It was fun to participate although I have to admit that these kinds of dances are not my favorite. The mathematics in it (counting the steps and the moves) make me really tired. We spent three hours dancing ( probably the longest time I ever spend dancing…ever) and got back home to a nice bed and fell asleep immediately. Carol and Jeff had it all organized for Saturday and around noon we left towards a lake where the family of Jeff had vacation houses and his brother was organizing his birthday weekend party. We were about 100 people, all friends and friends of friends, we talked with people, Jan went on the canoe, ate great food. It has been great. Same evening we came back home and next day ( Sunday we spent it at home relaxing). On Monday , pretty early (8 am) we went to Seattle to the Canadian embassy where I applied for my tourist visa. One entry is 75 dollars (multiple is 150). After a long waiting line and an easy interview I got my visa in the afternoon and we went happy for a walk in downtown Seattle. I actually like a lot Seattle. Even if it is quite a big city, it gives a laid back feeling.
There is a nice park and a vegetables and fish market, and we had an amazing Italian gelato in a little Italian coffee shop. Next day, Tuesday , Jan wanted to go to Mt Rainier for a day or two , so early in the morning we drove to one side of the mountain and slept there, although I must admit I was quite annoyed by the aggressiveness of the mosquitoes.
Next day we drove around Mt. Rainier and Jan did a few walks while I rested in my camping chair reading a novel and getting bitten by the mosquitoes.




Getting back to Seattle in the house of Carol and Jeff we spent another peaceful night and Thursday evening we went for a walk and visited some openings of art galleries. There is a lot of artistic life in Seattle and people try to gain money from open air concerts, art fairs and galleries. After almost one week relaxing with Carol and Jeff but also sharing ideas about travels, God(or better said his absence) and life in general, it was time to leave Seattle and direct ourselves to Bellingham where our friend Amy ( a member of CS that hosted us one year ago in China) was waiting for us. We left Saturday morning, on a rainy weather, with the prospect of a rainy weekend but before leaving Seattle for good we also visited Freemont street and the troll of Seattle and a chocolate factory where we enjoyed for free several kinds of chocolate and coffee.
I always like to meet again friends that we made along the travel and this time it was time to see again Amy, a young American girl that we met one year ago in Xining, China, and with whom we spent really nice moments back then and now again we were looking forward to see her again.
Amy lives in Bellingham, very close to the border with Canada…less than 30 minutes. Bellingham is a small town, with many young people, due to the university here, probably the less American town we’ve been till now. You can walk to most of the places in town which in the rest of the cities is impossible. The shared house where Amy rents a room is close to the motorway from Seattle but the feeling of the house was quite nice. The house mates of Amy are 3 great guys: Chris, Zach and Michael with whom we made friendship instantly. Amy used to study here in Bellingham and when she came back from China after teaching English for one year she decided that the best moments of her life were in this city, her best friends are here so best thing to do is to come back and make some more roots. Amy is a great person, and to prove that she gave up her room, her sanctuary and slept on the couch and we had 4 restful nights in her home. Same night of our arrival it was party time, so around 10 pm we all dressed up and walked to the house party where other 30-40 people were listening to disco music and drank some alcohol. It was great to experience this kind of party, the typical we see in US films. At about 2 am we left the party and came back home walking again. I felt as when I was at university and no one really thought about the future and what our life will be like. We were all living the moment. Amy is a very creative girl, and besides writing (she studied creative writing) she also joined a punk music band about 2 weeks ago and they were already having their 2nd house concert planned for Monday night in a house in Bellingham. It seems that many young alternative people in US at some point in their life join a band or go on a road trip. While Monday morning Amy was at work, I left Jan at home and I walked through Bellingham stopping in a vintage shop for hours in a row. I was so overwhelmed by the watching of a common shopping behavior of the young Americans (the thrift stores and second hand stores and vintage shops are in fashion here) and I kind of needed a small leather bag for myself…last one I bought was in Pakistan in the market for just 1 dollar. In the evening we went to a the house concert. It seems in US the amateur art (of any kind) is much more appreciated than in Europe where people tend to value more quality. I enjoyed a lot the house concert where 4 bands played their punk rock songs. Amy’s band was the first one, then a band from San Francisco played( they were on a 2 weeks tour) and 2 more from Bellingham. Some of the songs were pretty good. People that do these tours they gain money from donations of people (normally enough for gas till the next location) and they also sell their Cd’s or other handy crafts.
After 4 magnificent days spend with so many wonderful people that live the American dream with less money but seem to be more happy, it was time to take the road again. I was so sad to leave Amy again but I am hoping that one day we will see her again maybe this time in Spain. I will miss you Amy and Bellingham …and all your house mates and friends that were great people and with whom we shared many stories, has great laughs, walked the town in the night, had dinners….(they are great cooks).

Oregon state- the green state

When we meet nice people along the way , it is always sad to say goodbye to them, and so it was a bit sad to leave San Francisco but the prospect of a few days alone on the west coast of the US seemed like a nice thing to do. We left the bay area and started to drive on the coast, direction RedWood national park. If you want to stick to the coast of the US you need to drive the 101 road which is quite spectacular but foggy this time of the year. The coastal area is not very populated; actually the whole west coast is much less populated than the east coast, that’s what the local people say. We managed to arrive to the Redwood national park, saw the elks…impressive animals and continued on the coast because we were expected in Grant pass the next day. In 2008 we met Do Lee in Greece. She is a 55 year old American lady, that smokes pot and has quite a tumultuous life. The time we met her in 2008 I had the feeling she is a bit strange, but now meeting her again she seemed almost the same. She left America for Greece a few years ago, having divorced her third husband now she was living alone, taking care of a friend of hers who has terminal cancer. We spent in Do Lees rented flat about 2 nights, with very few moments of talking to her but much more shared moments with her ex husband Dimitri (who came to visit from Greece) and another women she met in town and whom loved to talk about her life, so from whom we learned many new interesting facts about the Americans or some of them were just confirmed.I was happy, or better say very happy to leave her house in Oregon because I need to fill myself with positive energy. I promised myself that this last part of the travel will be filled only with as much positive things as I can get so my mind and body are working against negative vibes.
Our adventure continued towards Crater Lake where we arrived Friday and where we spent the whole day driving around. The place is amazing, with incredible blue water, nice reflexions, a bit of snow. The only horrible thing is the mosquitoes and flies that make your stay an impossible experience. The aggressiveness of the insects must be explained through the hard and long winters with big amounts of snow covering everything so the few months of summer make them eager to sustain their life and energy by biting everything that moves and has blood. We spent just one day in the Crater Lake National Park, but I would say it is enough. In the evening we went down through the woods that extend for hundreds and hundreds of miles. Oregon in general is very green, low density of population and quite wild in the woods. Many poor people moved from big cities back into small abandoned wood houses in the woods and they live with less to nothing. We crossed some places through the woods with shacks, and homeless people and it looked quite weird and scary but seems that especially now with the crisis many more people go back to country side life. Saturday we arrived to Oregon City where Terry, a 60 year old American lady was expecting us. She owns a very nice house on a hill in Oregon City and offered us the nice bedroom of her daughter. We were hosted together with another Spanish girl who was was travelling for 2 months in US. We connected pretty well, had a nice dinner together and talked about travels, people, and couch surfing. It is amazing how much good it can do to travel like this, using CS and meeting local people. An average night in a motel in US is about 50$...like really cheap and weird places, so for us to spend 1500$ per month just for accommodation it cannot be. In the 2 months that we have been already in the US, we spent 20 days camping and the rest with nice friendly people, the number of our hosts rising now to 7. On Sunday we were expected at the house of Chris and Jen, in Portland, but in the morning me, Malen and Terry went out in east Portland to do some shopping, wonder through small shops and go to organic farmers market. It was a morning for the girls because Jan stayed home working on his computer. In the evening we left towards the house of Chris and Jen whom I was hoping to be a nice couple with whom we could spend some time together having a blast but I was surprised we had some difficulties to communicate with them at the begining. I always remember the great friendship with David and Maria and probably anything compared to them is just not the same. We spent three days at their house, sleeping for the first time on an extensible couch (still I must admit I had great sleeps). The first night I cooked some Spanish omelet that we enjoyed a lot and the next night they cooked for us 2 amazing pizzas.

Their hobby seemed to be cooking, but besides that they also were doing yoga. The second night we managed to discover that they are passionate table game players, so we began playing Carcassonne, and then Dominion (which I enjoyed quite a lot). The game captivated our time spent in the house so we managed to communicate quite well on that level. I suppose that for many people it is difficult to open to other people especially those who come from other cultures.
. During our stay at the house of Chris and Jen we went out to visit some parts of the city of Portland, but the more we try to visit the big cities of US the more it is confirmed to us that there is not much to see here.


To be honest both me and Jan think that the American cities are not so nice, still in Portland we could relax in the rose garden, where we spent an entire afternoon.
Also we did a day trip outside Portland, to mount Hood, quite a famous place for the horror film connoisseurs, because here is the place where they filmed Shining. After 3 nights spent in their house, we finished our stay there with a nice dinner and another game . It was again time to go on the road, this time towards Seattle but with 2 days camping trip to Olympus county and national park.

SAN FRANCISCO

After a well deserved celebration of the winning of the football world cup, we went to buy groceries for the next days , including 2 camping chairs, a gas stove and a pot. I was really tired of eating cold meals all day long so I thought a little stove might help us make our diet easier for the stomach. It was a good decision because the same day as we entered Sequoia national park I heated some vegetables from a can and also I fried some sausage just to be sure we attract enough bears to our table. Sequoia National Park is beautiful, and in this park are found some of the biggest trees in the whole world, tall, voluminous, some of them older than 3000years, real books of history.




We did some walks through the park; saw about 8 bears in 3 hours, including a mother with her 3 baby bears. Since I come from Brasov, Romania, and I know how bear mind works I was keeping enough distance to be safe but Jan on the other hand, that probably never heard or saw a bear attack was approaching them at a very unsafe distance….still surprisingly nothing happened to him but the whole park was full of signs indicating security measures in case of bear attacks. We were also informed that we should not keep the food in the car during the night because the bears can brake into the car. As always Jan loves hard core adrenalin so we spent the night camping in the park with our nice van full of yummy food.


I could not sleep all night having nightmarish thoughts of a bear jumping on the car, breaking the window and cutting my head off. Next day as you can imagine it was change of policy day, so I told Jan we need to park safer next time because I cannot afford 2 sleepless nights in a row. It seems difficult for Jan to understand my fear of bears but I remember the times when I was living in Racadau and if I was visiting a neighbor that was living in a different house I had to stay overnight because you could not cross the street due to hungry bear presence. Close to Sequoia Park there is another smaller park called Kings Canyon, a drier and hotter place, but still very beautiful. The landscape of eastern California is amazing, yellow fields, hills with trees and yellow grass, many fruit trees, horses, farms, it gives a very idyllic feeling. They say that California is the state that has everything: from ocean to high mountains, dry deserts to snow, green valley and yellow hills… surely I would say it is one of the most beautiful regions of the world.
If you come to California, another destination that you should not miss is Yosemite National Park. The park is located on the west side of Death Valley in a higher mountain zone with green beautiful woods, meadow, lakes, animals, high picks. We stayed only 2 days here although you can spend much more time doing easy trails or more long and difficult ones. Something that is very typical here is to go and see the water falls, which are amazingly beautiful. The best light to catch the true feeling of Yosemite in a photo is the sunset light when all the east wilderness of the park is illuminated by the sunset. Although Yosemite is such a beautiful place, you can get tired of being surrounded by so many people spending their vacation and making the whole place look crowded. This is something that happened to us a few times here in the US, being summer, everyone has a vacation and many people seem to chose camping trips to the national parks so the beautiful scenery can be sometimes disturbed by the multitude of people. After spend 5 or 6 days relaxing through the parks it was time to hit again the coast of California with a destination that no one should miss in the US : San Francisco.
I have been searching for a host in San Francisco and it was difficult to find someone so I looked outside of the bay and I found Kevin in San Leandro and he responded positively to my request. We arrived late in the afternoon at Kevins house, a small but relaxing 2 bedroom property with a big living and a nice little garden. Immediately Kevin made us feel like at home giving us the possibility to recharge batteries, clean clothes and work on the computer. Later we had a small dinner together commenting details of our trip and he detailing a bit about his life, beliefs and sexual orientation ( he is gay).



I knew that San Francisco is the capital of the gay , with a large community residing in the area, with less prejudices and maybe more freedom of expression. Actually I think we were very lucky to be accommodates in his house because like this we could learn how society influences their lives and their political choices. Kevin declared himself still a Christian (he is of Irish origins) but not involved with the authoritarian catholic church and a supported of Obama. Most of the people in San Francisco support Obama. The second day in the hose of Kevin, we met Francisco, his partner (of Cuban origin), who is a philology doctor and a psychiatrist. We could enlarge our themes of discussions and also learn many more things over a dinner that I prepared. The same evening we were invited by Francisco and Kevin to a movie. I loved the idea of watching my first Hollywood made movie in an American cinema and actually it was quite an interesting film, with limited release, about a gay family and their problems. We spent a great evening, also going to a folk concert in a bar, Kevin also drove to some interest points of San Francisco. The night that we drove to the cinema we were coming back home on the motor way and we saw a big traffic jam in front at 10.30 pm , police cars and we felt that something happened so I tell Jan to take the first exit on the right and get out of the motor way to be able to avoid the jam. We did not know what was going on but there were maybe 30 police cars, ambulances, and firefighters…like a whole army blocking the motorway. Many cars were stuck there and it seemed like something really bad had happened. We were able to cross the motorway on the sides although it was blocked for several km’s and we arrived home before Kevin because he was stuck in the jam. Next day we discovered what happened. It seems police was following a car for speeding and when they managed to stop the car the van was full of guns and the man in the car started to shoot. It seems that the policed killed the guy but still they secured the whole area for more than 24h and the FBI was investigating the case. It was exactly one of those nights from the movies.
We spent 5 days relaxing in the house of Kevin but also visiting the Bay area. We had to cross the bridge into San Francisco every time paying 5$. We went to the old hippie area of San Francisco on Hait Street, where you can still see the hippie shops and a lot of tourists and homeless people. San Francisco is famous for many things and one of it is the architecture, old Victorian houses in colorful colors, big skyscrapers in downtown and the Golden Gate Bridge and the Golden Gate Park. We saw all the attractions, but probably the most impressive in the Golden Gate Bridge.


The cold and the mist were making sightseeing a painful job. In the summer the whole west coast but especially the bay area of San Francisco is affected by the cold currents coming from Alaska, creating the fog. All day long it seems that a huge, demonic storm is about to release its power on the city but every day passes with no rain. The wind that blows into the bay area is no less demonic dropping the temperatures severely. (No more than 14•C during day time). We were lucky also because we could celebrate Jan’s birthday in San Francisco and Kevin and Francisco invited us to Francisco’s house in San Francisco for dinner. They even bought a cake and two other lesbian friends came so we were 3 couples, 1 heterosexual and 2 gay. It was really a lovely evening, being able to share ideas, clarify prejudices and understand the American society in a better way. It was one of those nights that you will always remember and it will always give you the feeling that what you are doing in life is right for you and that our travel is the best thing of our lives.