Stardate 020071202: California trip

Thanksgiving break was something that everybody was expecting for. People made plans to go on trips to California, New York etc already months before the break. I ended up going to California by car with Jiang (from China), Seth (American) and Coco (from France). We rented a car and drove first all the way to San Francisco, about 20 hours! We were staying in the most dangerous area in the city in a crapy hostel. But San Francisco is really an amazing city! It's very small in area but so dense that it's crazy. The houses are very tightly close to each other and the blocks and areas change suddenly when walking in the streets.

Me and Jiang on the streets of San Francisco

San Francisco at night

The city hall

Some houses..

In San Francisco we were walking quite a lot because the parking was a bit problematic. Even so problematic that we ended up getting two parking tickets...in total worth 100 dollars... It wasn't really funny at the moment :P Anyway, we were walking around the city, in Chinatown, Golden Gate Park and Fisherman's Wharf. Especially the coast line was really amazing. We found an ice ring too but didn't go skating eventually. On the last day we went to Golden Gate bridge and were walking on it. Then we drove outside the city and went to kind of a national park, called Muir Woods. It was really beautiful place, very peaceful, like a contrast to the busy city :)

Japanese garden in Golden Gate park

Some downtown view

The trams are one symbol of San Francisco

The Golden Gate bridge

Coco, me and Seth

Muir Woods

Some traffic in San Francisco

After three days in San Francisco we started driving towards Los Angeles. For some reason we decided to take the coast road because we thought that the view would be nicer that from the big freeway. Result: the view was indeed really nice, although it was dark but still you could see the Pacific Ocean in a moonlight, but the road was horrible, very small full of curves and I ended up feeling incredibly car sick. Plus I noticed that I had lost my glasses in San Francisco.

After hours and hours we finally reached Los Angeles found a parking lot and slept in the car. We thought that the parking tickets were worth so much that we should save on something :P Next day we went to walk in Hollywood and saw some beaches and visited the Griffith Observatory, but basically we were just driving around and being stuck in the traffic. Overall LA was quite disappointing.. Very polluted and the traffic...it's just awful! It took us hours to go very small distances and the whole city is so spread out that it was difficult to visit much any places.. So, to sum it up, we really didn't like LA so much..

Los Angeles

Hollywood

View from the Griffith Observatory

Los Angeles is incredibly polluted.. there were no clouds and sun was shining, but still we couldn't see any of the landscape because of the smog!

Telescope in the Griffith Observatory

In the beach during sun set..

"The Baywatches" :D

On the second day in LA we went to Universal Studios. The parking itself cost 10 dollars but it was free to walk in the street where the gift shops were. If we wanted to enter the actual studios, we should have payed about 65 dollars.. We ended up not going.. But instead we went to see a film in the iMax theater! We saw Beowulf in 3D and it was quite cool :) Even the price for the film was cheaper than in Helsinki...

The Universal Studios

Coco, or Forrest Gump?

Me, Seth and Coco

The street in the Universal Studios

After the Universal Studios we were heading to San Diego, the last city in our road trip. In San Diego we were staying in one local aiesecer's place and it was really nice after sleeping in a car for two nights in LA. Taking a shower and just sitting in a sofa felt extremely comfortable. Emerald was really friendly and let us stay at her place for 3 nights. We had Thanksgiving dinner with her and her friends and it was really nice :)

In San Diego we visited the San Diego Zoo and we walking in a really nice park, went to downtown and some beaches. San Diego is a really friendly city, very different from LA for example. One day we were having luch in the beach and a couple started talking with us. We ended up having dinner in the house of the parents of the guy named Steven. They were really tipical American family :P We had a prayer in the beginning of the meal and the father seemed really to be the head of the family. But it was really nice :) I even tasted pumpkin pie for the first time in my life! :D And it was amazingly good!!

Some pictures from Balboa park in San Diego

San Diego Zoo

Jiang, Coco and Seth...

A panda!!

Sunset in a beach

The Old Town of San Diego

Another beach...

...and some view of the city!

On the way back to Las Cruces we stopped in Joshua Tree national park. I think we didn't go to nicest place because for us it looked more like Las Cruces with all the desert! hehehe :D The trip was in total long, tireing, very interesting and also fun! Above all California is really cool place where I definately want to visit again!! :)

Stardate 020071202: Roswell & Carlsbad Caverns

Roswell was one of the cities that I absolutely wanted to visit during my stay here in US. So one weekend we decided to rent a car with few people and drive there for a day :P It seems that in fact there's really nothing to see in Roswell... heheh.. Many people already said that there's nothing to see so we could already kind of expect it :D Basically we just went to the UFO museum and local Wal Mart. The UFO museum was really lame... I was expecting something a bit better than just some pictures and text on the walls.. And plus you had to pay 5 dollars for it. I wouldn't recommend. Besides the museum was really small and the gift shop expencive and crapy. Anyway, we went to see the local Wal Mart because we were told that it would look funny outside with the ufo stuff. And it seemed that Wal Mart of Roswell had the best souvenirs we could find and the cheapest ones too :)

Streetlamps in Roswell are shape of ufo :D

Everything in Roswell is about UFOs :P

Me and Julia hugging an alien!

On the way back to Las Cruces we stopped in a ghost town called Lincoln. It was in fact quite creapy.. It was already dark and there was absolutely nobody, we could only hear dogs barking. Not even any cars were passing by... I took a small video there, you can't see so much, but listen carefully ;) It's like Blare Witch Project :D

Next day we drove to Carlsbad Caverns, a really amazing network of caves that was formed during millions of years. It was like mines of Moria from the Lord of the Rings! Really cool! I took lots of pictures but most of them are too dark or blurry, but I tried to select here some of the best ones.

View from outside the caves.

The natural entrance, it was also possible to go there with an elevator

Inside the caverns...

On the way back we went to see some small waterfalls and were also hunting some other ghost towns. We kind of found one but then we got lost on the way. We wanted to get back to the highway to El Paso but we ended up to some very strange and small road which seemed like not a road at all. It was full of huge stones and we could only drive like 10 miles per hour and in addition to that we were running out of gas.. We decided to turn back and ended up in a camping area which was the end of the road. We were guided to drive back to Carslbad, the city and take the highway from there. Well, we just managed to go there with the gas that we had left :D In total we were lost for hours and decided to have dinner in Carlsbad. So that the story wouldn't get too boring, we came back to Las Cruces something like 1 in the morning and plus I got some strange stomach ache and was throwing up the whole night!

The waterfalls

Queen, the ghost town we found! After this we got lost...