Florida was not in our travel plan, not at all. But what can one do when, on the way to Mexico in Dallas' airport, one realises that one's passport is suddenly missing? I suppose that I lost it at the airport in LA when passing through security. Not only do you have to show proof of your identity, but you also need to remove your shoes, your belt, your coat, show your computer and... tutti quanti. Well somewhere in all that mess, my passeport dissapeared! After a couple of nights spent in the Dallas area, we flew from Dallas to Atlanta. [View Full Entry]

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San Francisco is too well known from all of you, so we won't go into too much detail. It is a real city in the European understanding, a city where you can walk, take the bus or the tram and leave your car at home. We stayed in a B&B in the Castro, the 'gay' neighbourhood where most of the action in the movie 'Milk' happens. As in other SF neighbourhoods, most of the old Victorian houses have been restored and it is really nice to walk around. It is not possible to speak about SF without mentioning it's bay, the [View Full Entry]

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As we had to pass very close to it, we found it impossible not to visit the Napa Valley where so much Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot et tuttu quanti come from. We also visited Sonoma where we could find some good Pinot Noir. So we picked up 2 wineries which don't charge too much for tasting. The first we visited was the Regusci winery called a gost winery because they are one of the few who survived the phylloxera infestation of the 1890's, the prohibition and the 1930's depression. This winery is very good in Zinfandel and Cabernet and the buidings and [View Full Entry]

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Crater Lake National Park is a fascinating place. The whole area is part of the Pacific circle if fire, there are loads of volcanoes around, all inactive at least for the moment. Crater lake lies inside a volcanic basin (caldera) and was created when Mount Mazama collapsed 7 700 years ago following an eruption. There is a lake in the crater, very deep with beautiful blue water. As you will see on the pictures, a second smaller volcano showed up inside the 'old' crater and has itself a crater. The region is beautiful and we manged to do some nice hikes; [View Full Entry]

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After Seattle we were more in unknown territory, it was the less prepared and documented part of our US trip. We enjoyed Seasite and Newport, but hated Lincoln City. If you read these lines and intend to go to Oregon, listen to this: never go to Lincoln City a waste on this planet. Although it is rather cold, this part of the Pacific Coast is beautiful, full of life. We had fun watching these colonies of birds flying about 50 cm to 1 meter above the sea and diving to catch fish. Brown pelicans were a surprise to us, we saw [View Full Entry]

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The Combia River gorge is a must, it is beautiful and a scenic road follows the gorge and brings you to all the nice spots. The gorge started being formed millions of years ago, but at the end of the last Ice Age quick erosion due to floods, cut deep through the volcanic rock so that most affuents ended up as waterfall. After visiting the gorge we went to Dufur where we had booked a room at the Balch hotel. This historic hotel is situated in a small country village surrounded by wheat fields. We very much enjoyed our stay there [View Full Entry]

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From Glacier National park to Seattle is it close to 1,000 KM so we had a 'technical stop' and stayed one noight in Coeur d'Alene in Idaho. It is a very pretty city, but more importantly it has a fantastic camera shop with wonderful people. Let me explain this. We had a problem with one of our camera flash cards. We couldn't use it anymore, it is a 16GB card with about 10,000 picturtes on it, we were desperate. Camera Corral in Coeur d'Alene fixed it for us, they had a cumputer program running all night and recovered 95% of our [View Full Entry]

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After Grand Teton National park we headed north to Montana and visited Glacier National Park. The park is on the border with Canada where it becomes Waterton Lakes National Park. The park is big and everything there is remote; bears are everywhere. From the park newspaper: “In 1850, there were an estimated 150 glaciers in the park. By 1968, the number was reduced to around 50. Today only 26 glaciers remain in the park, many of which are mere remnants of what they once were. Scientists predict all glaciers in Glacier National Park will be gone by the year 2030”. The [View Full Entry]

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Just south of Yellowstone. You barely leave Yellowstone and a few minutes later you are in the Grand Teton area. The two parks are so close and have very different climates. Teton is a much smaller park and the crowds tend to flock to Yellowstone mainly. Guess what, there are bears in Teton also, but this time we were greeted by the elusive moose. That set it for us. The Teton area is also so rich with wildlife, there was a moment when we shared the trail with a coyote! We only spent two full days in the Tetons and got [View Full Entry]

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We left Billings (Montana) early morning and decided to enter through the Northeast Entrance and take the scenic way to Yellowstone instead of the busy interstate. We made our way through a town called Red Lodge and as soon as we started climbing we experienced dramatic changes in the weather, something Yellowstone is famous for. The N-E entrance is at 2 245 meters and the peaks surrounding it can reach over 3 300 meters. No wonder we were greeted by a snow storm, pretty frightening and awesome at the same time. The park covers north west of Wyoming, south of Montana [View Full Entry]

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