This is it, I have arrived on the shores of the Atlantic Ocean, almost exactly 5’000 miles after departing in San Francisco. What a journey! Thanks, Prius! J Clarkson would probably just keep on driving and dump you into the sea, but I have to return you to the rental company tomorrow. I am sure they will be jumping for joy! Including all rental, fuel and incidental costs, the Prius has cost me 0.25 cents per mile (0.15 sFr / km), and I have beaten the official US EPS combined fuel consumption of 49 mpg (I will try to make it to 51 mpg by tomorrow at rental return)!

“You are all set. Welcome to Canada”. Stamp, stamp, passport closed and returned. I have arrived in Canada. Took me 2 minutes, of which I have spent 1:45 explaining my work as a volunteer National Park Ranger and that I needed to make sure I exited the US before Sept 30. If only the US could be that easy to enter. I have already nightmares about my re-entry in five days, seeing the queue of cars on the bridge that went the other way, from Sault Ste Marie (CAN) to Sault Ste Marie (USA) on the other side of the river… I need to find that little border crossing with no traffic at all, into Vermont or New Hampshire or so!

It was a beautiful fall day, not too warm, sunny, bright colors, hundreds of bridges and lake passings on the Trans Canada Highway. The drive is pretty long, still, and I am now in Sudbury, of which I haven’t seen anything except the hotel and the gas station next door (which does not sell beers, we are in Ontario, and apparently they have similar liquor laws as Utah). Tomorrow I will be in the Toronto area, which will be the shortest distance to drive for a while (5:30 hours), and I hope to have some more time stopping along the road without ever looking at the Sat Nav adding time to my estimated arrival.

These days have been quite long, every day like 400+ miles to drive across countryside that is really beautiful and plentiful, but still can get boring if there is a relatively straight road across it. However, many photos tell the storey, so enjoy the following instead of too many words of mine:

A relatively steep ladder, Badlands National Park, South Dakota, USA

A relatively small sign for a relatively important site in history, Minuteman Missile NHS, South Dakota, USA

A relatively tall sign for the great nothing, Fort Pierre National Grassland, South Dakota, USA

Relatively dangerous, Rattlesnake Sign, South Dakota, USA

He's aimed pretty straight at me..., Sheep, Badlands NP, South Dakota, USA

Relatively colorful - the Badlands just after sunset, South Dakota, USA

Relatively straight and boring ... state route across the Plains of the Dakotas, USA

Mysterious and foggy, Detroit Lakes Area, Minnesota, USA

Quite a few trees, Chippewa National Forest, Minnesota, USA

Still relatively young and small: Mississippi River in Minnesota, USA

Relatively spacious... and a great view, courtesy of Diamond Membership, Hampton Inn Marquette on the shore of Lake Superior, Michigan, USA

Yellowstone is big and alive and fascinating! Unfortunately, it is bigger than my time allows, so I assume all that I am doing here is really getting a first taste of the features and the living elements of this supervolcano that we hope will never erupt in our lifetime! And in terms of sightseeing, I haven‘t even spoken of Grand Teton yet.

So let‘s start with the 20th of September, when I arrived in Grand Teton after the „scenic“ drive up from Park City (refer to my driving blog entry) and got right away into the middle of a huge Bison herd. Now this is probably not unheard of in this area, but also I am thinking that many tourists come here and never really get close to Bison, whereas I was literally surrounded by them, but I couldn‘t really help it. What happened is, after I had checked into the Hampton Inn in Jackson town, I left for sunset and had not even entered the boundaries of the park when I came upon a Ranger Guided activity that started by the river side and then continued as an auto corso to various overlooks over the park. At one point I decided to get ahead of them after they had been talking forever at an overlook where there was not too much to see, so I drove down the few miles to famous Mormon Row and the old farm houses to get a few shots of the sunset with the hazy Teton Range in the background (we were surrounded by wildfires at that time, causing the visibility to drop). And well, there I was, parking the car in a pullout when suddenly there was Bison all around us, hundreds of them! And then, the pronhorn was out, too.

Next morning, I was in what they call GTNP proper, waiting for a sunrise that was in fact hiding behind the wildfire smoke. You couldn‘t even see the mountain range unless you were literally standing in front of it. The colors produced by this elusive sun were beautiful, especially up Signal Mountain where I went next, but this natural soft tone filter could not make up for the lack of visibility into the mountains. So I withdrew to the hotel, took a late breakfast and a nap before checking out and moving over to Teton Village to check into the next hotel, where luckily my room was already available. This was good timing and a good location to bypass the main road where I had got stuck three times already in the one-lane section due to roadwork, and to be in time for a ranger guided activity to Taggart lake in the early afternoon. The smoke was still there and the visibility still wasn‘t, but apart from that it was a perfect autumn afternoon, sunny, crips, bright colors, not too warm nor too cold. The walk was leisurely and interesting, and once we reached the first lake I took the opportunity to go a few miles on to a second, where I took my shoes off and cooled my feet in the fresh water before returning another trail down to the parking lot. I had deserved a nice dinner and a swim in the waterfalls and hot tubs of the „award winning spa“ in my lodge, and it was really gorgeous. When I am grown up, i will have a swimming pool like this!

Pickup on the 22nd was at 6:30 in front of the lodge. I was on a Old Faithful / Yellowstone Discovery Tour with Wildlife Expeditions, a „sustainable“ tour company part of Teton Science Schools that can be booked with getyourguide. I went to school with the co-founder and now CFO of getyourguide, and recently have become a freelance travel photographer for them also (very recently, in fact, as the first tour that I have taken photographing for them was in San Francisco). While the tours themselves are mostly OK, the organization of the vouchers and the travel dates by getyourguide have been a nightmare so far, and this one was no exception – as it should have taken place on the 23rd. Only by chance did I find out it was actually 22nd, which cost me my Old Faithful Hotel booking in Yellowstone that I so desparately wanted, and probably cost me my prepaid rate, too. We‘ll see. The tour itself was mostly driving in the truck and getting out, but the guide was very knowledgeable, the two other people on the tour friendly and funny, and we had a good time spotting Moose and Elk (one moose actually walked in front of our car, just yards away from the Yellowstone South Entrance Gate) and getting to Old Faithful in time for one of the eruptions right before lunch. There were good photo ops on the way, both of the tour and the activities we did as well as the scenery and the wildlife, so I hope once more that getyourguide will be satisfied.

Losing my reservation at Old Faithful had meant to find an ad-hoc solution, which I got in form of a hotel room at Grant Village, about an hour before Old Faithful inside Yellowstone National Park. So I had to drive the same route that I had just down with the tour again, but found more bison herds and good sunset spots along the way, getting some more impressions of Yellowstone, including some scenic shots of Waterfalls that we had only briefly stopped by or literally seen from the moving car during the expedition. So the 23rd I started from Grant Village and had to drive only a couple of miles to be in the West Thumb Geyser basin, which is reportedly one of the best for sunrises. The morning was very chilly and cloudy, the sun casting a yellow and orange color on the clouds it was hiding behind, which added to the steamy and gleamy atmosphere of the thermal area. I heard rumors from other visitors that bear and moose just had said good morning, but I couldn‘t spot them myself. On to Old Faithful, then, to discover at my own pace. I had been recommended renting a bike (or having a bike with me, which was a bit too much for the Prius), which is really a great means of getting around in the Upper Geysir Basin between Old Faithful and Morning Glory Pool as well as heading over to Fairy Falls and the beautiful, incredibly beautiful overlook across the Middle Geyser Basin and Grand Prismatic Spring from Fairy Falls Hill! I could spend weeks here, watching and listening to the geysers, the pools, the springs. I said initially that Yellowstone is alive, and nowhere is this more true then here. It burbles, gurgles, hizzes, fizzes, splishes and splashes, fountains and rivers and spouts and cones and everything that comes with the thermal features of an ancient supervolcano that probably had changed the surface of probably half the continent if not more forever when it last erupted.

The previous night, I had been lucky, profiting from a cancellation at Old Faithul and getting a room for tonight. It was a pretty nice room in the „Old Faithful Snow Lodge“, one of three lodging opportunities at OF, but rather an expensive one, given that I have already spent fortunes on hotel rooms and having promised to myself that for the coming days it would be a rather budgety accommodation. Well, not so, but how often can I come to Yelllowstone anyway! But having a room at OF meant I could hang out a little in the late afternoon, get an early dinner at one of the restaurants and then heading out to take long time exposures of erupting geysers, in particular Grand, during sunset and dusk hours when I could manage exposure times of between 1 and 15 seconds, and then, at night, finally one of Old Faithful. However, it had started raining a little and there was neither moon nor stars, so I could not compete with other people having taken such pictures before.

A glimpse out the window confirmed that there would not be much in terms of nice dawn light or an intense sunrise, so rather than going out to the Prismatic Spring again, I decided to run the bike down the path past Castle geyser towards Morning Glory Pool (the name must come from somewhere?!) but got stopped short by an erupting Grotto Geyser. Now this is really my favorite, intricate in its forms, not quite sure if it symbolizes some Italian art, but the sun coming through the morning haze added to the atmosphere, I liked it a lot! I spent more times around all the Geysers and Pools, using my new tripod for rather unconventional „high up“ photographs where only the camera can be lifted, not the photographer himself, before leaving around 10 o‘clock to return the bike and continue north towards Mammoth Springs, which would be my last stop inside the Park. There was so much to see and even more to miss along the way, so I got only ideas of the Lower Geyser Basins, all the sightseeing detour roads or the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone, which in late afternoon light was unfortunately exactly 180° of where I wanted it to be, and I definitely could not come back in the morning, so I had to give this one a pass. Well well, so far so good, tomorrow I will try to complete the „Big Five Animals of the Yellowstone“, driving the Beartooth Highway out of the park towards Cody and then probably almost to South Dakota.

Most of you might probably agree that driving has brought many advantages to mankind. This is not to mean that driving does only good, but the primary intention was to make it easier for us. So we don’t speak of the gazillion accidents every year on this planet, and neither of the negative impacts it will have if 8 billion people decide they want a car. But, for us, mostly it brings us to the destination faster, easier and with a lot more luggage than we could carry ourselves.

So, driving across the US should be a piece of cake, then! But here’s the thing – while driving is a blessing most of the time, it can also be a curse. I expect to do approx. 5’000 miles overall, and not all of them will be interesting. I mean, if I am driving a “scenic” route from A to B I would assume all of the journey will be scenic and nice and curvy and interesting. Not so. Probably 45 minutes of the overall drive of 5 hours is scenic and interesting, and to get to that scenic route, you had to detour for 45 minutes… and the rest is just flat, straight and boring.

So it would be nice to have that invisible driver with you that does not need to have a pit stop, doesn’t get tired, never complains and doesn’t cost anything, neither food nor drink nor accommodation or fees. So once the scenic portion is over and you’re tired and sick of holding that steering wheel just straight you could just switch seats and do something efficient, like read a book or plan the journey ahead. But unfortunately, that driver is not there.

Some of the new driving assistance gadgets are going the right direction, but for the full automated driving in portions where you don’t want to do it, it’s just not there yet. Adaptive cruise control and side & lane assist do a good job but it is still a mile to the full autopilot. Of course, the Prius doesn’t have all of that. Now, this may turn into a little bit of a road test report of the Prius, so if you could not care less you can skip this section. The Prius has at least cruise control, for which I am very grateful, and it does have it in the right place: It is not yet another button on the steering wheel, but a separate lever on the right lower side of the steering wheel that is fully intuitive and blind to operate: Push the button = On. Down: Set and decel. Up: Resume and accel. Pull towards you: Standby. Whoever between the 1980ies (Mercedes-Benz) and 2011 (Jeep Grand Cherokee) decided to put it from there onto the steering wheel should be tarred and feathered instantly.
Other than the lack of assistance systems, which you could get on the Prius if you wanted to spend another 10’000 CHF in Switzerland (just checked their website), and the noise from the resistance optimized tires, the car is actually pretty good for such a long ride. Of course, especially the part at the gas station. Where I could sink about 100 dollars on previous rental cars in Hawai’i and they still would not be full, I haven’t managed yet to spend 40 dollars and not have to return to the counter to retrieve my 5 or 10 USD in change! Another great part is the “touristy driving” in the National Parks and so. Slowing down to watch wildlife and pull over on the shoulder: Silent. Starting again slowly to decide to go to the main parking lot: Silent. Exiting from the parking lot with half battery left and rolling downhill to the next scenic spot: Silent AND a full battery when stopping down there.

Well, so far I have come a good way and can relax a little while here in Grand Teton. Tomorrow I will be on an organized tour with Getyourguide, for which I am doing some freelance photography, and then will proceed to staying in Yellowstone. Which will mean, by the way, that I won’t have cellphone or internet coverage and will not be able to add to the blog for another couple of days. This is why I have added a few more “pictures of the day” here and here.

And here’s the “scenic drive gallery”

Yes I know, even more cars, but I guess I had to compensate for the Prius, and then I am not too much into the gambling and glamour of The Strip, therefore I joined a track driving experience in Las Vegas – not really “track driving day” but still a few laps.

You pay a lot of money, you drive out into the desert to “Speedway Boulevard”, and the company now as their own race track. So you wait in line with a lot of other jerks who want to spend a lot of money in a very short time, listen to an introduction to racetrack driving course that is nowhere close to new to you, get a helmet and drive around a track with like 3 corners in about 10 seconds per lap, and you get five laps per car (of course you can always add to those, if you like, and as long as the car doesn’t break before that).

I actually broke the Porsche’s transmission while passing an Audi R8, but as it is a flappy-paddle gearbox, it is not my fault! Apart from that and the instructor breaking always before me in the Porsche, it was really not that much of an exciting car. Perfect, well balanced and probably really fast, but without any ado. The Nissan (and the instructor that came with it) was much more fun and instructive and the guy showed me the way round the track. The Nissan is a pretty heavy car that needs hard work at the wheel, but gosh is it fast!

This was royal treatment, I must say and also give my warmest recommendations to the Hilton San Francisco Financial District. I had posted on facebook previously that I had gotten a room with “twelve doors” (including all balcony doors, though) and uploaded a panorama picture in the daily photo section here.

Well, here’s the background. In fact, I did not really do much to get it other than stay with the same hotel chain a lot. I have become a “Diamond member” of the Hilton Honors membership program pretty early during my sabbatical, as I stayed in some franchised hotels of them during my travels in the Southwest to the Solar Eclipse and back and in Hawai’i. Especially there, Hilton hotels seem to be in a high category to earn points, and suddenly I found myself climbing the HHonors ladder fro msilver through gold to Diamond, their highest category, which really has a lot of benefits.

In the San Francisco Financial Hilton Hotel (formerly the Holiday Inn with its famous rooftop Swimming Pool that features in a movie whose name I can’t remember at the moment), this Diamond Membership meant that there was suddenly this upgrade to the Presidential Suite out of nowhere for the initial two days reservation, as well as the access to the Club Lounge with free breakfast and appetizers and drinks 24 hours per day and of course this priceless 27th floor view to the Bay. When I commented about this upon checkout (I did not dare making a comment earlier than that!) and that I had another booking for the last three days in San Francisco, I got an apology that “the presidential suite was taken those days, but one of the Junior Suites would be available”. Only the 25th floor 😉

Well, I have left San Francisco now (see daily photo) and it will be over with city luxury for a moment, the woods are calling!

The true smell of San Francisco is the one experienced when riding downhill on the Cable Cars: The intense, not really ill but still somewhat “getting-to-you” smell of the hot brakes and brakepads and the cable running underneath the streets. I guess once it has gotten into your nose and brain, it is just hard-coded there forever and will remind you of all the other fantastic cable car rides you have taken before – that’s at least how I have felt today after having bought my weekly Muni pass and completed my first ride during this stay in San Francisco.

The weather during the day is really fine, some take it to be the best days of summer in the Bay Area, but it really does get chilly at night, so better pack that sweater and windbreaker for the night rides on the squeaking and rumbling cable cars up- and downhill. I know that I have probably been taking the same photographs over and over again, but technology evolves, does it not?! So now with my new Eos 5D Mk III camera I don’t have to be afraid of the high ISO settings or dirt on the sensor and can make my pictures even better than last time, right? And anyway, I just picked up the “Lonely Planet Travel Photographer” book in one of the bookstores I visited and read about the essential behavioral elements a travel photographer needs to have, and one of the things (besides the: “You will always test the patient of everyone else with you”) that struck me was the comment that the travel photographer has to “see the things that are not there” to get new and stunning photographs while traveling. So perhaps that’s exactly what I am doing when trying out the still new-to-me camera that already has done thousands of photographs since I started and yet is not quite mastered by me with all the new fancy functionality. So I keep trying with these cable cars and the dusk and night scenes here in downtown SF – and there’s always the historic street cars, too. They smell a little less but rumble just as much…

A lot has happened since my last blog entry – I mean, I have ended my volunteer appointment after three months with the National Park Service, tried to squeeze everything into the maximum allowance for airline travel (two suitcases at 50 pounds each plus a bulging backpack especially with my underwater camera case in there plus another “personal item”) and left the Big Island. Traveling again – living out of the suitcase and hitting hotels or B&Bs every other night or so again.

My flight from Hilo took directly to Honolulu, and at the Hertz counter (sorry I could not help myself) I upgraded from a Toyota Yaris (I cannot really drive a car that has the name of a 2 year old that I know…) to another Mustang Convertible for a handful of Dollars, so ultimately it was WAY cheaper than renting one out at a regular rate, and in no time did I find myself at the Hawaiian Village in Waikiki, getting a really sweet deal out of my two separate bookings – a crappy room for the first two nights and a quite good room for the next three nights ended up being upgraded for free to a corner (2 balconies) room in the Rainbow tower steps from the ocean.

Waikiki Beach at Hilton Hawaiian Village, O'ahu, Hawai'i

Some of the other activities on O’ahu you already know:
– The diving that was really just a swimming pool lesson on how to use your fins to make a great circle – OK there were a few turtles thrown in for a few seconds before we had to move on.
– Visiting Bishop museum, which is quite overwhelming especially if you are not too familiar with Hawaiian history and culture and language etc., but it was so good to finally see these Kahili ornaments and the feather capes for the royal Ali’i after so much talking and hearing about them.
– What I haven’t told you about, and it is of course all cheesy touristy stuff, was the Segway Sunset tour along the Waikiki Beaches, Parks and the Harbor. Was it worth the money – probably a little too expensive. Was it fun and a good discovery of the Waikiki / Honolulu oceanfront? Definitely.
– Circle island tour in another grabber blue mustang, this one almost brand new and in the favorite Hertz equipment rather than the run down from the other brands. Well I cannot complain, although the weather could have been a little nicer. Running around in moist swimming trunks all day didn’t do me too good, it seems. At least not my skin…

Segway of Hawaii Sunset Tour, Waikiki, O'ahu

Canoes at Kailua Beach Park, O'ahu

Ford Mustang Convertible in grabber blue

From there it was time taking to the air again, in a full 32 minute flight over to Maui – including a half-circle island tour for free, as we were approaching OGG Kahului airport from the south, which meant going around the northwestern tip of the island with the resorts and the old, famous Whaling Town of Lahaina. Maui Ocean Club by Marriott is one of these time shares that I almost was lured into at Waikoloa on the Big Island during my Hilton Grand Vacations stay for a couple of days. I guess if you are really and permanently into this type of holiday, it might really pay off if you are offered a great entry deal, but this stay as a non-member guest was really sweet – the price wasn’t any different from the hotels that would be in sort of the same category, but it is much less crowded, feels much less touristy – especially in and around the Pools and Waterslides and stuff – and yet you get a full apartment with kitchen etc. instead of a single hotel room.
Another dive should be different, so the equipment was just rented out for a “quick” shore dive. Entry into the ocean was far from easy with fins and camera gear etc., and getting the dive flag untangled and positioned at the bottom of the bayside reef was quite a struggle, but bottom time was >60 minutes in a depth of up to 45 feet, which is clearly a record for me, the air-sucker. No turtles again, but a lot of Humuhumunukunukuapua’a and other nice fish, and so much more relaxing compared to swimming behind an unmotivated dive instructor! The big surprise came at the end: Navigating back to the dive flag is really difficult if – your dive flag is not there anymore. I am pretty sure that was close to the original beginning of the dive, and only two other dive flags that were clearly (like, really clearly!) not ours within miles of sight – while the dive flag could have theoretically drifted off, the dive shop keeper conceded with my theory that someone actually took the flag, which he “unfortunately” had to add to the bill – 39.95$. However, some of the underwater pix turned out quite OK I’d say – can you find the Lion fish hiding in the picture below?

Maui's wild north shore

Diving Lahaina, Maui

The next trip was the reason I was off for a couple of days – no internet at all: There are still places in the world that do not have free Wi-Fi next to your bed (The Alalele Place cottage in Hana) nor a Starbucks within reasonable distance to profit from their free internet access, so I couldn’t update the blog. However, staying in Hana made perfect sense to take more time to discover the beautiful beaches, bays and streams, including countless waterfalls more than already discovered during my travel back in 2008, to swim in the Seven Sacred Pools of the southern section of Haleakala National Park, and to start the Pi’ilani highway going around the island fresh in the morning with the good sunlight in the right direction. The road is unbelievably scenic and, at least in good summer weather with no visible previous rain on the road, really not that hard to negotiate if you can guestimate the width of your car within a range of 6 feet or so, and this was really not a small car 😉

Jeep Grand Cherokee at the beach, Road to Hana, Maui

Waterfall jumping at the seven sacred pools, Haleakala NP, Maui

Famous Bamboo forest on the Pipiwai trail to the best waterfalls on Maui