Gold!

Why were so many people moving to California in the past? Was it the wonderful coast? Was it the climate to grow fruits? Maybe both of it is right, however the main reason to move to California in these days was to find gold. Well, you might wonder if there is still something left of the gold. The answer is: Yes. Well, maybe not so much anymore. However, there are still people who search for gold as their profession – small businesses that earn just enough to do their living. Well, you don’t become rich, however if it enough to survive. Knowing all that, we were still surprised that one of those spots to find gold was our perfect campground at Merced River. John – yes, you are right the wildlife photographer - told us about it. Of course we knew that in former times you could find gold here, but that there was still some left…. Of course, when you look at the river flowing in the morning light then it is clear that if you were to find gold it must be here.

Well, being a true Californian, John of course had the right equipment with him to wash gold. For many people this is a nice spare time activity – hobby. This was very fascinating so that we had to try it as well. We even found something. In my second try I found a tiny flock of gold. John stored it so that we could take it with us. Super!

Vegas

To arrive in Las Vegas is like meeting an old friend. However, this time our friend was a bit sick. Pretty high fever 105 degrees Fahrenheit and some open wounds, which were not healing as no one is taking care of them (frozen construction projects for several hotels). Therefore, Las Vegas needs a lot of friends in order to recover. Due to the financial crisis not so many people were traveling to Vegas and that is the reason Vegas is not feeling too well. Symptoms are frozen construction projects; low hotel-occupancy (down to 72% in July), unemployment and real estate prices drop. Therefore, new hotels like the Donald Trump one, Caesar Palace and Hilton are frozen. Only big construction sites like the City Center are still being built with 9,500 workers. This is a gigantic construction side of 8.4 billion and with 6,000 rooms. The low hotel occupancy of the hotels has a nice side effect. There are best deals everywhere in order to get people into Las Vegas. Thus we stayed in the MGM for 50 Euro a night (MGM is the place where the boxing fights take place). The occupancy rate of hotels is now up to 82% but still too low to overcome the crisis. The unemployment rate increased to 12.3%, in comparison in 2006 it was 3.8%. The biggest issue in Las Vegas is the prices for real estate. In the States people tend to buy a house while in Europe you rent or build your own. The same is true for Las Vegas. The city was one of the fastest growing and very optimistic cities in the USA (it was compared to New York in 1900). Several 100.000 people (roughly 60% of all people owning a house) have now higher debts than their house is worth (as the worth of the houses has decreased 50%). However Las Vegas has found a solution for this crisis (even if it is not the most ethnical one). People buy a new house often even bigger than the old one for less money. They take on a new mortgage stop paying the old one. The bank gets so fed up going through the whole process so that the stop asking for old mortgage. Unbelievable, however it seems to work.

Well, we hope our old friend will recover soon so we can find it next time sound again. Before we leave for Germany we will pay him another visit to see how he is doing and give him a financial support.

Pearl in the Desert

Many times had we been to Escalante in Utah. Even more often have we passed a coffee shop, which was close to our favorite campground - Calf Creek campground (see our campsite on the picture below).

We had always seen the sign of the Kiva Koffeehouse as you cannot see the building itself while passing it.

Last year our friends Andi and Irina had been visiting the Escalante area (not sure if it was as we recommended this place to them or just by accident). They tried coffee there and were thrilled. They were so thrilled that while we were staying with them in New York Irina mentioned it to us. Thus we decided next time we will try it as well. Unbelievable how many good coffees we hadn’t had, or coffee cake, raspberry cheesecake! Yummy!

And the architecture of the building is unbelievable as well (artist Bradshaw Bowman designed it), incredible view! Thanks Irina for recommending this place to us. This place has also Wifi for free as most of the coffee shops in the USA. Coffee shops without Internet access have a disadvantage - the same for hotels. This whole experience makes the Kiva Koffeehouse a perfect spot – a true pearl in the desert in an unbelievable landscape. Now we can have everything: camping (7 dollars per night) where we can read at the river, enjoy the outside, relax, hike, run, bike and the beauty to communicate with the rest of the world.

That is why we know such important news from Germany like soccer results and that German Chancellor Angela Merkel was attending a beer festival….

Ansel

The photographer Ansel Adams intrinsically tied to Yosemite National Park. It was here where he took most of his masterpieces and spent a lot of his time. And that is why a lot of people have is black and white pictures in mind thinking about Yosemite.

Of course there is also a Ansel Adams gallery in Yosemite National Park a must for all visitors. Therefore we took our rental bikes and drove to this gallery to look at the pictures and the books. As I had finished my last book, I bought an autobiography of Ansel so he will be with me for the next couple of weeks.
Back to our campground we met John who stayed at the same campground and was waiting for his family to join him. While we had nice conversations with him we found out that he was into wildlife photography as well. He even won a competition where Ansel Adams picked his photo as the winner one. We had 2 fantastic nights with him. John who gives photography lessons as well, gave us some tricks how to improve our photos.
At the end we looked at some of the Africa pictures I took and John was really impressed. Of course he was very constructive as well and we discussed what I could do better in future. Very inspiring!

Chocolates

Life is like a box of chocolates. Forrest Gump knew it. And that is exactly our experience here. Several times we were searching for the perfect campground (perfect means close to rivers, lakes, away from streets), however every time we did that we ended up in an average or below average one. And we searched for hours - what a waste of time.

On the contrary, when we were not expecting too much. We were only looking for one for one night. We found THE perfect one. That is what happened to our way to Yosemite National Park. This nationalpark in the USA has a high number of visitors. Therefore, we were expecting to camp on an average nationalpark campground, next to your neighbours, having the tent next to the road. This would not matter at all unless you are in Yosemite.

However, this is not what happened. The road which we wanted to take to Yosemite was closed due to fire. Thus we drove the 2 hour detour to the next entrance. In the visitor center 30 miles away from the entrance the ranger told us that the campgrounds were full as there was also a landslip and they had to close campgrounds. We were recommended to stay at an RV campground (not really charming spots) next to the nationalpark. Well, we could have lived with it. However, on our way to the RV campground we saw a little sign to an unknown recreation area called Merced Wild and Scenic River and a sign for primitive campgrounds. So we turned into the dirt road, drove along the river and found the most beautiful campground of our trip. Maybe of all our US trips so far. This spot was away from the road, next to the beautiful Merced River. We installed our hammock so we had a fantastic view to the river and could listen to the sound of the river. Moreover, we had a wonderful spots to swim in. So we could take a 'shower', long swims and dive into the water. What a dream!

Of course we stayed there for several nights - in total 5 days. We drove into the overcrowded nationalpark knowing that we end up in our comfortable spot on the river... J