Alaska

Alaska. It is as wild as it sounds.

The Bramante's took us to a small island near Homer. 

There is no running water or electricity on the island. We broke our record of sleeping closest to the sea. The cabins we stayed in, were only three meters away from the high water line. We arrived at low tide:

These are the cabins:

We had a really nice time. We relaxed by a campfire on the beach:

And we walked up trough a beautiful forest:

After a while, it started dripping. Then it started raining. And with long grass brushing against our legs, at the end we were soaked:

But luckily, there was a sauna on the island. I never wanted to go into a sauna ( too hot and too cold), but after the hike, I was ready for it. And it felt good!

Hot:

And cold (around 10°C):

The last morning, we woke up in a completely white world. Fog all around. But it cleared up really quickly. The process of disappearing mist was a spectacle to watch:

There was always something to watch. Our neighbor in the tree next door was a bald eagle:

And a lot of sea otters swam by. Mothers carry their babies on their bellies:

There are also whales in the bay. We saw one coming up briefly.

In Homer's harbor, Zach pointed out one of the crab ships from "world's deadliest catch" :

The tide around Homer is one of the biggest in the world in high tide-low tide difference. In the background is a glacier. In the foreground is fireweed, that grows everywhere here:  

In Homer are some nice stores:

On our way back, we saw a moose: 

August 10-14: San Francisco

If you 're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.

I don't like cities too much, but I like San Francisco. Not the city center, but all the rest. It reminds me of Amsterdam. Besides the smell of weed I only smelled in those two cities, people are friendly, have a nice sense of humor and are above all free minded.

Just some pictures:

Sunflowers planted on the sidewalk by:

This last picture isn't an attempt to copy the tower of Pisa (although we saw today a church inspired by the Notre Dame in Paris with as doors the copy of the Gates of Paradise in Firenze...) Just turn your computer until the house is level. This is how steep some of the streets are!

In those streets, Luka is as tall as Jan:

At Pier 39 lives a colony of Sea Lions. Those animals are delight to watch. The bulls are constantly quarreling to be the boss of the platform while the females think "just shut up and lay down!" The show was better than the one at Sea World:

And there was some foreshadowing on our path (I know that word since our kids where reading Shakespeare):

Tomorrow we are leaving for Alaska. We are very excited to go to the last frontier. 

Sonoma Beach, August 8th-10th

From Yosemite we drove west, to Sonoma Beach. We were very excited, because besides Jan, no one of us saw the Pacific before.

When we left the higher elevations of Yosemite, we drove through dry land, and it was 38°C again. We arrived at the coast just before dark. I knew the Pacific is cold and therefor influences the air temperature at the coast. But I never expected the weather we got when we exited the car.
It was very windy and only 14°C! Good thing we plan to go to Alaska. We pulled the "Alaska suitcase" out of the car immediately before we turned into ice cubes:

The landscape was very beautiful. It reminded me of England (and more so than New England!):

Around noon, the sky was blue and there was no wind until around three. But when the land started to warm, the wind picked up and clouds of mist started to form.

We wanted to see the sun set above the Pacific, but that didn't happen!

We were no longer in bear country, but we still had to watch our food. This time, racoons circled our tents at night:

Obviously, the wind blows a lot around there. Since Americans tend to call us "the Windy's", we felt a connection when we saw this:

Because it didn't get warmer than 18°C at the beach, we didn't feel like relaxing there. We drove inland to spend a few hours at a river.

It was nice and warm up there. It was only 10 km from the coast, and 25°C. We started to think that the weather had changed. But when we drove back in the evening, it went from 25 to 15°C in 10 minutes drive!

On our way down to San Francisco, we stopped at the earthquake trail. The San Andreas Fault  shapes the landscape there. We saw a fence that has jumped 6 m after the 1906 earthquake:

And we saw Harbour Seals:

They like doing yoga:

Yosemite

Yosemite is the archetype of American wilderness and nature, there are for sure more beautiful places and definitely more remote places, but the accessibility and infrastructure make it a busy place,  almost like St. Tropez on a august evening!

It is a place worth seeing, enormous granite rocks;

quiet green meadows;

streams to swim in;

waterfalls;

Yosemite is famous to the Belgians since last year Tom Waes climbed El Capitan, it is truly an impressive 1200m high piece of granite!

It is so high that it requires a few days to climb, which makes that people have to sleep against the rock!

We added a few animals to our list: a black bear in an apple tree next to the campsite, he was not really bothered by the dozens of people he had as audience, munching away on apples, quite well hidden in the tree. We heard also bears roaming the campsite at night, trying to outsmart the park rangers who patrolled the camp as well, trying to keep bears and humans separated as much as possible.

and a rattlesnake:

We spent 3 nights in Yosemite, camping in the 'wild', including bears, but the whole valley feels resort-like, there are plenty of activities organized, including painting classes wich Inge, Luka and Emma took, learning how to paint 'fast and loose' .

Sequoia National Park

We drove from the east side of the Sierra Nevada (Lone Pine) to the west side, where Sequoia NP is. As the crow flies, it is something like 100 km. But there are no roads over the mountains, so we had to drive 5 hours to get around them.

We drove through an agricultural region where we saw more olive trees than in Tuscany. But all untrimmed:

The campsite was hard to find, it was really in the middle of nowhere. When we were almost there, we saw something on the road. My first thought was a toad, but it was so dry that this was almost impossible. Then we realized it was a spider, a big one!

I threw my camera cap besides it, because it was the first thing I could think of as a reference for the picture. But the spider decided it was hers now, so I had to politely ask it back.

We camped in bear area, on a small campsite miles away from everything. The camp host explained all safety rules and told us bears are seen rarely there. But still we felt safer close together:

We followed American tradition and made the best s'mores ever:

In Sequoia NP are the biggest trees on earth. They are not the highest (the coastal redwoods are), and not the widest in diameter, but the biggest in trunk volume. And they are amazing! Since I heard about them, I wanted to see them and now I was finally able to.

It takes a while before you realize how big they really are. All other tree species around it, are also much bigger and taller than the average tree in your garden (and especially in the poor soil place where I grew up!). And because the tree looks rather slender, you need a reference to comprehend the real size of it. Jan is the little blue spot at the bottom of the tree:

The cobblestone figure here is as big as the base of that tree:

We walked through the immense forest, here are some pictures:

And here is a baby. The kids are wishing him a good life (he has some thousand years ahead of him):

Also in the neighborhood of our campsite was a historic grinding spot. It was so remote that there was no hiking path, no explanation or visitor center. Our camp host told us where we could find it.  History came alive: