Red trees in Northern California

In Northern California, there was initially a lot of fog on the coast and a lot of forests. In Redwoods National Park, which was our first major stop here, the special feature is the tall coastal redwood trees, which do not yet have such reddish wood. In the national park, we walked on a beautiful, slightly longer hiking trail past many of these trees and a small waterfall. The area was called Elk Meadows, and we had already seen elk before, but unfortunately they didn't show up here. The trail was classified as 'moderate', and we had just found out at Crater Lake that this level should not be a problem for us in the USA. The trail had a few inclines that we easily mastered. However, we were not always particularly fast, and because the trail was not very wide, it was difficult to pass. Soon there were people behind us who apparently wanted to pass, but only said to each other that they would walk faster if they could. Instead, they could have simply asked us to let them pass, but they were probably once again too polite for that. We let them pass when the opportunity arose, but in fact we were not that slow that day and later overtook the people again. Judith noticed that despite a slightly higher effort, she didn't have any asthma problems, unlike last and the previous summer in Germany, or even a few weeks ago in the Atacama Desert. This gave us hope for a few more relaxed summer weeks. In this national park, we also took a second, shorter and easier trail, where we took some funny photos with the trees. At the two remaining stops on this day, we noticed that here, near the coast, the fog had returned. Initially, we could still admire the low-hanging clouds at a viewpoint in the national park. Then we stopped in the small town of Trinidad, which was supposed to have a nice fishing harbor. On the way there, it was partly so foggy that we wondered if we would be able to see anything at all. But almost directly on the shore, the fog suddenly cleared up a bit, so the harbor was partially covered in fog, which looked great.

In our next accommodation in Arcata, we didn't like the breakfast again. Now it probably sounds like the rest of the day doesn't matter to us as long as we get a good breakfast. Of course, this is not the case, but breakfast habits in the USA seem to differ particularly strongly from ours. Often we don't even have breakfast in the accommodation, and then we make ourselves the coffee, which is always available in the room, and have self-bought cereal and fruit, which is not the worst. However, this time we had slept in a Comfort Inn for the third time, and in Comfort Inns there is always breakfast included, which we take advantage of to save money, but we don't expect a good breakfast there anymore. In this case, the buffet was not replenished when something ran out and unless you happened to meet a staff member whom you could ask. And after the experiences of yesterday, we thought the American way was not to point out things that bother you, but to let the responsible people notice it themselves... In addition, the television in the breakfast room was constantly playing the notoriously Republican channel Fox News, which does not correspond to our political beliefs, and its breaking news was unmistakably spread among the breakfast guests: Joe Biden's fitness for reelection is dubious, Biden's climate envoy John Kerry is being criticized for his alleged private jet flights, woke culture in the army should be banned. We found it alarming how clearly a channel can express its bias - and were surprised that Fox News was even playing, especially since we were already in California.

From Arcata, we first drove to Eureka. Actually, we didn't want to go there, but our rental car had indicated the day before that an oil change would be due. You can ignore such notifications for a while, but we wanted to drive with the car for many more weeks. When we chose a car in Seattle, we didn't pay attention to the next maintenance dates, and there was also no person who could have pointed that out to us. We wondered how it was regulated in our case. The internet told us that such maintenance is definitely not our responsibility, but that of the rental car company, which we already pay enough money to. So Judith wrote an email to our landlord Alamo, who replied that we should stop by a branch of Alamo or Enterprise (apparently they belong together). That's why we were now at Enterprise in Eureka, who would have given us a replacement car, but they didn't have one. They suggested that we have the oil change done at a workshop next door at their expense, but we would have had to wait several hours for that, which would have messed up our further planning. We haven't booked all the overnight stays of the trip yet, but we do make a few days in advance. After some back and forth, we agreed to exchange the car in Ukiah the next day.

Now we could visit the Humboldt Redwoods State Park as planned, which offered a similar landscape to Redwoods National Park, but now with redder trees. Our entrance pass only applies to national parks, but this state park and all the parking lots in it were free. We drove along the Avenue of the Giants lined with tall coastal redwood trees, where there was a self-guided tour: At the beginning, you took a sheet of paper that described all the stops where you could stop along the way. But we only stopped once to take a circular walk and at the visitor center. The circular walk was a bit longer but had only a slight incline, and we took more funny photos with trees there. At the visitor center, we watched a film about the park. We noticed at the provided information that it always seems to be important at tourist attractions in the USA to point out who donated how much money for their establishment and maintenance, especially in this park.

Next to our next accommodation (in Fort Bragg), there was a mini golf course where we got a discount as guests, just like at the go-kart track in Washington. We think it's nice when there are sometimes such fun additional offers, especially since our accommodations often have nothing else to offer. So in the evening, we played mini golf, which was particularly fun because it was not a standard mini golf course, but lanes laid out in a beautiful environment with different surfaces and water ditches in between. We played it just like Adventure Golf in Tecklenburg, for example: All balls are on the lane at the same time, and after each stroke, the person whose ball is farthest away from the hole is next. In this case, there were also lucky wheels in between, which you could spin to get a bonus or penalty for the next lane, such as having to hold the putter behind your back. We also had to retrieve the ball from the water several times and then imposed penalties on ourselves in the form of points. Judith won narrowly in the end. So here we are always looking forward to new fun outdoor activities.

Those were our first impressions of California. Next, the first infamous city awaited us: San Francisco.