Our last words … at the end of the journey ☹

Thorsten:

With the end of the journey, it is also up to me to draw a conclusion from an organizational point of view: What went well, what can be improved, what to pay attention to...

Such a 10-week trip requires an incredibly long lead time and without my infamous Excel spreadsheet, I would have been completely lost with 68 overnight stays, various flights, and car rentals.

I can't even say how many times I changed the travel route until it was finalized. And here we already have the first big problem of such a road trip: the country is so big and the weather conditions are so extreme that we still had to change our route while we were already on the road, because, for example, the east exit/Tioga Pass in Yosemite National Park was still closed/not cleared due to unimaginable snow masses, while it was 42 degrees Celsius below in the valley when we visited. Unimaginable, these extremes! In addition, access to Glacier Point in the national park was only opened regularly the day before our visit, which made us worry for a long time if it would work out...

Our hike in Zion Narrows was almost literally washed out, as the narrows were only released a week before our planned visit, as the water level or water flow was still too high and therefore too dangerous.

The passage through Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park was only possible from July 1st due to construction work.

All in all, we were really lucky. Everything worked out well in terms of timing. But you really have to read the websites of the national parks you want to visit every day and inform yourself about the road conditions so as not to be suddenly disappointed that certain routes are impassable!

Anyway, it is recommended to constantly stay up to date on the websites, for example, to be informed about certain permits or admission restrictions: access to some attractions is restricted, and you have to sign up. I tried to stay up to date, but unfortunately, we missed the registration for a hike through Fern Canyon in Redwood National Park. Otherwise, we were able to do and experience everything here as planned!

Speaking of planning: in terms of accommodation and car rental prices, it was once again great to book everything well in advance (it all started with booking our accommodation in Palm Springs for one month already in January 2022 for June 2023!). Especially during the summer vacation time in the USA, prices skyrocket (I noticed in the meantime that, for example, rooms that I booked for 75 € now cost 250 €!!!)! It is also recommended to book rooms that are free to cancel, then you are flexible for possible route changes and can also take advantage of a cheaper offer.

All in all, we can say that the usually "affordable" motels (around 80-90 € on average, mostly with a small breakfast) have absolutely positively surprised us. The rooms were all great and mostly very spacious. We had expected much worse, at least at a price of sometimes less than 50 €, but here too: all good. Can do it again!

If we were to repeat the trip, instead of a midsize car (which was still great and totally sufficient), I would book an SUV. Although we didn't drive off-road (well... 😉), the road edges, where we often had to park due to overcrowding of the remaining parking lots in the national parks, were challenging for vehicles with low ground clearance. We experienced this in Yellowstone when we almost got stuck and only got free again by using our front bumper and had to bear the scratches...

We also found out that, for example, exchanging the rental car is not a problem: we were also absolutely positively surprised there! Thrifty immediately exchanged our completely unusable Mustang for an unsightly but fast Kia K5 family car for a road trip! And even when it already broke down on the 4th leg (without the warning engine light, the engine jerking might have been bearable...), the staff at the airport counter in Salt Lake City was super nice and of course, facilitated another smooth exchange! Here, a big positive comment (which, however, I have to take back partially due to the outrageous deposit return policy - sometimes taking over 4 weeks!)

Another cost point is the purchase of daily necessities: a big shout-out to WALMART! What would we have done without you? Luckily, we noticed on the first day of the road trip in Phoenix how cheap the groceries we preferred here were compared to other chains. Absolutely incredible! Overall, we have certainly saved an estimated 50% on food costs because of this (of course, we are not representative here: we have exclusively consumed bagels with turkey breast and provolone cheese, as well as various cookies and peanuts during the 6-week road trip (excluding the month in Palm Springs). True story!)

What turned out to be a stroke of luck during shopping: we decided to buy a small cooler on the first day of the road trip in Phoenix (that's how we ended up at Walmart in the first place). We fell in love with this cooler and filled it with ice from the ice machines at the motels every day. This way, our treats always stayed chilled. It was the best purchase of the whole trip. The love even went so far that I took the cooler in my suitcase from Phoenix to Palm Springs on the plane ;-) What you do...

We end this journey with the final stop in Las Vegas and say goodbye to the western USA for now. After a total of 3 road trips in 2015, 2017, and 2023, we have seen everything we wanted to see here. Can only recommend it!

Now it's my turn:

Would you like some statistics?:

We were in the USA for 68 days and drove through 13 states (that deserves a big scratch-off on our world map at home...)

We stayed in 40 motels

We used a total of 7 cars and drove more than 10,000 km (How many liters of gasoline? We didn't note...)

We ate about 300 bagels; with 600 slices of provolone and 600 slices of turkey breast

A few kilos of margarine

Chomped on about 10 kg of Planters peanuts

About 2 to 3 kg of "Marias" - dry cookies for during the day...

Magnets:

36 magnets will expand our magnet wall from the day after tomorrow... (and probably make it collapse...)

Shopping:

We shopped the best and cheapest at Walmart. Fun fact by the way: what the ball pit is for children at Ikea, the self-scan area was for Thorsten. He was always totally excited about self-scanning at Walmart. If we had that more often here, I wouldn't have to go shopping anymore...

Driving:

Americans can't overtake. They start overtaking, but then remain at the same level as the vehicle being overtaken, only to slowly pass it at 2 mph faster. That can take a while... and sometimes our nerves get frayed.

Infection with Corona? - Hasn't that been taken care of:

Surprisingly, many people still walk around wearing face masks. This can be on the street or in a store. In the national parks, some people, especially Asians, also wear masks even when the temperature is well above 30 degrees. Asians like to wear a closed jacket with a hood over their heads (preferably black) and long pants.

Homeless:

In big cities like LA, San Francisco, and Seattle, most homeless people are found. They live on the outskirts of the cities or even in the middle of them in self-built accommodations made from junk and waste. These "homeless" people also exist in smaller towns, where they walk through the streets aimlessly like zombies or from "The Walking Dead".

About clothing:

Especially women dress conspicuously. Either with nothing under the miniskirt (overweight woman on the Golden Gate Bridge), or even if slim, with skimpy pieces of fabric or even in a bikini in the national park.

Refueling:

But there are also things that work better now than before: you can now refuel at any gas station with a credit card. However, you have to differentiate: there is a price for cash payment and one for credit card payment. It's only 10 cents per gallon, but still...

Chevron is the most expensive gas station in all the states we drove through. Despite the significant price differences (sometimes up to 70 cents), they exist, even though "no-name" gas stations with much cheaper prices lure you on the same road.

On the other hand, the prices at or near highways or at the entrances to national parks are quite moderate and not "exploited" like in Germany. In addition, there are no hourly changing prices for gasoline here.

So now we only hope that our plane will actually take off with us on Sunday. It is now after half past eleven in the morning of the day before departure. Last time, we received the disastrous email at 9 am on the day before departure that the return flight was canceled...

It's quite nice here, but somehow we do want to go home now. The trip or the things that didn't work have drained us a lot in the last few days. We need peace and stability again to recharge.

Nevertheless, it was the most beautiful trip of our lives so far. We end the travel blog for today with Thorsten's last words in his daily status: MORE TO COME - hopefully!