The Transcontinental Journey

This page is under construction. Expect more information and pictures soon.

Some of the pictures have description in their alt attribute, you may be able to see them if you move the mouse above the picture and keep it there for a while.

First Day

We hit the road at 8am on August 17th,1999 in Milpitas, CA. We rode various freeways towards highway 120. Yosemite valley was our goal for the day. We reached the park early in the afternoon. After a short stop to take first few pictures,

we continued down to the valley. We drove through the village to see the falls.

It must be much more spectacular in the spring when its waters are fed by millions of tons of melting snow. The pictures show just the lower part of the fall, the total height is over 700 meters.

Having seen the usual (for this time of the year) crowds in the village, we decided to find a resting place for the first night. We went up the southern side of the valley to a campsite not far away from highway 41. After we parked the car we hiked to Dewey Point couple of kilometers away. You can see large part of the valley from there.

Second Day

We spent peaceful and cold (well not for me) night under the stars and in the morning went south to Fresno and later to Sequoia & Kings Canyon NP. We entered the park around noon. At first and at a distance those trees did not look so big.

The big tree in the front of the first picture is actually average pine.

However when one gets close they are astonishingly huge. My car would easily fit into this one

twice. Smaller ones are as big as the largest pines I have ever seen.

Sometimes they fall and people cut them into pieces like this.
This one was over 2500 years old when it fell. The little board in the front of it shows important events of human history on growth rings. They are all in the leftmost tip of the trunk cut.

And finally since we are in America something has to be youngest, oldest, worst, best, smallest or simply "The Largest Living Thing On Earth".

Just in case you cannot read the information about this beast from the picture, here it comes:

For your convenience the table was converted into metric system.

Leaving the park was also an interesting experience, but probably an unpleasant one for the car. Few thousand feet of elevation drop nicely folded into many serpentines. Downshift to the second gear and be prepared to break often, especially if you follow RV.

We finally got down and stopped at a dam in the valley. I found out that the watch I bought in the morning was not water resistant despite the legend "Water Resistant to 30 m" on it. I suspect that I misunderstood this phrase, those 30 meters were probably horizontal. There goes ten bucks.

After this loss we drove south and then east. In the late afternoon I spotted something strange on the horizon. When we got closer I recognized wind power plants, thousands of them.

There are exactly 437 power plants just on the first picture and it is only a tiny fraction of the total amount. We continued to I-40 and stopped around midnight at a rest area in the desert near Barstow, CA.

Third Day

In the morning I was astonished by beautiful rise of the Sun above the desert. The next surprise came an hour later, when the car did not start. Half an hour later I found somebody with jump start cables and with their help the car started immediately. We were not sure if the battery was just discharged or dead for good. However the car started fine at the gas station in Arizona few hours later.

The weather was beautiful all the way to Grand Canyon. It suddenly changed about twenty kilometers before we got there. We got into heavy rain, thunderstorm clearly hanging above the canyon. Despite the weather the place was crowded, it took us about half an hour to find a place to park at the south rim.

But it was worth it. There is no other place like Grand Canyon in the Earth. The rain stopped shortly after we were frozen by astonishment at the rim of the canyon.

I wanted to go down, at least few hundred feet. But cars have their own minds and these do not always coincide with their masters' wishes. The battery was really dead. It was slightly easier to find people with the cables this time. We traded our parking space for starting the car. Again with cables we had not problem starting it.

We had the battery changed in Tuba City about hundred kilometers from the canyon (the first city with any car service on the way). By the way, if you need to start a car, I have cables, bought them in Arizona.

The storm caught us still in Tuba City. I am not sure if it was the same storm we saw above the canyon, but it was at least as spectacular. It started with strong wind carrying sand, but shortly after we hit the road the rain started pouring. Well, the car needed a wash anyway. We continued on highways 160 and 163 to Utah and got out of the storm just in time to see the Sun shining through the clouds above Monument Valley.

As we started to look for a place on the side of the road to spend the night we saw another storm ahead. A small motel in Blanding, UT saved us from it just in time.

Fourth Day

Refreshed by good 9 hours of sleep in the motel we hit the road just before 10am. The next goal was Arches, about hundred miles north. We first stopped to see the balanced rock in the distance

not knowing that the road gets very close to it later.

We saw the first arch there. I am sure you can find it in the picture.

With all these bushes around, there must be animals around.

This is one the famous arches, it is also on the cover of my road atlas, so there was no reason to go four miles in the heat just to get a better picture of it.

Most of the people had probably the same atlas and went to take the same picture from the distance.

Of course there are some arches rather close to parking lots. Like the Landscape Arch.

It is less then two kilometers away from the parking lot. Not much further is the Wall Arch (if I remember the name correctly)

and this one.

To be continued when I get the next set of pictures in electronic form. And gimp those that did not come out very well.

Last modified: Mon Sep 20 14:22:22 EDT 1999