Back to Canada

Bozeman – Great Falls – Lethbridge – Calgary: 804km to go on this day. This time we had to start really early and we were successful! Additionally, we immediately went to a gas station in the morning. Our first stop was in Dutton, where we had lunch. It was a nice little Diner in the middle of – actually nowhere. Please see our Calgary photo album to have the same impression.

Crossing the border was pretty easy this time, they just told us to go on. But I was prepared: what’s about the green U.S. visa card, that you have to return when departing!? After asking some border officer we found out, that we can keep the U.S. visa – but we have to return the card to a border official before it expires. Good to know, nobody would have told us.

Back in Canada, we suddenly got into a traffic jam. You wouldn’t believe it, but there was a railway crossing on the highway! Finally arriving in Calgary, we looked for a nice, cheap motel to stay for one night. However, we only found one for about CAD $140 and therefore decided to use our tent once more. We spent the night in a campground east of Calgary, where we found out the difference to the KOA campgrounds. No WiFi, quite unfriendly people and a lot of additional fees. However, we were busy fighting the mosquitos and laughing about the permanent campers with their garden gnomes. We are proud to tell you, that this was the first day when we built up our tent during daylight.

Pure nature

Our second day in Yellowstone Nationalpark is easy to summarize: wildlife, waterfalls, canyons and – of course – a lot of fun. Our trip started early, we passed the park entrance at 10:30am (wow!) and followed the road to the north loop. Our first stop was Norris Geyser Basin, where I started to smoke (as you can see on the picture). However, we were not as impressed of the geysers over here as we were the day before and so we went on to Canyon Village.

Using the little one-way sight roads we were able to see a lot of wildlife, including deers, does, a moose, and a wolve. It was amazing how fearless the people around approached the animals. Although we were further away than all the others, one woman came to Julia and told her to stay away from the moose because she was wearing a red shirt. We also “saw” a bear near the road – actually we just saw something moving for a second, but people kept telling us that they can see a bear (about 500m away behind the trees). However, they also said it was running and then it felt asleep all of a sudden… ;-)

The Grand Canyon of Yellowstone was a really nice sight. We went to all the lookouts and even hiked to the brink of the lower falls and upper falls. See our Yellowstone photo album for more pictures. Travelling on, we saw Tower Roosevelt with lots of Hoodoos, more wildlife (even blocking the road) and a petrified tree. Our last station was Mammoth Hot Springs, where we saw Liberty Cap and Palette Spring – looking like the small brother of Pamukkale in Turkey. Mammoth was a nice city as well, especially because the deers were walking through the streets and in the gardens as if they were humans.

During that day, we saw so many cars with different nice-looking license plates that we decided to start a picture collection. So far, our picture list counts about the half of all U.S. states and half of the Canadian provinces. But – we’ve just started!

Finally leaving wonderful Yellowstone Nationalpark, we left through the north entrance to the city of Gardiner. There we called the Bozeman KOA for reservation and were told, that it’s only a 40min drive to get there. 90min later (as our nüvi told us as well) we arrived at the campground and asked what we did wrong. The guy there just laughed: “Oh, you’ve talked to Ashley – you know, she’s a blond. What else do I have to say…”

Steam and water fountains

Early in the morning as usual (you know that the truth is different) we started to Yellowstone Nationalpark. We were lucky to go to the Visitors Office first (although Andi though that it’s not important to go there *g*), were a Ranger told us everything about the sights and the eruption times of the geysers. As soon as we entered the park, we started to take a lot of pictures – the landscape was simply fascinating. When we looked at those pictures afterwards, we didn’t find it so fascinating anymore – there were much more interesting things at that day. That started with a deer and a bunch of does, which we saw because of a good hint of my friend Nina. She told us to stop immediately when there are a lot of cars standing besides the road – and so did we.

Our Yellowstone tour started with a trip to Geyser Country, where we saw the famous Old Faithful Geyser erupting. It isn’t so famous because of its size, but because the highly periodic eruptions in an interval of 92 minutes. See our Yellowstone photo album for some pictures. Of course, we visited all the other sights like Morning Glory Pool which is very colourful (orange, blue, red, yellow, green) because of its many bacteria cultures.

At this day, we continued to drive as south as Grant Village, where we met a real American spy. He told us about the capital of the spies, which is or was in his eyes Vienna. However, he gave us a lot of interesting hints and we had fun. We also met a guy who was born in Schärding in Upper Austria (next to my grandma, where the cheese is produced) – yeah, the world is obviously very little. By the way, we got in touch with him because of Andis “trau di” and my “inigüxla” T-Shirt (Walchlible).

Following a hint of the ranger, we returned to the Geyser area again to watch the largest predictable geyser called Grand Geyser erupting at 7:30pm. We were already near, when a buffalo blocked our way and we couldn’t pass. So we had to wait until the huge animal decided to stop eating, but we still made it in time. This special geyser has a time frame of 4 hours around the predicted time; however we didn’t have to wait a long time for the show to start. We are proud to tell you that we’re some of the only people on earth that saw Grand Geyser erupting, shooting water in about four different fountains of about 50m height. It lasted 15 minutes, then it stopped so suddenly as it had started.

On our way back to the campground, we took a shortcut (ok, it was little longer than the regular way) to see Firehole Lake during sunset. Just a reminder, you can see that in our pictures. Without any more bear contacts we fell asleep – because we already knew, that it was our neighbour again who snored all the time. An incredible day was over and another one to come.

On the road again *sing*

Day 6 started very early, because it’s been planned to be a travelling day. Our journey took us from Spokane in Washington State to West Yellowstone in Wyoming, crossing three U.S. states. But if you know us better, you’ll guess that we found lots of things to do before really starting the trip… ;-) That day was the same: we packed our tent, loaded our laptop batteries and repaired the car.

Repaired the car, what’s that about?? In Rainers package (where we’ve got the nüvi) was a power supply for the car, which converts the 12V cigarette lighter power to regular 110V power for all other devices. That’s pretty cool to load up the camera battery etc. while driving – so we wanted to use it. But as we wrote before, the cigarette lighter wasn’t working. So Andi called the car rental company to ask which fuse to change, because there was no manual inside. And the answer was: we can’t fix that, but you can come to our Spokane office and you’ll get a new car. That’s not what we actually wanted to do, packing our stuff again, losing more time…so Andi decided to simply check the internet for a manual. We found several versions, all telling us different things – so it seemed easier to check all fuses and see if they are blown. When Andi finally found the one, we went to Wal-Mart and bought a new one – and we were lucky, we changed the right fuse! But now we had to hurry as usual, because we were already 3 hours late.

By that time, we already used our nüvi a lot – and it told us that we’ll be in West Yellowstone by 7:30 pm. We were both happy and satisfied that we would be so early at our destination. When we stopped at McDonalds we saw the time in the restaurant, and it was one our later than ours! So guess what? We forgot to calculate the time lag of one hour, so our stop at McDonalds took us one hour and 20 minutes instead of only 20 minutes ;-)

When we left the highway, we wanted to fill up our car with fuel. So we were driving on and on, but there wasn’t one gas station on our way. Slowly running out of fuel, we found one – but it was closed! When we just wanted to go on, a woman came to that station and we asked her for the best way to get some gas. Luckily, she was the owner of that gas station and opened up again just for us. Puh, that was close to being stuck in the middle of nowhere…!

Finally, we arrived after 9 pm at the KOA West Yellowstone Campground. That’s when we had our first contact to a bear. On our receipt there was a note: “This is a bear area, do not leave any food, anything to drink and even shampoo or toothpaste in your tent.” We didn’t think that we would really hear or see a bear, but we were careful with the things we took into our tent. When we were lying in our sleeping bags, we suddenly heard something near by our tent. We were both a little bit afraid and Andi turned off the light quickly. Quietly we lay down but then we recognized that this wasn’t a bear, but our neighbour who snored. ;-) Happy again and laughing about our mistake we wanted to fall asleep, but then we heard a real bear roaring. Though it was quite far away, it was very impressive. Our trip to Yellowstone Nationalpark had started! See the pictures of the trip in our Yellowstone photo album.

To be continued...

We were actually in a hurry during the last days...holidays, you know ;-) We'll try to catch up during the next days - so far you can have a look at our pictures from the following places:

• Vancouver (see added posts below!)
• Seattle
• Yellowstone (travelling there so far)

We are in West Yellowstone at the moment and we've got to go in our tent now...the bears are coming! See you soon.

How to visit Seattle in a hurry

Our first and only night in Seattle was nice, because the room was pretty big and we were sleeping in a real bed. We started with a delicious breakfast at Top Pot, the home of the best donuts in town. Afterwards, we started to visit the sights of Seattle, because we weren’t able to see them the evening before due to our late arrival. A quick view at Pike Place Market (a famous and really big marketplace on multiple floors), the harbor with the characteristic green ferries (for Grey’s Anatomy Fans: you can see them in the intro) and Pioneer Square – and it was already time to hurry. On our way back we visited the famous Elliot Bay Bookstore (which Julia was obviously interested in) and the Seattle Seahawks Football Stadium.

Time to go: we booked a tour at the Boeing Company in the afternoon, which we didn’t want to miss. It was short, but really nice – we saw the huge Boeing 747 being assembled in various stages, from wing parts to the whole plane. It’s amazing that they produce eight 747 a month and one 737 a day! We wanted to order a 787 Dreamliner that day (we’re going to be rich one day, you know), but it would have been delivered by 2014…so we decided not to buy it ;-) It’s a pity that we were not allowed to take pictures, but you’ll find some anyway in our Seattle Photo Album.

Again, we had to move on…Yellowstone National Park was waiting for us and it’s a long trip. That’s why we headed for Spokane and passed by Redmond, where the Microsoft Corporation is located. Of course, Andi had to get a closer view and so he left his footprints in the lawn of the company ;-) Moving on, we had a problem with Mr. President. He decided to visit Seattle (actually we think he was looking for us) and so the Interstates and surrounding roads were closed – it took us two more hours to avoid getting stuck.

Finally on the road again (by the way, our favorite song these days) we experienced some funny things…like following a truck in the dark and therefore stopping in the middle of the road work or seeing people on foot or by bike on a highway…America is great! Arriving after midnight, we fell asleep without blogging again…but we’re catching up now.

Searching for the Whales and Bimbos Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen

Yeah, here it is - the star of our last blog entry: our brand new cheap tent (Julia always calls it our first shared house). Behind our home, you can see our second home...the car! We're spending most of our day in it at the moment. But on that day (Sunday, by the way) we spent our day on a ship, as you can see below.

It's been the day of Whale Watching (one could also call it Whale Searching). We started the trip at 9 a.m. at Anacortes with a huge boat (as far as we can tell) and went on to San Juan Islands. It didn't take long until we saw the first oil tanker and some birds, but after some time there were even seals. But - no whales so far. So the trip continued as we had a guarantee to see some whales and 5 hours later, when the trip was actually about to end, we were miles away from our harbor and saw the dorsal fins of two whales. Ok, nice - but not as fascinating as we thought. Additionally, we had a problem now - being two hours late for our trip to Seattle.

One would think that we searched enough for that day. But that's a mistake, because we continued the same way in Seattle. After a two hour trip from Anacortes to Seattle we found the Moore hotel pretty quickly thanks to our navigation system. However, we noticed that the power plug of our car does not work and we can't load the battery using our car. Of course, the battery was empty exactly 5 mins before we found the hotel ;-) Anyway, we finally found a secure parking lot (which is not as easy as it sounds) and checked in to our pretty nice room. As we were hungry, we looked for a restaurant from Julias travelling guide and asked the receptionist for it. He told us the way..."you can't miss it, it's just a 20 mins walk!". 2 hours later...we were finally standing in front of the restaurant called Bimbos Bitchin' Burrito Kitchen. As this was our lucky day, the sign at the door said: No Minors allowed in here. You know who's a Minor (below 21 years), don't you? ;-) After talking to the security and getting a place next to him, we were allowed to eat something...thank god. We enjoyed two of the best Burritos in town and went to bed afterwards. It seems obvious, why we're late with blogging! See all pictures of the day in our Seattle Photo Album. Don't forget your comments, we love them!

Buy a tent quickly

The title of this entry tells everything, actually... ;-) The mission of this day was to get some souvenirs, a rental car and - last but definitly not least - a tent. After picking up the car, which is a dark-red Ford Focus (without working power plug, i.e. cigarette lighter), we went to the shopping district for buying a tent. In our timetable we spared one (!) hour for doing that a named it "buy a tent quickly". In reality, it took us 4 hours for visiting 3 stores and finally getting a tent for 189 CAN$ + Tax + Lifetime Membership at MEC Inc.! By the way...our goal was to get one for less than 50 Euros, but the tent we bought was actually the cheapest one. Please also see the rest of our Vancouver pictures.

Starting way too late, we crossed the border to the U.S. and left our finger prints there. When we asked the people of the border patrol if we should lock the car, they just said: "There are 10 security cameras and 2 armed guards, what do you need the lock for?" ;-) We finally arrived at Burlington KOA (Kampgrounds of America, you'll see that more often now...) just in time to check-in. Of course, it started to rain heavily upon our arrival and we had to set up our brand new cheap tent for the first time. However, we have to add that the tent is really easy to handle and we did not experience a wet night at all! The nice things in KOA are the clean restrooms and the free WiFi (WLAN for Europeans) all around - see the picture beside for Internet in a tent! Please also note the introduction of our brand new navigation system Garmin nüvi, which has been sponsored by Rainer! Thanks again for all the cool stuff you sent to Burlington for us. Please see more pictures of the trip through Washington State in our Seattle Photo Album.

Exploring Vancouver

Our first day in Vancouver started typically American...with Iced Coffee from Blenz (the Canadian Starbucks). After visiting the tourist office we moved on to China Town, where we visited the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Garden. Please see our updated Vancouver photo album for more pictures. Having a lot of Chine restaurants around us, we decided to have lunch in one of them. But this wasn't so easy, because it was really hard to read the menu with Chinese vegetables in English language! ;-)
In the afternoon, we rented two bikes for traveling through Stanley Park (which is located on a half-island connected to Vancouver downtown). From there, you can get a fantastic view of Vancouvers skyline, as you can again see in our gallery. In the middle of the park is Vancouver Aquarium, a nice spot with Orcas, Sharks and other very interesting animals. We proceeded by bike to the Third Beach, where we went for a quick swimming trip in the Pacific Ocean and watched the beautiful sunset. After a really nice day, we watched Vancouver at night from the top of Harbour Center.

Vancouver - First Impressions

Thursday, 2:00am. Excited mothers, calm children and two cars travelling to Munich Airport. Although we were at the airport 2 hours early, we were pretty late for boarding because of the farewell conversations & pictures ;-)

Starting from Munich, we travelled via London to Vancouver. It was a funny flight, because we had a video on demand system with a monitor in the back of every seat. The service and food was great - we can only recommend British Airways. During our time at London Heathrow Airport we checked out the way from Terminal 4 to Terminal 1, because we have to be very quick on our way back in December...but therefore we had to pass security three times!

Finally in Vancouver, we went through Customs without problems and I've got my study permit. We travelled by free bus (because of the friendly driver) to our hotel, which is pretty old & cheap - but clean. We've got free Internet here and the staff is very friendly.

In the evening, we discovered Vancouvers downtown, including the Harbor Center and the Canada Place. See more pictures in our Vancouver Photo Album. After having the best burger and chips so far, we were happy to go to bed! All the best from Vancouver.

Our trip starts...

So that's it: my first entry to the brand new blog and the start of our trip to Canada! I packed some warm pullovers and other clothing, a guide to Canada, some maps, and - of course - my webcam to keep in touch with all of you! As always, I'm doing things last minute - so I've got to get some sleep now before leaving to the airport. Did you know that it's possible to check-in online nowadays? That's pretty cool, we already reserved the best seats! We hope to get a lot of comments for our blogging work, so stay tuned!