Gefeliciteerd Ingrid!!!

Thursday the 21st of July will be known in the US as the day that four Dutch adolescents entered Yellowstone National Park. We entered this geological heaven from the north, coming across the small town of Mammoth Hot Springs First. We bought ourselves a place on the campsite (all the campgrounds are full around noon everyday so we have to grab every change for a spot) before exploring the hotsprings which gave the town its name. The lovely sulphur (rotten eggs) smell accompanied us as we walked through the terraces made by the precipitation of minerals from the hot springs water. The lovely colors on the wet parts of terraces were created by bacteria, so the signs told us over and over again. Somewhere along the afternoon we came across the Backcountry office were we planned a backcountry trip for the following two days. We finished the day by hiking up a mountain just outside of town to clear our heads from the sulphur and enjoined a great view over the Northern part of Yellowstone. Even the snowy peaks of the Tetons way down south were visible.

On Friday morning we made our preperations for the backcountry trip which would take us to a campsite along the way to a nice peak. With fully packed backpacks we hiked to the campsite through the burned forests created by the big forest fire of ’88 (36% of the park burned down in that fire). After setting up our tents we tried to hike to Trilobite lake but lost the trail in all the chaos created by the new interactive song ‘ei ei ei, gebakken ei’ (egg egg egg, fried egg). After warming ourselves by a campfire, we tried to sleep through the cold night with mixed succes.

At breakfast we inspected our packs for food and came to the stunning conclusion that our food (a factor that killed a lot of our backpack trips already) wasnt sufficient enough to maintain four people for a whole day. So we decided that Nienke and me (Frans) would head back without climbing the mountain, graciously offering our lunch to Sander and Jasper. We arrived back at the Hoff around ten in the morning, in time for a cup of coffee as I forgot my cafeine shots too. The rest of the day we hang around our campsite and in Mammoth Hot Springs writing postcards before heading back to the trailhead to pick up Jasper and Sander.

Sunday was skype and groceries day. After these exciting things we headed out to Canyon Village, more south and east in Yellowstone. Canyon village is named after, taadaa, the Canyon the Yellowstone River created. It was since May we met a canyon and the return to this geomorphic feature was heartbreaking. The Yellowstone River plummits down from the big Caldera into softer layers of volcanic ash, thereby creating two amazing waterfalls and a pretty deep canyon. Deeply impressed and memory cards full of pictures, we returned to the campsite to dream about a river of jus d’orange (as Herman van Veen describes in one of his songs) roaring through the canyon.

The day after we had a quiet ‘tourist’ day in which we visited (by car) a number of the geologic oddities of Yellowstone. Late in the afternoon we were trying to find a campsite, but somehow Yellowstone doesn’t have sufficient camping spots for the crowd of people which visit the park during the high season and consequently, every camping was completely full. Luckily, we could squeeze the Hoff in on a campsite which was operated by the national park service and the day after we went to Grand Teton National Park which lies just south of Yellowstone. This park consists of a 80 km long mountain range which rises 2000 meters from a completely flat plain. For our nerdy geology friends back in Holland, the Tetons (boobs in French) are formed along a normal fault which pushed the rocks west of the fault up relative to the terrain east of the fault. Glaciers subsequently filled the plain with sediment, creating a flat plain with some moraines on it.

Anyway, we went hiking in a canyon with pretty nice view with the four of us and the day after, Frans and Sander went to Jackson Town to do laundries and groceries (this is Jasper writing by the way) and Nienke and I went for a fantastic hike to Solitude Lake with awesome views on the Grand Teton range behind us. After 30 km of hiking, we were pretty tired and went for pizza while the other two waited in the Hoff (we didn’t have any water left so they couldn’t cook until we were back on the campsite). On Saturday, the four of us hiked to yet another lake which lay in between white peaks and provided us once again with pretty nice views of the Grand Teton. On the way down, Sanders knee went out of the pipe permanently so his hiking days in America are over, unfortunately.. The timing couldn’t be better though, because in three days Frans and Sander will be going back to Edmonton by bus while Nienke and I will be exploring Glacier National Park for another 6 days before driving back to Edmonton as well and saying a heartbreaking farewell to our faithful Hoff.

Zachte prairie Frans eet een Huckleberry ijsje

Get ready for some other great adventures in the Canadian Boonies!

We will start this epic episode in Taber, where we started the Hoff on Wednesday morning for a 50 k drive to Lethbridge, a small city where the Greyhound took our Notorious Sander away for a wedding of Kaylee's girlfriends sister. Jasper and me continued towards Calgary, where a join-up with my other uncle and aunt, Jake and Ann, failed. Banff was the next stop for us, we bought a map, picked some day hikes and planned a 4-day backpacking trip.

The day hikes were nice, we stayed at a campsite near Castle Rock. The day hikes at Lake Lousie though were spoiled by the mist and rain. A beautiful viewpoint was just a beautiful viewpoint on the picture at the info-sign. At Saturday we drove to the town of Banff in the morning, skyped and got some food for the backpacking trip. Around 13.00 we started the hike up to the first campground, a trip of about 12 k. At the campground, we put up the tent and did a small hike to Elk lake, a very desolate and silent place with the rainclouds above the high ridges. Back on the campground we teamed up with two couples to build a fire and had a very pleasant evening with these young folks from Calgary and Vancouver.

On Sunday, we walked a trail of 26 k to the next campground. This distance is quite big but with a nice trail with good views, some challenging slopes and bends this distance wouldn't matter. The fact was though that the trail decided to go right through the forest without bends and without views. So it became a hard, hard game. Our dinner wasn't that good either. The frozen pre-made hotdogs were gross already at the first day and the second day the zip-loc bag of pasta salad was totally crushed and awakened the nice feeling of nausea. This was also the meal of the third day so we decided to combine the third and fourth day into one long day-march on Monday. At night it rained, so a muddy day followed, with some showers and a lot of mosquitoes. Pretty tired we arrived at the Hoff and after a short stop at the Starbucks and Safeway we planted ourselves at a campsite near Canmore. The toilets at the campground had the same effect as the crushed pasta salad.

Tuesday we did a dayhike to the middle sister, one of three high peaks on a row. We started in the valley of the Bow River, followed a trail up through a creekbed and had to climb the rest of the way over steep debris slopes. The view from the top was marvelous and amazing. The peaks of the Rockies looked like waves of a ocean (the were all thrust facing the east) with some snow on top like the foam during a steady breeze.

Then, finally, a big day was there for Nienke and Jasper, as they were reunited again on Calgary airport. Maybe a bigger day it was for me, as we did some laundry and bought the new George RR Martin book. More of the adventures will be told now by Nienke. Enjoy!

And here speaks Nienke

My Wednesday was a long one. It started at 6:50 a.m. in the Netherlands, with lots of rain and me panicking over plane tickets, backpacks and whatever you can worry about when about to start a journey. In spite of all my panic, everything went well. My first flight brought me from Amsterdam to Frankfurt. My second flight took off at two and brought me back to Amsterdam (well, we just flew over the city) and then Scotland, Iceland, and Greenland. By the time we reached the American continent, the timid Swiss guy next to me had dared to accept the stroopwafel I offered him and would even talk.

And then at four, after a flight of nine hours, I landed in Calgary. Stealth and cunning bought me a place in the front of the queue, and a chat with some customs officer entrance to the Promised Land. Jasper waited for me outside with a band playing country music behind him. Frans was sitting somewhere else in the hall, while reading the new GRRRRM book.

That same afternoon, I acquainted myself with the Hoff, its noise, and all its rules (keep the fridge from opening by strapping elastic band around the opening, push down the little metal thingy while closing the closet above the stove in order to not break it, and most important of all, the rule that Some Hard Object Will Be Wherever You Put Your Head So Watch Out. As of yet, I haven't really figured out that one). We drove all afternoon to end up at Crow's Nest very late and with me sleeping through most of the bumps in the gravel road.

Thursday proved to be shorter and quite uneventful. We spent most of the day reading, chopping wood with our extremely blunt axe (I still have blisters) and washing ourselves in the COLD river next to our campsite. By then, the competition between Frans and me had started in earnest: who would finish GRRRRRRM first? It was all for the greater good: so that Jasper and Sander could start reading. (of course, in the end, it wasn't necessary because those yups both bought an e-reader)

On Friday, Jasper and I made a hike, but the weather seemed to be turning foul and we didn't want poor Frans to be sitting there alone in the woods with only a book, a folding chair and an axe for company, so we started back without having seen any pretty views. We did however succeed in buying the very necessary new roll of toilet paper at the local chinese shop.

We got back to find 'Poor Frans' gone. We yelled and searched, and only when we sat down to weep and mourn him did some unknown truck drive up to us, miraculously revealing our lost friend. The others (all the Canadians plus Sander) had arrived at one and decided that our campsite wasn't good enough so had moved to a place which supposedly was better but there were many more horseflies and other horrors as well. It was, however, a great camping trip. There was lots of BBQ, lots of campfire, 'smores' (I hope I spelled that correctly), and LOTS of fireworks. I don't think I've ever seen anything like it. Hundreds of millions of dollars must have gone up in smoke within 40 minutes.

We left Canada on Sunday. Another customs officer (U.S. this time) decided to question me thoroughly with questions such as 'Where are you staying?' (uhm... everywhere) and 'Why did you fly to Calgary?' (uhmm.. because I could?) but we were allowed to continue our journey to Glacier N.P. The picturesque RV campground we found had free showers (most people would call those sprinklers) and much less mosquitoes and horseflies. We slept blissfully, woke at 7.30, and went for a hike – my very first one during this trip!

So far, it has been the only one as well so I can't judge how it relates to other hikes but I thought it was really beautiful. We started at Two Medicine lake, and hiked up a U-shaped valley (geologists!) toward Old Man Lake (which happens to sit next to Boy and Young Man lakes). It was really hot, but quite a lot of snow still remained near the lake and the sky was clear so the views were amazing. It was a long hike as well, 24 km for my untrained legs, and in the end, we all agreed that we deserved: a) a bath in the cold stream running from the lake, b) a huckleberry ice cream and c) a good night's rest. We succeeded in everything, although it took quite some time before we could sleep. Efficient young people as we are, we decided to drive for a bit, so by the time we drove into the very first KOA campground of the boys' trip, we had already crossed 40% of the distance from Glacier to Bozeman, where Sander's uncle still lives. To make the most of the 42 bucks it cost us, we stayed in KOA's hot tubs until we nearly dissolved, took long showers and free firewood which we didn't use in the end. And we slept like babies.

Then came another driving day: uneventful, apart from the road constructions that seemed to have gathered all along our route especially to vex us. The 300 km took us six hours, but we arrived in Bozeman in time to do some serious shopping. I bought a bra and Sander and Jasper both an e-reader (Jasper actually got most of his from me as a very belated birthday present).

Today, all we did was laundry and me and Jasper some walking in the hills. Tomorrow will be for driving to Yellowstone, so your next update will be all about geysers and hot bubbling pools.

Uhmm

Welcome back boys and girls! Are you ready for some new adventures from your favorite road trippers in the whole western States and Canada? We saved a couple of them the last 3 weeks, because we are just lazy at keeping something like a blog up-to-date.

Well, the last post was about Pokemon, a nice way to kill the time if the Hoff is taking a holiday. But before the Hoff decided to become a stubborn little van with a dead battery in Columbus, we had our breaks checked in Rapid City. Afterward we drove to the Badlands. This national park was created for Boss Bruce to live safely with his enormous jaw, but contains some nice landscapes too. The plains at the park have been eroded like crazy, leaving a rugged landscape with all kinds of wildlife. Too bad there was a acute shortage of hiking trails in the park, which made us decide we had to go to the Devils Tower, as the lack of trails was surely this block's doing.

The Devils Tower in Wyoming is an old magma reservoir which is beautifully exposed in the surrounding landscape, a real surprise for us. We camped at the foot of it and joined a nice lecture by a ranger about porcupines. This nice lady had some interesting points of view about this creature, for example: it can be compared to teacup and a little porcupine is called a porcupet. After this moving story we went to bed with heads bulging with porcupine thoughts.

The following day, it was a Saturday as I recall, we headed out for a long driving day. The three bends in the stretch of 400 km kept us wide awake and alert, and this day ended at the free campground in Columbus. How that went is already described in the previous two posts. The mechanic who helped us on our way on Monday told us it was a dead battery and something might be draining it. We, having faith in the Hoffs capacities, decided not to let him look any further and headed out to Bozeman, a nice college town in Montana, fully enclosed by hills and mountains. In this town Sanders uncle, Ewout, and his family live.

The following day we visited the Rocky Mountain Museum in Bozeman, a museum with all sorts of things, especially the dinosaurs are impressive. Though when we came back, had a nice bike ride and a small hike, we tried to start our Hoff which was parked on Ewout's driveway. I wouldn't have written the last sentence if our effort had been successful, so the Hoff was broken down again. The same thing happened: a dead battery. We towed the Hoff to a shop with Ewout's car, meeting strange and entertained looks on the way. The next day, after the mechanic checked a lot of stuff, he couldn't find any draw whatsoever. We decided we would disconnect the main battery every night when we were parked somewhere.

So after some really nice days in Bozeman, we left again, stuffed with cookies, cheese and sausage for on the road. After a long long day driving the Hoff finally stopped his noise in the National Forest near Glacier NP in northern Montana. After a deserved nights rest, we woke up and hiked up one of the mountaintops which was accessible. A lot of the park is still not opened yet due to the harsh winter and snow. The hike brought us to a fire lookout, a nice wooden building surrounded by two meters of snow. The inevitable outcrop-dance was preformed not on a outcrop but on the building itself.

A visit to lake MacDonald was preformed the next day, Sunday, where we hiked over a ridge down to Trout Lake. The weather wasn't good, a lot of fog and some spatters of rain. On the way back over this ridge, we had lunch in a switchback. Suddenly a brown creature appeared some way down, cutting of the switchback and lazily continuing his way down the trail. This brown creature proved to be a grizzly bear. Thankfully our bear bells and our scents must have warned him of our presence. Back at the parking lot a second surprise waited for us. The Hoff had drained his battery again! With some help of a family from Arizona, I (Frans) drove to the ranger station with them, meeting halfway with the law enforcement ranger send for us earlier by an old lady. So I drove back with this friendly but stern woman, in between us two big shotguns. And so we discovered that the National Park Service of the US has rangers with battery chargers which they use for free on the Hoff! Not long after, we were on our way again, towards Columbia Falls where we parked next to the shop. Jasper pitched his tent on a even weirder place then his Walmart-camping trip, this time it was behind a autoshop next to a supermarket.

We got up early, got the guy from the shop to look at our battery and he decided the battery was bad. Though Sander and me had bought this battery last year, so we got a waranty! We went to another shop, picked up the battery and went on our way again, over the continental divide towards the east. We stopped at a beautiful lake and after the hike and a bath in the lake, the Hoff's battery was dead again. Luckily we could call our friends of the National Park Service with a payphone and a ranger quickly charged our battery again. From now on we disconnected the battery every time we are parked for more then an hour. After our second Ranger meeting we headed out to Canada, to Waterton Lakes NP. As it was getting late we camped in the campground in the park, which hurt our wallet, as one night was 28 dollar!

Waterton lakes took two days to discover. The dude at the visitor center warned us for snow, but apparently he must have thought we are really old, as the snow was almost non-existent. The second day we had some more snow. That evening we drove to Pincher Creek, where we stood at a campground again, this one with a better price. The following morning we skyped, or at least as long as the internet could hold it. We got some food and beer and headed out to the Crowsnest pass area, where we would team up with my family and all the friends which where camping out there.

Though this camping was a bit different from the standard Dutch holiday traditions. Almost everyone had a huge trailer or big RV-touringbus. Besides that, everyone had a quad or crossmotor. Thus the following three days Sander and me enjoined ourselves with quadding, Jasper couldn't come as it would have broken his back even more than it already has, so he made some nice hikes in the area, including a hike up to Turtle Mountain, a mountain which collapsed in the early 1900's onto a mining town. The adventures of getting stuck in mud, rivers and bumping over rocks, trees and steep hills are countless. Though the biggest story is about Sander, who decided to fly a bit with the quad. He got launched from his quad after bumping in a ditch with a speed of 40 k per hour. He hit a tree, followed by the quad, and ended up some 10 meters below the trail under the quad. Luckily, very luckily, he didn't break anything and is walking like a daisy again now. The quad is riding like a daisy again as well.

This happened on Sunday, the last day of camping in Crowsnest. In late afternoon we drove back to Taber where we stayed at my aunt and uncle on Monday en Tuesday. We did some laundry, got some hair cut, visited a doctor due to tickbites and got our van fixed. At least, that is what we hope. Our eight year old auxilary battery was cooking so we bought a new one and had someone check our divider. Some wires where weird and we have to get a new electric divider. Hopefully the Hoff won't let his batteries drained again by the draining ghost!

Sander will be heading of to E-town (Edmonton) for a wedding of Kaylee's sister, Jasper and I will head to Banff NP for some more hiking before picking up Nienke and join up with Sander again during the fireworks festival Thunder-In-The-Valley in Crowsnest pass.

Zachte Prairie Frans, I choose YOU!!!!

Another update: we just downloaded Pokemon Blue, the popular gameboy-game from the 90's! So, we'll be fully content if the Hoff is going to be broken for another week!

Zachte Prairie Frans in de regen

Here's an update on our situation: the Hoff has, once again, broken down! The situation is in a great many ways similar to our last endeavor: the ignition is broken (back in Chilliwack, at least the engine would make some noise, which it now doesn't), the town we're in is competing with Chilliwack to the title 'ugliest town on Earth' and it's raining, as it was back in Chilliwack. Once again, we've skipped the first four sentiments and gone right to acceptance, so we're drinking free sprite refills in the McDonalds all day long while reading, browsing the internet and muttering to ourselves that things could have been much worse. Oh, and it's Sunday, so the shops where the Hoff may be cured from this illness aren't even open! We'll keep you updated!

Zachte Prairie Frans

Hi kids, and welcome back to ‘Crazy Dutch adventures in America’! Frans left you in the Boulder area with Nathan the Native with whom we spent an evening on the Walmart parking lot. On Wednesday, we headed back to the town of Nederland in the Indian Peaks Wilderness, where we hoped to hike a few days. From earlier observations, we expected trails below 10,000 feet to be accessible so we planned some five day hikes in the area. However, the month of May had been very snowy and none of the trails in the Indian Peaks Wilderness was free of snow as of yet, as I discovered during a hike to a lake at 10,500 feet while Sander and Frans were skyping (I never reached the lake, but stranded in 2 meters thick snow).

So, the next day we headed out to Rocky Mountain National Park with very small expectations; we had learned in the past couple of weeks from the National Park Service website that the park was still covered in at least 2 meters of snow. However, the NPS was wrong! The day after we arrived in RMNP, we climbed the 11,500 feet high (3485 m) Twin Sister Peaks from which we had an incredible view of Longs’ and Meeker Peak, the two highest mountains in the park with altitudes of over 4,000 meters. We stayed in the national forest nearby at a dispersed campground where i pitched my tent on a near vertical slope which caused me to slide down my air mattress every time I turned in my sleeping bag. The day after we climbed the Twin Sisters, we made it to the summit of another 3,300 m high peak (Estes Cone) and we decided to hire snowshoes for a few days.

With these, we hiked to Bear and Emerald Lakes which are the great summertime attractions of RMNP. Even while covered under a meter of snow, the trail was immensely popular and we were the only ones with snowshoes and, consequently, dry feet at the end of the day. The next day, we set off for a hike in the Wild Basin, a little-visited valley bordered by 4 km high mountains in the south-east of the park. We made our way to Ouzel Lake, a lake at some 3,200 meters altitude which hadn’t been reached by anyone this season. With our snowshoes, this proved to be a piece of cake and we were rewarded by great views of white mountains, frozen lakes and wildlife such as blue woodpeckers and running marmots.

Sanders knee hurt after this adventure, so Frans and I decided to try and hike up the 12,000 feet high pass below Longs’ Peak and from there climbing the 13,250 feet high Mount Lady Washington which would be an altitude record for the both of us. We started at 8 a.m. and in three hours we had reached the saddle point, where an incredibly powerful wind was blowing us off the mountain. We still tried to climb Mt Lady Washington, but after my peeing all over my pants and Frans getting his sunglasses blown off, we turned back with our tails between our legs (the wind was blowing from the front). Below the treeline we were finally able to peacefully eat our pasta salad. We only had to descend some 8 km from here to the point where Sander would be picking us up so we figured it’d take us another two hours. Wrong! We lost the trail and had to descend through a snow-covered forest with a slope of some 50 degrees before we hit upon the trial again. The snow had by now been heated enough to be unable to bear our weight, even with snowshoes, so every second step we sank up to our thighs in the wet snow before we were finally below the snowline, where we discovered we lost the trail again and had to follow a small creek down to the valley. All in all, it took us 4,5 hours to descend, after which we didn’t even have time to read our books (Frans is reading War and Peace which is disintegrating so he has the last 200 pages bound together with a peg and has to take out a page a time) before Sander turned up with the ever faithful Hoff.

We drove to Fort Collins, a large town in the north-east of Colorado where we spent the night at a Walmart parking lot. At least, Frans and Sander did: I demonstrated that even in urban areas, pitching a tent isn’t an impossibility if you’ve a mind to it and I slept next to the Walmart parking lot. On Wednesday, we drove all day to reach South Dakota where we’ll be spending some time in the Badlands before heading to Montana where and uncle and aunt of Sander live who we’ll be visiting. Today, we had a small hike in Windcave National Park, a small park with limestone caves underneath a landscape of rolling hills covered with grass, forest, grass, herds of buffalo and more grass. By the way, buffalo are the coolest animals ever! They weigh some 900 kg and they always seem to be chilling; we saw several of them crossing the road at a leisurely pace and just standing on a parking lot among the cars. Later on, we saw some prairie dogs, antelope-like animals and two eagles!

The last few days, we’ve been hearing a weird sound coming from our brakes. We figured that they needed new rubber so we went to our friends of Midas (the same company which took three days to replace our ignition in Chilliwack). After just over an hour, we were summoned back to the office where we heard the good news that our brakes were fine. And the nice lady behind the counter didn’t even want money for it, even though the mechanic had been working on the Hoff for at least half an hour! It’s great that we’re living in a 33 years old van with more rust than paint; this, in combination with our unshaven faces and unwashed bodies (we haven’t taken a shower in 27 days now, though we wash in creeks and rivers every day) causes every US citizen to take pity on us and treat us like three orphaned puppies. Awesome!

Nathan

It is time for some new adventures from the Hoff and crew!

As Jasper told us already last time, Monday 30^th of May we reached the back country of Crawford, where I could just avoid a pillow thrown at me while I slept on a brick that night. The following day we woke up early for a long day hike along a cone-shaped mountain. Finally mountains again after a month of canyons. In the idyllic morning sun we witnessed some deer and elk bouncing through just awoken alpine meadows with snow-white mountain peaks in the background.

This perfect image couldn’t last long of course. The first river we had to cross was so wild and grown in size due to melted snow we first cried for a while before setting on a search for a crossable tree trunk. After Sander had found one, we managed to get to the other site and continue our journey. A couple of miles further up a second, smaller but still quite wild creek met up with us. After taking the shoes of again, walk over some trunks, dry our feet and put our shoes back on we continued through the muddy trail. Eventually we met our Waterloo in, yes, the good old snow again. After having lunch, building dams in a small stream and drying of Sanders foot (he almost fell in a creek) we hiked a bit around at lower elevation before heading back. After Jasper threw his shoe in one of the fast streaming creeks, the shoe was saved some hectometers further downstream, we finally reached the Hoff again, battered and bruised and full of images of bouncing deers in morning meadows.

Wednesday Paonia was our target, where we managed to get a hike from the Forest Service. A hike, they said, which was do-able and not very snowy. We planned this hike for Thursday and did some groceries, wifi-ed at the public library and I got a involuntary shower during the refilling of our water tank. We tried to camp near the trailhead, which was reachable by a four wheel drive road. The Hoff got through it but for the second time in a week he moaned about not being build for that kinda stuff. The following day we started to hike to the peak of a mountain with the intention of camping up there. But again, after finding the real trailhead at noon and struggling with over enthusiastic creeks, we found snow blocking our way. So the only option was head back to the Hoff again.

Finally the conclusion came to us; hiking in the higher mountain regions of Colorado was impossible. A roadtrip through these beautiful mountains was the only alternative. Friday we drove to Glenwood springs for skyping and asking for more trails at the forest service (which failed because the ranger was lazy and gave us rubbish). Saturday we drove to Aspen, over a pass of 3687 meters high (Go Hoff!) through walls of snow and a bunch of skieers and further through the mountains to Nederland, a small mountain village / hippie town near Boulder (which is near Denver). People there were flabbergasted by the fact that three young dudes in a van didnt some weed!

The piece de la resistance came near Boulder, where we parked at a Walmart for the night. After walking to a nice mall for a Subway (the area of Boulder is very Yupping) we came back at the Hoff. Next to us was another van with a guy who wanted a nice chat with us. Though the guy was already a bit drunk. He came from Oklahoma and was a guy of the 'fast money', hedgefunds and stuff. Though now he lived in a van. After 30 minutes, his speech about the world economic situation and banking system was finished, after which he started to orate about capitalism and how the States should be managed. 15 minutes later we managed to get the first words in, we were still entertained at that moment, and drank a beer together on the Walmart parking lot. After more gibberish about oil, economics and politics he came up with a conspiracy by the big bank dudes who are trying to destroy the middle class worldwide. This was accompanied by a strong historical background lecture of the monetary history of the dollar and British pound. In between all these lectures and theories we tried to get the subject changed into climbing mountains, cause that is what the guy (Nathan was his name) did when he made enough money. But immediately the subject changed again and his monolog continued. At this moment we were getting a bit tired, so we decided one of us listened and the other two just continued with our van-bound life, switching roles. A couple of interesting (uhm...) subjects and theories came from this drunken man. He could have been 10 million dollars worth but now he wasn’t, he had to get his life back on track. Even more hilarious was when he started to preach like a American Native (cause apparently he was also partially Native..), talking about all what was build and it didnt matter as it would be gone in 100 years, talking about how to change the world and stuff.

Finally, after listening (or better, pretending to listen) for 2 hours he stopped and went to the bar to get himself hammered (even more hammered?, we thought) but not before he slammed his door shut for 5 times as it wouldn't close, meanwhile busying the already legendary words of: “Close, you stupid American product!”. Too bad this process of handling his van took place 3 times that night, the first around sunrise when he came back from the bar. This guy made a real deep impact on us so many quotes of Oklahoma Nathan will be busied by us during this trip and the years to come.

Sunday was a hot day in Boulder. As Boulder is a Yup-town, thus rich, Boulder has a very large area of the front range turned into a hiking park. Though it was extremely busy at the parking lot, in the park itself it wasn’t so bad and we climbed to Bear Peak, a very nice hike! Only at the top thousand of small flies came and sit on every visitor, which made the view a bit less nice and we quickly descended from the mountain. Totally cooked we arrived at the Hoff, went to McDonalds for some sprite and bathed in a nice cold mountain river near our new camp spot (no Nathan-like people around) in between Boulder and Nederland.