US and Canada road trip

Gefeliciteerd Ingrid!!!

2011-08-01T12:04:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-20T21:17:00.001-07:00

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

2011-07-05T21:42:00.000-07:00

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!!!!

2011-06-19T13:37:00.001-07:00

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

2011-06-19T12:48:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-17T12:14:00.000-07:00

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

2011-06-06T08:07:00.000-07:00

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.

Arches, Canyonlands and Colorado

2011-06-01T14:22:00.000-07:00

First of all: here is a link to our picasa account on which we posted a lot of pictures from the start of our trip until now: https://picasaweb.google.com/116931182011734845806

The last blogpost Sander wrote was in the town of Moab, which lies in between Canyonlands and Arches National Parks. The 25th we went hiking in Canyonlands. This is a national park which consists of a very large plateau which is surrounded by 700 meter deep canyons and is created by the confluence of the Colorado and Green rivers. Here, we went hiking on the Northwestern tip of the plateau; the trail went around a very large dome which was destroyed by a meteorite. The weather was brutal: no clouds and no wind and there was virtually no shade along the trail. Happy day J Luckily, we had 1.5 litres of chocolate ice waiting for us in the Hoff, which went a long way to restoring our joy in life. Afterward, we rode to the southern tip of the mesa and had dinner while watching a gorgeous sunset over the amazing network of canyons which lay beneath us.

The day after, we went to Arches. The presence of thick layers of salt in the subsurface has caused some parts of the sandstone layers above to rise and rain in combination with frost-thaw cycles has created some 2,000 natural arches, some of which span tens of meters. This park can only be enjoyed by car while hiking for short distances to the arches themselves so we spent a lot of time in the Hoff. That night, we parked at a rest area where the constant coming and going of trucks and a temperature of 25 degrees did a very good job of keeping us out of our sleep. Then it was on to Colorado, where we spent a day talking to people on skype, baking pancakes, washing our clothes and visiting the local outdoor store. We’re going to spend nearly a month in Colorado climbing mountains but as it is only late May and Colorado has received a record amount of 520 inches of snow (13 m!) the higher reaches of the mountains are still impassable. We wanted to know exactly how high the snow line was and hoped to get some information from the store people, but sadly, they couldn’t tell us much.. We ended up by buying a book which describes a hundred hikes in the whole state of Colorado; with some luck, we’ll be able to hike some of these trails.

After our restful day in Grand Junction, we decided to give the book a try and hike Mount Garfield, a mesa-like mountain which lies above Grand Junction. From there, we had a great view of a landscape of eroded shales at the base of the cliff, the Grand Mesa (a 3000 meter high plateau where we hoped to hike the day after) and some snow-capped mountains towards the south and east. We were so filthy when we arrived back at the Hoff (we hadn’t taken a shower in over a week) that we decided to wash ourselves in an irrigation channel in the middle of the village. Then, we rode up the Grand Mesa where we came to the conclusion that the trail we were going to hike was still too much covered in snow so we rode on for another 1.5 hours to Montrose, a town near the Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park. There, we spent another miserable night at the Walmart before going on a hike which went into a valley of the Gunnison. The hike was fun and hot and the most notable thing was that we drove our ’78 Ford (meaning the Hoff) for 4 km over a 4-wheel-drive road, thereby reducing its value for when we’re going to sell it by at least 200 euros.

Today, we went to the Black Canyon of the Gunnison; a 700 meters deep canyon which is only 400 meters wide at some points. Afterwards, we drove for 2,5 hours trying to find Forest Road 721 in the little town of Crawford which is the location of the trailhead for the hike we’re going to do tomorrow. And now Frans is singing ‘listen to your heart’ by Roxette so I’m going to try and muffle him with a pillow or a brick.

Tweed pyjamas and piranhas

2011-05-24T17:00:00.000-07:00

As the weather gets better and we get better at finding fantastic camping spots, the frequency of our updates seems to be plummeting. Our sincere apologies, hopefully we'll be good from now on and updates will keep rolling in on a regular basis. I'm delighted to announce that I actually figured out Windows Movie Maker yesterday and I started the opening scene of our travel movie. At the rate at which I'm going, it's probably going to be an epic 3,5 hour movie which will hit theatres in Fall 2014.

After our last update, the Hoff took us (we really don't have a say in all this, the Hoff is a true tyrant) to Bryce Canyon National Park, which was a fairytale experience (I urge everyone to Google some pictures until we find a router that will allow us to upload some of our own. We found a free camping spot with restrooms (!) and spent 2 full days hiking. For the people unfamiliar with the North-American obsession with Stop-signs: They. Are. Everywhere. And I seriously mean Everywhere. So on our way back after our second day of hiking, I was stupid enough to ignore one, right in front of a park ranger. Apparently, park rangers are also some hybrid form of police officers, which I realized after the poor guy had been driving behind me with flashing lights for some 2 kms. After making sure we weren't drunk, stoned, or in any other way showing off our Dutch heritage, he let me off the hook with a warning.

The next day was my birthday. So we woke up to snow. Say what? Yup, there was actually snow on the 18th of May. Thankfully, it heated up fairly fast and we were able to go for a short hike (actually advertized as "The Best Short Hike In The World") before stealing Best Westerns' WiFi to Skype on my birthday. We had a "Helluvah" pizza for dinner in a restaurant with waiters (premier during this trip) and drove to Petrified Wood State Park where we spent the next day listening to Frans teaching us all sorts of interesting stuff about biology and watching some pieces of petrified wood.

After a drive through yet another snow storm we arrived in Capitol Reef National Park, where we would spend the next 5 nights. We found an absolutely gorgeous place to camp and hiked for a couple of days in what is probably the most diverse and pretty region we have visited yet. Canyons, mesas, arcs, rainbows.... it was absolutely gorgeous. After five days we had exhausted the hiking possibilities and decided to hit the road again, which brings us to our current location. We are in Moab, Utah, at a couple of kilometers from Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park, which will consume a couple of days before we continue our way to Colorado.

That's all for now. Hopefully pictures, movies, powerpoints, stickers and promotional chap sticks will follow soon!

Mr. Thumb and the amazing Razor

2011-05-15T13:59:00.001-07:00

Well folks, after our Grand Canyon adventure I (Frans) shall bring some stories and myths about our 3-state-crossing journey. At first, we had to steer the Hoff towards Phoenix again. In a two day journey, including sleeping in the desert under the stars, we arrived in the suburbs on Saturday to skype and team up with Kaylee's mom and colleague who were in town for work. After a huge amount of Mexican food (which I missed because of skyping) we left Kaylee with the two ladies. Kaylee, later that day, got on her flight with some help of her mother, who works at the airline company.

We, in the meantime, drove away as quickly as possible from our city-shaped nemesis, though not after buying another load of books. We spend the night at the foot of Humprey's Peak, an old volcano near Flagstaff. Courageously we started to climb the mountain on Sunday morning but found our Waterloo in the snow which slowed us down and made the trail almost impossible to walk on. Defeated we returned to the Hoff and got on the road again toward the west where we camped at Kingsmen. Miraculously, the Walmart had a quiet parking lot and we slept liked knocked down daisies.

The next goal on Monday was to conquer Nevada with Jaspers wisdom, Sanders looks and my silly dances. First we had to face the challenge of visiting the Hoover dam at border. Before we could drive over the dam we were checked on atomics and bombs. As we proceeded and drove over the dam, Sander and me were largely disappointed by the size of the famous dam. Jasper at first didn’t notice the dam at all as he was occupied by slaughtering a mango. The second time we drove over the dam, Jasper also noticed the miracle of concrete and shared our opinion. Our opinion of the highway bridge near the dam was the opposite though.

A couple of miles up the road, we saw the skyline of Las Vegas unfold before our eyes. Miles and miles of suburbs surrounded the skyscraping casino's along the Strip. Vegas doesn't have many rainy days but we managed to get there on one of those days. After another skype session we headed for the strip, were Jasper played on his pink guitar and we shot movies and pictures of the astonishing wast of energy and scenery the casinos displayed along the Strip. We also got out of this city as fast as possible and slept at a Casino near the Nevada - Arizonian border.

The next day, the Hoff brought us through the desert (with a gray sky!) into Utah toward Zion National Park. We immediately grabbed a back country permit as we planned to hike on Wednesday and Thursday along the West rim trail. That night we had a pancake party. Together with leftover pancakes, sleeping bags and a tent we started hiking up the canyon the following day. Awed by the sandstone cliffs showing crossbedding everywhere, we climbed up the canyon and enjoyed the view. Though up at the plateau it was kinda coldish, actually too coldish for the Grand Canyon diet we brought with us. So, after an emotional discussion in which all three agreed from the start, we decided to call an end to our backpacking trip and head for the Hoff. After a 30 km hike, in which Sander injured his knee, we slept like babies. The following day, Jasper and I decided to hike up the east rim, leaving Sander behind with the Hoff due to his knee. The hike was even better than the day before which washed away the last regrets about abandoning our back-country adventure.

The next day was another skyping day, combined with a small hike in the afternoon in the Kolob Canyons, the northern part of Zion. Sander and I went up to a overlook point to read our books there while Jasper ventured on a longer hike. The evening and night was spended at a rest area where the generators of the trucks contributed to a nice allround environment.

Saturday we headed back to the Kolob Canyons to hike a 20 km roundtrip towards possibly the largest arc in the world. Why the word possibly was added in the description is unknown. The arc was indeed quite big and was located high up one of the canyon walls. A good look at it was difficult though cause the trail was in the forest at the bottom of the wall. During the way back we couldn't resist a nice clean creek and we took a nice bath (without shampoo though) in the cold and refreshing water. Today we are at Cedar City for skyping, again, and for the laundry. Next stop is Bryce Canyon National Park.

To end with a typical Dutch greeting: Ajeto Buur!!

North Side Story

2011-05-09T13:16:00.001-07:00

This blogpost is written by Jasper and will tell of Frans’ and my adventures in the Grand Canyon. The day we left for our four-day hike we got up at 4.45 (at least, we should have; the alarm didn’t work). So, the day we left for our four-day hike we got up at 5.15 (pretty impressive without an alarm!) and ate a very cold breakfast of yogurt, cornflakes and banana since it had been freezing that night. Frans took his shot of ultra-concentrated Redbull which he needed to start him up for the day and we were off at 6.11 am! We walked for fifteen minutes to the rim of the canyon and followed the rim trail to our trailhead. Alas, we didn’t check the distance it was to the trailhead too closely and after walking for 45 minutes we were still some 5 km from the trailhead. So we took the bus which took us back to the village first before dropping us of at the trailhead. By then it was eight o’clock and we could start our descend amidst the host of people who had come up with the same idea of descending the South Kaibab trail.

When we descended some 1000 meters, we decided it was time for lunch; we checked our watch and it was only 09.31! So a grain bar would have to do. We managed to get to the Colorado river in three hours and since we thought we were almost there (by then it was only 10 km to the campground) we settled ourselves and read a book for an hour. Then we were off again into the smaller canyon which would take us to the campground. However, we hadn’t realized our poor shoulders still had to get used to carrying the weight of a tent, a sleeping bag, an air matrass, 2.5 litres of water, clothes, 40 wraps, 20 grain bars, 2 cans of pasta sauce, 2 blocks of cheese, 2 crops of lettuce, 4 sausages and two bags of peanuts so it took us another 3.5 hours to get to Cottonwood campground. There, we set up our tent, placed our food and garbage in the metal boxes which were provided and had to make sure the wildlife stayed wild and got to bed at sunset (8 p.m.) after which we slept for twelve hours straight. Except for one incident at 4.45 am when the alarm decided to work properly this time.

The next day, we had to climb 1400 meters to the North Rim which was pretty easy; we walked in the shade most of the way and we left a part of our food at the campground to which we would return the day after. When we got up the North Rim in the late afternoon, we were greeted by patches of snow and a completely deserted camping because the season starts only at May 15^th. We ate our dinner at the lookout point on the rim and watched the sunset before going to bed. Again, we slept for twelve hours and again, we woke up at 4.45 am because Frans had forgotten to turn off the alarm. Time to get back to the Colorado. The killer canyon from the first day proved even more of a challenge this time because there was scant shade to be found. At five in the afternoon we arrived at Bright Angel Campground and washed ourselves in the stream before eating our last dinner (wraps with pasta sauce again, yummy!). All was left for us to do the next day was to get up at 4.45 and climb back to the South Rim, which we managed in 5 hours; just in time to wake Sander and Kaylee with our amazing stench!

Grand Canyon I: Kaylee

2011-05-09T11:22:00.001-07:00

I (Kaylee) have been deemed this weeks blog writer, so Ill fill you with what we've been up to since the last update. On Friday, The Welcome Wagon (aka: The Hoff) rolled into Phoenix Sky Harbour airport at about 9am. After popping about 30 balloons that decorated The Hoff for my arrival, we went to Starbucks where, while basking in the amazing warmth (well, I thought it was amazing. The Dutchies may argue otherwise), we ate breakfast/stole wifi. After Sander finally shaved off his beard, we then we hit the road. We drove for what seemed like forever (which is likely due to the fact that we had to stop every 15 minutes because Jasper has the bladder the size of a pea), and finally rolled into the luxurious campground in Grand Canyon National Park. Our first day here, Frans and Jasper headed to the Rangers station to get their back country hiking pass. Sander and I figured this would be a great time to go get groceries/gas up, so we hopped in The Hoff and hit the road. Seconds before we were about to exit the park, Sander asked “where's the park pass”. This sent us into a frenzy of searching, yielding no results. We headed back to the campsite where Jasper and Frans joined the search. The poor Hoff was violated as we strip searched him. Just as we were about to give up, Jasper figured it'd be a great idea to check the pockets of the pants he wore the day before. Guess what he found? After that adventure, the four of us hit the road one more time, and went to get groceries, where the adventure continued. We arrived at the General Store, which one would assume has more than canned goods and a few rotten vegetables for sale. After paying an arm and a leg for the little bit of decent food we could find, and a bottle of wine (which we had to prove we were old enough to purchase by showing our passports because apparently a drivers license isn't valid photo id), we set out to stock the fridge. However, a faulty grocery bag made this seemingly simple task far more complicated than necessary, for our bottle of wine smashed, starting an argument with the store employees. After a lengthy exchange of rather unpleasant words, we were finally on our way back to camp (with a free, new bottle of wine).

Over the next few days, Jasper and Frans were gone on their 4-day hike across the canyon. I can't offer much detail on this excursion, but I can wager a guess based on the state they returned in: it was super warm, and they're sick of eating wraps. During these four days, Sander and I did a nice day hike along the rim of the canyon. We also attended a lecture about how the Grand Canyon was formed, simply to avoid the cold. One would think the Grand Canyon is a warm place to vacation. Guess again. The high for the day was 8ºC and overnight, a not-so-comfortable -7ºC. We ate breakfast with an elk, and after a couple of days were finally able to enjoy the sunshine we expected.

Oh, I also forgot to mention, during the first night, aliens abducted Frans and replaced him with a goateeless lookalike. Check it out:

Strapazen

2011-04-28T13:40:00.000-07:00

A little Dutch documentary (about wasting time in Phoenix, AZ)

Immer gerade aus

2011-04-27T19:40:00.000-07:00

Dear all,

We're in Arizona! It's some 30 degrees centigrade 24/7, the cities are as uninspiring as I've ever seen them and the gas is about twice as cheap as it was in California.

After Sanders last update two days ago, we drove via the outskirts of LA (still some 60 kilometres away) to Joshua Tree National Park. Along the way, I (Jasper) bought a new tent, as my old 2-person tent which I had bought in Seattle proved way too noisy under windy circumstances, robbing me of three nights of sleep. Now, we have a luxurious 3-person tent with wifi, a bath tub and escalators and the three of us are now able to go on multi-day hikes!

We had found out the location of the free overflow campground of Joshua Tree Village where we could stay the night. However, the navigation system directed us to a very uneven patch of desert which happened to be the property of a beer-drinking, red-neck giant with a very frightening German Shepherd and an equally frightening wife (we've not been able to distinguish between the two). Luckily, we were allowed to spend the night 5 meters away on the other side of the road, outside of the rightful property of this charming gentleman.

The next day, we drove to Joshua Tree National Park and out of fifteen people inside the visitor centre, nine persons were Dutch! After having received warnings about dehydration and the presence of snakes and turtles (yes, turtles, I don't know why either) we set off for the desert. We walked two short, one-mile nature trails which led us to a canyon with completely weathered, yellowish granites interspersed with Joshua trees, some erratic flowers and more rocks before climbing a 400-meters high mountain called Ryan Mountain which gave us a terrific overview of the desert plain. We'd never been in a desert before and it was awesome; it's strange to realize that Indian tribes were able to live off the land where we'd be dead in two days' time.

We had dinner at Jack in the Box because we just had to know what kind of food was being served in a place called Jack in the Box. It turned out to be hamburgers and unlike the McDonalds, these were really tasty! Afterwards, we headed to the McDonalds for an icecream cone which we ate in the Hoff; we were watching two drunk tramps having a fight right outside the entrance while a third one took off with the meagre possessions of one of them.

This afternoon, we arrived in Phoenix where we'll be picking up Kaylee from the airport Friday morning. However, Phoenix is a very, very dull place without any entertainment, culture or whatever, so we'll be spending the next day talking to people at home via Skype, writing cards, shopping for groceries and shorts, repainting the Hoff, eating out of our own and each others noses, attempting to break the world record for wearing the most purple t-shirt and going for a swim in the one swimming pool which isn't open only from late May to early August. Friday, we'll head for the Grand Canyon, where we'll be staying with Kaylee for a week before taking off to Vegas. See you next time!

Oh sweet Sun

2011-04-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

Since Frans wrote our last update, we've been blessed with sun, sun and some more sun. This has yielded some inevitable results. Jasper is already more tanned than I will ever get. Frans seems to be incapable of getting sunburned but he's slowly becoming a pretty blondine. My skin is peeling off.

We happened to be in Yosemite NP at the beginning of National Park Week, which meant that people who normally can't be bothered to go there decided to take there dog for a walk, go biking (or whatever they call biking here) and occupy every single square metre of the park. We managed to find a pretty terrific hike though (pictures on picasa https://picasaweb.google.com/thehoffmeister42), which ended at the video in our last post. Because that was our first really sunny day, we didn't have sunscreen on us, so by the time we got back down, Frans couldn't look at me without laughing. My clowns nose was gone pretty soon, but there is still skin peeling off my arms and neck.

After Yosemite, we decided to go and see some really big trees in Sequoia NP. We found a place to spend the night really close to the park entrance (we got a discount for being Dutch, hurray) where we could hear some horny bulls calling. We never saw any bulls though, and next morning we were wondering where in the world they were when the owner of the campsite came over to chat with us about being Dutch and told us there were no bulls around. We'd been listening to bull frogs all the time.

Sequoia NP was a fairly big disappointment. There were some big trees, but they weren't nearly as impressive as the Redwoods and there was ~3.5m of snow to make sure there was no way in the world we could go hiking. So we drove on and took a shower in the river instead.

Sequoai was our last view of the high mountains for a while, and we left for Lake Isabella, an artificial lake with a free campsite, where for the first time since the Nightmare of Chillwack we camped on the same site for more than one night. Even though the mountains weren't really high anymore, we could still do some serious hiking and reached some pretty cool vista points.

Tomorrow we'll be frying our asses of in Joshua Tree NP and then we're on our way to Phoenix and the Grand Canyon!

California! (continued)

2011-04-20T13:44:00.001-07:00

Hi y'all! (Genghis Khan, 2001)

I (Frans) shall continue the story at that wet and rainy day, called the day after the Redwood hike. It was a Friday as I recall and we left, after two skype sessions, one for Sander and me and one for Jasper, our dear old highway 101 to stay close to the ocean on highway 1. As the rain continued to batter on the Hoff this nice little highway started winding up and down towards the coast. With a mean velocity of 25 mph (40 k/h) for miles and miles our stomachs (except the drivers) started to disagree. As we finally reached the coast, the weather was too bad to enjoy the beautiful view of worlds biggest ocean. As dusk already showed itself we finally got a camping spot in a desolated forest.

Without the expected bears around our van we brushed our teeth in a cloudy though dry Saturday morning and we let Jack hit the road again. After an hour or so the sun had found a way through the clouds and we enjoyed the scenic ragged formations resisting the incoming waves. At the end of the day, in weather at least 10 degrees warmer compared to Friday, we parked the Hoff in a nice and relaxed small town some 100 km north of San Francisco to enjoy a fresh cookie in a open bar with, of course, free wifi. The overnight camping spot was at the Home Depot in Windsor after having a great omelet in the park downtown.

With a lot of excitement and nerves we drove the Hoff over the good old 101 towards the south. Our first major benchmark was in sight! San Francisco! City of Hippies, Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge. A city built on an astonishing 43 hills! Yes, that's rigth 43! And above all, our dear Jasper 'Open-minded' van Bruchem would finally meet his equals in San 'Open-Minded' Francisco. The Golden Gate bridge was beautiful, its northern red pillar shining in the sun while the southern one was hardly visible from the viewpoint. Other landmarks like Alcatraz and the Bay bridge contributed to our happy mood as we drove over worlds most famous bridge toward a mist-hidden San Francisco.

The Hoff immediately met a challenge, driving up one of the steep roads, and fulfilled his task with ease and honour. Without knowing it, we parked near the famous winding road, a small road which winds down one block in 3 whole S-shapes. At this touristy hotspot we took pictures of people taking pictures of people taking pictures! Soon after this historical pictographic event one of the typical trams full of people taking pictures came clinging down the street. We recorded it on picture.

As we had no clue where to go, a Starbucks café helped us out finding downtown SanFran. After having a skype session with our girlfriends we were rudely interrupted, while viewing the city hall, by a cheerful parade. Some of us still believe it was a parade quickly set up to celebrate our unexpected arrival. After searching for a book store way out of downtown, chilling out in the Mac and buying a second phone we decided we were bad city trippers and left the peninsula over the Bay Bridge. That evening we camped at Walmart in Manteca.

It is unknown if it is Walmarts influence or if our brains are decaying but we managed to cook a simple meal in 3.5 hours time, in the process destroying our frying pan. At night the Walmart employees started to vacuum the whole parking lot, which left me (and not my companions) wishing for the nice silence of the interstate next to the parking lot.

Monday morning, a sunny morning I may say, we got on the road again towards Yosemite. Fully packed with enough food to feed Africa we took a scenic highway into the foothills and later on the mountains of the Sierra. Along the way into the Yosemite Valley we were served with some astonishing views of the granite domes. Yosemite Valley itself though is a funpark-like touristy place. We found ourself a nice camping spot, without shower though, where Sander and me witnessed the heroic battle of Jasper versus the river in which he lost his dirt but also one of his just-bought flipflops. Tomorrow (Tuesday) we have planned a dayhike in Yosemite before we will travel toward Seqoiua NP. The higher areas in both parks are inaccessible due to heavy snowfall.

PS: Poor Jasper, we just found hot showers.

California!

2011-04-15T12:09:00.000-07:00

Another state, another blogpost! We’re now in California and the weather is great! Well, not really, it’s raining again but we can’t complain because we’ve made two fantastic hikes the last three days..

Sanders last post was from Tillamook where the local police now has produced a series of ‘most wanted’ posters featuring Sander with beard (he has shaven it off now) and Frans in his chill-pants, a pair of pants in which he practically lives; he sleeps in them and on ‘drive days’ he wears them all day as well. To avoid scenes with the law enforcement of Sea Side, we decided to take a trip to the countryside of Oregon and climb the highest mountain in the Coastal Range. After driving 80 km inland, we slept at Philemat County Fair, a place where bull-fighting is the main business in summer. The next day (the 12th) we drove up the mountain and got told by a park ranger (old, with a white beard!) that only last week the entire mountain was off-limits because of the snow. We decided to start walking anyway and within half an hour we were walking through a beautiful forest on the slope of the mountain where it had been snowing only the day before. After climbing ~400 meter, we arrived at the parking lot at the top of the mountain; luckily, the snow had covered all traces of civilization. When we arrived at the peak (~1360 m) we were amazed to discover that Mary’s Peak was the only mountain high enough to be still snowy.

The next day, we drove all day because we wanted to reach Redwood Forest National Park. Fortunately, the 101 is as beautiful as ever, running parallel to the rugged coastline of Oregon. All along the coast, there are weird rock formations which rise tens of meters from the water up to a kilometre from shore. Obviously, driving along such a coastline is a treat J. We reached Crescent City late in the afternoon and we stayed at a State Camping in the Redwoods. For only 10 bucks a night, we could park the Hoff and I was able to pitch my new tent for the first time and sleep in the forest.

Yesterday, the weather forecast was very gloomy; we felt like it would be a great waste not to take a hike in Redwood NP and we planned a tour of some 25 kilometres despite the impending downpours. Our courage, determination and enthusiasm paid off: the sky stayed clear all day! The hike was wonderful, we first walked down in a valley which was covered with streams, ferns and enormous Redwoods, trees which live up to 3000 years, can grow to 80 meters and have a stem diameter of several metres. After a while, we ascended a ridge which ran above the landscape and we had wonderful views of the Redwoods on either side of the crest. Eventually, we reached the ocean where the forest gave way to steep cliffs and a wide beach where really large waves reached the shore. We met a local Earth Sciences teacher who had lost his flock of children and we got some tips for our further journey. When we reached the Hoff at 6 pm, we could even take a shower (yay!) and after having a gorgeous meal of pork, rice, carrot and onion we drove for another hour to deliver Sander to the McDonalds for his skypedate with Kaylee. Today we’ll drive another 200 km and hopefully, we’ll be in San Fransisco tomorrow.

See you next time!

PS: For all our pictures we decided to put online visit: https://picasaweb.google.com/thehoffmeister42

Busted!

2011-04-11T14:41:00.000-07:00

Beloved readers and mussels,

We made it all the way to Tillamook, Oregon. Is this a landmark? No. Is there a Starbucks here? Obviously, yes. The North-American policy regarding coffeeshops requires there to be a Starbucks within a 5 mile radius of any geographical location that has been visited by at least one person in the last 42 years. Thank goodness.

Driving down Highway 101 is fantastic. Every ten minutes the view seems to change completely and today even the weather is holding up. Yesterday, we were completely swept away by a storm which tried to blow us over the Rockies. Because we had no intentions of crossing the Rockies just yet, we decided to call it a day and parked next to a large (as if they have small ones) grocery store in Seaside (a lovely little town). Sheltered by the huge building, we were sleeping blissfully until at 2AM a police officer decided to bash the side of our van with his flashlight and told us to open our van. After inquiring about the amount of fire arms we were carrying, he decided that his back-up officers he brought might have been a bit too much, but he kept them around anyway. He looked at our passports and asked if my last name was Amsterdam. After explaining to him that Amsterdam is a city, and giving him some clues, he figured out the layout of Dutch passports, which did not stop him from guess both Jaspers and Frans' last name wrong. He seemed to be appreciating our help a lot, or he had just realized he could correctly pronounce the word, because he tried to use it in every sentence. This is probably why he appreciated the fact that I was born on the 18th of May and that Frans' last name was Aben. After appreciating the hell out of us, he told us to leave the parking lot or he would have to give us a 700 dollar fine. We decided that was quite expensive for a night of camping and drove for almost an hour to find a new spot.

This morning the storm had passed and we were greeted by blue skies and a beautiful village next to the Pacific where we enjoyed coffee and breakfast. Life is smiling down on us again. Even The Hoff seems to having a good time in Oregon. That's it folks (and mussels)!

~Ciao~

https://picasaweb.google.com/107134396081770385975/11Apr2011#5594446586039113730

April 8th:

2011-04-10T17:20:00.001-07:00

Hi folks!

This is my (Frans) second contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. All you facebookless people will wonder how our car trouble adventure ended. Stop worrying because: the Hoff is up and running again! The second day in Chilliwack looked a lot like the first, only another mechanic of Midas decided to look at our car. Unfortunately this guy had some trouble with his pronunciation, which left us wondering what he was doing to our van. Besides, this guy seemed to take a big pleasure in having three hour lunch breaks, because after a whole day Starbucking, chillin' out in the McDonalds and bathing in the leisure centre the van still wasn't finished. A second night outside the shop followed and around noon the following day (wednesday) we finally could move again. Around 550 dollars less in our pockets, though with a new starter, ignition and some minor adjustments we finally hit the road again after another quick return to the Midas because our friend the mechanic forgot to remove the bypass in our fuelsystem...

Anyhow, around 3-ish we crossed the border at Abbotsford. A nice dude with the Dutch last name Van Dyke, interrogated us for half an hour with interesting and challenging questions as: 'Did you ever use pot?', 'You have any groceries in your van?', 'How much cash do you have?' and 'Sander, do you have a bad hair day?'.

In Olympic National Forest, we did a hike of ~14 km and we finally dried our tears after so much car trouble. The weather was gorgeous (we wore shorts!), the forest was amazing with a 60 metres high spruce tree and moss growing from the trees and it was fantastic to finally stretch our limbs after 7 days in a car. Pictures will be posted. Right now, we are at Kalaloch, a sort of resort along the highway 101 and we´re watching the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. After the dishes have been done, we´ll drive for another hour and go to a more northern site of Olympic National Park to go hiking for another day. Then, we´ll make our way south along the 101 to Redwood National Park and San Fransisco.

Bye!!

Van Trouble Inc. 2.0

2011-04-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

Beloved blog readers,

I will start with the most important news I've got to share with you: Jasper is pregnant. It seems he has a very rare and previously even completely unknown condition called PIMP (Precipitation Induced Male Pregnancy) caused by the amazing weather we've been experiencing. He will be delivering first thing tomorrow morning and Frans and I have been appointed godparents.

On a completely unrelated and (in the light of Jaspers situation) minor note, The Hoff has once again decided to test our patience and break down. We have decided to skip Denial, Anger, Bargaining and Depression and get on with Acceptance, which brings us to the Starbucks in Chilliwack, where we are currently enjoying tea and abusing the free internet.

We originally landed here on a 15-minutes-customers-only parking space of a convience store near the Starbucks to have Skype-dates with our girlfriends. Realizing our mistake, we tried to start The Hoff to move him, but without success. After Skyping in the Starbucks we got our heads under the hood and tried to figure out what was going on. Our relative peace was disrupted by the reasonable Chinese owner of the convenience store who kept shouting "15 minutes!". After trying to explain that The Hoff could not be bothered to start on sheer will power and trying to comfort him by obtaining a candy bar from his store we resorted to ignoring him for a while, which did not stop him from cheering "15 minutes!" on every occasion he had (which was, unfortunately, all the time). After a while we shut him up by pushing The Hoff to the middle of the parking lot and found a mechanic to look at our car. The Hoff was towed over and people started crawling around it to make it work but, being German, The Hoff did not give in easily.

Back in the Starbucks, the mechanic just handed us our keys and left for the day and we'll be spending the night on a mechanics parking lot once again. Hopefully the bill won't get out of hand, because our budget only stretches so far... As long as we're stuck here, we've got time to waste (Chilliwack isn't really worth visiting, the weather is horrible and we have no means of transportation) so feel free to send us long emails and Skype us. The second The Hoff is on the road again, we'll be sure to post on this blog and let you know.

Jasper, reporting from Kamloop

2011-04-03T15:42:00.000-07:00

Hi all!

This is my (Jasper) first contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. Or whatever that sentence means. Frans' last entry ended Wednesday afternoon when we had gone shopping. Since then, much has changed; we are in Mount Robson Provincial Park now, we have had the pleasure of listening to Frans Bouwer on a local Dutch Canadian radio station and Frans' goatee has frozen off during the night. Wednesday morning, after waking up at half past five I had a talk with my mom via Skype at half past six. Sander picked us up at 11 am to go and fix several things on the van (change the oil and airfilter in the course of which we destroyed Hope's ramps, using silicone kit to make the windows airtight and installing carpet on our beds as not to destroy our air mattresses). We stopped at Kaltyre to ask where the oil tank was located and a really nice guy of some 60 years of age entertained Frans and me with stories of his roadtrip across Europe in the 70's.

Thursday evening we had dinner with Frans' aunt and cousin who live in Canada at a fantastic Greek restaurant. The day after we picked up some pillows and sleeping bags at Frans' aunt's house and we bought an apple in the Safeway. But the most notable thing about Friday was a performance of the band 'Maria in the Shower' which we visited that evening. They played in a local bar and the band consisted of drummer, a guitar/trumpet player, a bass guitar/ double bass player and the main singer of the band who could play accordeon and trumpet at the same time while climbing onto the double contrabass! One weird thing about Canada is that, in the spirit of the promotion of sober driving, non-alcoholic drinks are free or at least very cheap in bars!

We originally had the idea to start our journey to Jasper National Park early in the afternoonish on Saturday. However, the weather forecast for the Rockies was very bad (~25 cm of snow was expected to fall, and that's vertically!) so we decided to take no risks and try to get as far as possible before evening. Therefore, we took off at 10 am after saying goodbye to Hope, Bill, Kaylee and Art, the ugliest but also sweetest dog in the world. On the way we incidentally turned on the radio and (chance would have it) we received a local Dutch Canadian radio station. The dj who hadn't been to Holland since the seventies judging on his way of talking was first telling us of the problems ING was coping with in Holland and after this, it only got better! Next up was Frans Bauer with an incredible performance singing the world hit 'Heb je even voor mij'. Needless to say, Frans, Sander and I couldn't help shedding some tears while listening to this sweet memory of our home country (videos are online). Then, on a more serious note, the rubric 'Heaven and Earth' followed, in which Psalm 374.83cll was used to explain the dissimilarity between the extinction of the caste system in the Flevopolder in the 90's on the one hand and the intensity of the Japanese winter monsoon on the other hand.

Anyway.. at 5ish we entered Jasper National Park where the snowfall was very severe. Luckily, this lasted for only half an hour and the rest of the day the weather was fine. We stopped for the night in Mount Robson Provincial Park and made some dinner (macaroni, courgette, onion and beef) after which Frans and Sander set to sewing the curtains which we needed in the van while I did the dishes. At 10 pm we started to prepare the van for the night, an activity which included covering all windows with curtains or towels, fold out the bench in the back of the bus, covering it with carpet, inflating the air matress, letting Frans undress and climb into the coffin which is the top bunk, unpacking the sleeping bags, finding out that the van was parked in such a way that we would wake up from the sun shining into our eyes, moving the van on a dark parking lot with all windows covered, having a really, really good laugh about it and letting Frans tell us some stories about the lifestyle of a typical mussel. The night was extremely cold, a fact which became especially apparent when I needed to take a leak outside. However, when we woke up, the sun was shining and not a cloud dotted the sky and we had an amazing look on Mount Robson (3954 m high). After having some bagels for breakfast and cleaning the ice from the inside of the windows with underpants we were ready to hit the road. We're off to Seattle now, where we hope to arrive sometime tomorrow.

SuperPaleozoic (sorry world, I'm doing this for Nienke) bye!

Pictures of Jasper and Frans' trip and their first two days in Canada...

2011-04-01T07:05:00.000-07:00

...can be found on https://picasaweb.google.com/107134396081770385975/3132011?feat=directlink#

We're officially leaving tomorrow, so from now on blog post will be post at a fairly regular basis!

Chinese Democracy

2011-03-30T16:38:00.001-07:00

Hi all!

This is my (Frans) first contribution to this blog and to keep the mums in touch of our adventures on the North-American continent. My story starts at 6 o'clock in the morning in Zeist, as we started our journey to Dusseldorf airport. After an emotional goodbye with Jasper, which as I discovered later was on the same plane, and the ladies I boarded the plane to Chicago. Nine hours later we found ourself on the beautiful (sarcastic) airport at which we participated in a six hour doing-nothing contest before we took the plane to Edmonton. During the journey across the oceans, many emotions were awakened, such as extreme joy (expressed by singing beatle songs), extreme grumpiness (especially seen at the US customs guy) and extreme boredom. The definite highlight were the four Germans on the plane who had a sleep and bailey-drink mode, which alternated every hour.

At the airport of Edmonton, a silent arrival-hall appeared to our tired eyes. But suddenly the music swelled up slowly, from a distance a bright white light increased in size as it came closer, the violins exploded into a heroic climax!!... And as beautiful as ever, Sander 'notorious Oos' Osinga appeared to us, an aura glowing around him. We ran toward him and gave him the mother of all hugs.

Sander, accompanied by his side-kick Kaylee, brought us to Hope's house. After a beer and a lot of talking and babbling, we went to bed after a 28 hour long workday. Both me and Jasper experienced some jetlagging as we had 4 hours of sleep before we woke up again and started with the new day. Sander picked us up with our van, 'the hoff', and we went to the university, where we met prof. Rick and the lab crew. After a good old fashioned poutine (fries, gravy and cheese, kinda like a kapsalon) we went shopping at bonny doon (the mall near Hope's place) and experienced all the wonders of capitalism such as cheap shoes for Jasper (photo's will follow). So far this day and this story.

Superbye!

Surprise.... a moose!

2011-02-25T15:27:00.000-08:00

Right, now that I have a blog, I should probably start producing some updates on my life in C-C-C-Canada (it's cold over here).

My flight wasn't nearly as painful as last time, which was probably due to 3 things. First of all, I didn't party until 4 in the morning the night before I left. Second, I didn't have to spend 13 hours at the airport before my flight actually took off. Last but not least, I didn't miss my connecting flight so my lay-over was a mere 3 hours long. So even though I had to clear American customs and spend my second flight bumping up and down (turbulence) next to a slightly drunk Canadian fighter pilot who kept showing me magazines about (surprise) fighter jets and Apache helicopters, I arrived in Edmonton fairly alive and kicking.

To be honest, I am living quite a relaxing life at the moment. In my first week here, I spent my days sleeping, playing guitar (and some piano), reading books and bugging Hope. Kaylee had midterms all week long, which meant I had to enjoy myself because she was either studying or at university. On Friday we (everyone except Kaylee) had a surpirise party planned because her birthday had come and gone during midterms. The party was a huge success although I think Kaylee might have lost 2 years of her life when she opened the door.

Currently, it's reading week at the U of A, which (legend has it) was mainly invented to prevent students from committing collective suicide. Kaylee and I decided to hit the mountains for two days. We got on Hotwire, booked our hotel and then checked the weather reports. I know, aren't we smart. It was -21 C without the wind chill while we were in Banff. We visited Banff Springs Hotel, which is the hotel Stephen King based 'The Shining' on and I ran into one of the kids I used to tutor in Bilthoven (it's a small world). The next day we went for a three hour hike during which we saw a moose! (Actually, we saw two, but I only caught one on video). I apologize for the fact that she's taking a leak during the video, I stopped filming before she started on her nr.2 because my hands were freezing off.

We saw people climb frozen waterfalls, but most of all, we didn't see or hear anything else than snow, forest and mountains. Our hike ended brought us to 'The Inkpots' which are supposed to have beautiful colours, but they were mainly frozen. We tried to stop walking for a minute to eat a granola bar, but it was too cold to stop moving and the water we brought turned into ice slush. Nevertheless, hiking at minus 21 is fantastic :)

Oh! And Kaylee got herself an ice-beard.

Next up: partying with Superman, moving Kendel (Kaylee's brother) to his new house and attending a baptism. And it's only -11C today, what more can you wish for?

New trip, new blog

2011-02-21T12:51:00.000-08:00

Hi there, welcome to my new blog about my newest adventure on the North-American continent. Hopefully, this will be the home of a lot of amazing stories yet to be lived and told. For this trip, I switched to an international website, which makes it a bit easier for non-Dutchies to navigate. In 5 weeks, Frans, Jasper and I will be leaving for our 4.5 month road trip through the USA and Canada. Hopefully Frans and Jasper will be co-authors on this blog and I won't be responsible for keeping either of their moms up-to-date on their sons' lives. If you want to subscribe to our stories, use the email alerts on the right of this page. Hopefully (if I set everything up correctly) my Facebook page will also show whenever there is a new story to be told!

I will post a short update on my first week in the land of snow and (ice)hockey shortly. Don't forget to use the email subscriptions (by Feedburner, forget the weird Google option) if you want to receive updates on our trip (and the 5 weeks I spend in the freezing cold without my travel companions before we take off)!