We had no expectations for LA, our main aim for this stop being to catch up on some much needed rest. We found there isn’t much to do in LA if you’re on a tight budget and don’t want to drive around in traffic for hours to get from place to place. We went to…

This last unplanned stop on our roadtrip turned out to be one of our favourites and an unexpected surprise. We arrived at the camp at sunset and left the next morning so didn’t have time to explore. But we enjoyed the silence and just being in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by desert, cactuses and…

Camping in National Parks turned out to be an experience in itself, mostly good, but sometimes requiring minor adjustments to our expectations. But hey, that’s what travelling is all about right? Our first camp at Fallen Leaf Lake turned out to be one of our favourite, but also the most expensive at $33 a night….

We opted for the less commonly visited North Rim because Renaud had already been to the South and we figured it would be more enjoyable with less people. We drove through 3 states to get there, passing through Las Vegas twice, astounded by the opulence of this giant city in the middle of the desert….

Notre arrivee dans la Death Valley fut mouvementee. En effet plusieurs chaines de montagne nous barraient la route depuis Sequoia Park (les memes montagnes responsables de l’aridite de la Death Valley). Pour contourner nous avons du conduire plusieurs heures et nous sommes arrives au portes de la valley de nuit sous une pleine lune presque…

On a beau essayer d’imaginer ou evaluer ce que represente ces sequoias geants, il faudrait etre infiniment arrogant pour ne pas etre frappe d’humilite en arrivant au pied de ces geants naturels. De nombreux arbres dans cette foret depassent les 10m de diametre, les 80m de haut et approchent l’age inconcevable de 3000 ans. Parmis…

Running into a bear in the Sierra Nevada Parks is not that common, except if you’ve left food out in your camp. To prevent this from happening, each camp is equipped with heavy-duty ‘anti-bear’ containers that you must store all your food and hygiene products (?) in, which can be quite tedious when you change…

Definitivement LA surprise de ce road trip. Prevu initialement comme une etape de transition entre le Yosemite et les Sequoias, cette etape a pour moi ete une des meilleures. Tout d’abord la route pour y acceder est truffee de points de vues magnifiques et serpente dans la roche ce qui rend l’arrivee dans cet endroit…

Nous voila enfin dans ce fameux Yosemite dont les americains ne cessent de nous vanter la splendeur ! Arrivee un peu rude puisque le US government nous taxe de 30$ juste pour mettre les roues dans le parc, ce sera le premier peage d’une longue serie … Cependant, une fois la douloureuse digeree, il faut…

The photos speak for themselves about the beauty, uniqueness and desolation of this place. At the gates of Yosemite NP we decided to stop over at the local camp site to have more time to take it all in. The bright colours, dramatic skies and reflections, black volcanic islands, moon-like rocks, craters landscapes and ‘tufa’…

Our first contact with nature was in the region of beautiful blue Lake Tahoe, a few hours drive from SF. We chose a camp near Fallen Leaf Lake, in itself a beautiful setting. Our 16 km hike to/from Mt Tallac (and 1 km climb!) rewarded us with spectacular views over the lake and a very…

We spent 3 days in SF. We were really lucky with the weather: got to see the Golden Gate bridge all day every day! We saw it close up by cycling over it over to the other side where we enjoyed an afternoon at Muir beach after a 50 km bike ride! We returned to…