Roadtrip: California, Arizona, Nevada

I went on a roadtrip with two friends for 5 days in the beginning of this month, and I want to share with you what we did :)  It was pretty full on, we did Death Valley, Las Vegas, Grand Canyon, Santa Barbara, Monterrey and Santa Cruz which is a lot of driving. I went with Julia (Sweden) and Marit (Germany) who were in their travel months. I had vacation because my host family went to Spain, so the perfect opportunity to plan a roadtrip. Fun fact, I have known Julia for almost the whole time I was here and this was actually the first trip outside if San Francisco we did together.


On Tuesday 29 April I had to work the whole day first and after that I had my class till 9 pm. My friends went to pick up the car while I was in class and later picked me up there. We went to my house, because Marit was going to leave the rest of her stuff there and to pick up my stuff, then the long drive began. The first night we drove from San Francisco to Death Valley, which was about 8 hours. I don't have my liscence, so the other girls took turns driving. Julia had never driven here before, so Marit drove in the beginning. Then after a few hours on the highway Julia tried and it wasn't as bad as she thought. I guess driving here is a lot easier then in Europe, first of all almost all the cars are automatic. And the highways are so big there is not a lot of traffic. It was a long drive with not a lot of sleep, but we got to Death Valley in one piece the next morning.

Driving into Death Valley in the early morning

Death Valley with Julia

Creepy statues in the ghost town

Ghost town

View from the hotel in Vegas, we stayed on the 25th floor

View

In the early morning of Wednesday we arrived in Death Valley. We were really tired and definitely needed to freshen up a little bit after sitting in the car for 9 hours. So we got changed, went to the bathroom and then we went to the visitor center. We asked them what would be the best to see and they gave us a map with a route we could do. So of we went, we spend about 5/6 hours there and it was really cool. From there we drove to Las Vegas, but when they gave us the map to go there we found out there was a ghost town on the way. We decided to go there first and it was pretty creepy. In the middle of the dessert, there was a little museum and then the old buildings that where falling apart. Strangely enough nowhere in the museum or the little town you could find why all the people left.... After spending an hour or so there, we drove to Vegas, which was about two hours. We checked in in the hotel, and we had a really nice room. We stayed in Excalibur right on the Strip, after we all showered and got changed we went to have some dinner. We were so tired that the rest of the night we pretty much just hang out in the room watching tv.

Pool and Cocktail time!

Our hotel from the outside

Thursday we slept in a little bit and then we went to get some breakfast. After breakfast we went back to our room and we decided to go to the hotels pool. It was pretty hot outside and we figured we could hang out at the pool till about 3pm, and then walk around on the Strip. Well it ended up a little differently, we basically spend the whole day at the pool. For me that was not that big of a deal, because I had already been to Vegas and saw what I wanted to see. So it ended up being a nice and relaxing day, when we went back to the hotel room we all showered and got changed. Then we talked a little bit and eventually we had dinner at like 10.30pm... Afterwards we went back to our room and went to sleep because we needed to get up at 5.00am the next morning.

Grand Canyon

With Marit

Imagine seeing this for 600 KM on a straight road.. Boaring!

Friday morning we got up early to go to the Grand Canyon. It was about a 3 hour drive, but we didn't have a lot of time to spend there. So again we went to the visitor center and asked them what we could see in the amount of time we had. They gave us a map with a route again, so we did that. It was pretty cool and I'm happy I saw all of this before going back home. We left around 3pm, driving to Santa Barbara which was 10 hours. Except from the Grand Canyon this day was not that exciting because we spend most of it in the car. We would drive for about 600km straight in the middle of now where, with the only radio stations being country music about god and Jesus, so it was pretty boring. We arrived in the motel around 1.30am, then we ended up watching this stupid tv show and went to sleep.

Santa Barbara <3

And yes, that bird shit on our car...

Sunset on the way to Monterey

Saturday morning we first all showered and then we went to look for a place to have breakfast. We ended up at this place where they did a buffet, and it was pretty good. Then we dropped Julia off at the train station because she would go visit her sister in LA. Then we drove to the beach and we walked around there for a little bit, which was really nice. We were driving to Monterey afterwards, which was about 4 hours. We stayed there in a hostel and we still needed to have dinner. Apparently everything closed there really early, but we found a nice place and had a nice dinner. We went to sleep pretty early, because we wanted to see some more of Monterey and we had tickets for the Mystery spot in Santa Cruz as well.

Breakfast with a view

Monterey

The Mystery Spot, yes it's weird...

We had breakfast with a really nice view of the ocean and then we walked around a little bit. I actually liked Monterey better than Santa Barbara. After some sight seeing we got back in the car and drove to the Mystery Spot in Santa Cruz. I won't spoil to much of it, but at certain areas there is more gravity and it was pretty weird. After that we drove to Santa Cruz and walked around on the boardwalk. We sat on the beach a little bit and started to drive back to San Francisco. In the end I was home around 9pm, which was pretty good. The trip was amazing and I'm glad we were able to this and see so many cool places! Thanks girls!