July 15, Cologne-Bonn – Boston

The trip began with a flight from Cologne-Bonn to Boston. Well, it actually started earlier. At that time, we were living in London. Well, not really living there anymore, we had quit our jobs, ended our tenancy in our apartment, and a week before departure, we rented a garage that could easily fit all our stuff, acquired in London in less than a year, along with my motorcycle. And so, our trip began early in the morning with a transfer to London Stansted Airport and a flight to the aforementioned German metropolis. Our Eurowings plane was scheduled to take off from Cologne at 1:40 PM and land in Boston at 3:45 PM, which was great because after an eight-hour flight, we gained back six hours. I definitely CANNOT recommend the cheapest tickets without surcharges from Eurowings for such a long flight; we didn’t have anything included in the price at all. However, we were prepared for it and had food supplies, which wasn’t really a problem. But the multimedia stations on the seats could have worked, even with limited content, as is usually the case, but they didn’t, so we could only watch flight information and listen to music from our mobile devices.

And what needs to be arranged in advance for such a trip? The basic thing – flight tickets. I didn’t buy ours as return tickets, as I was tempted by cheap tickets to Boston half a year before departure. Then I spent a long time planning all sorts of routes, different versions of buying or renting a car, whether we would just do one loop or return the car to a different location than where we rented it from, and so on… Time passed, prices rose, and we had nothing, except, in addition to the aforementioned tickets, a date by which we had to be back in Europe, not in London, but in Košice for a wedding that we couldn’t miss. It was, give or take a few days, two months after departure, which seemed like a sufficiently long time. From the perspective of financial planning, it was too long, and from the perspective of route planning, it was too short. I was finally beginning to realise the distances between American cities and the time required for individual landmarks and national parks. At least that’s what I thought. The distances didn’t seem like a problem to me, and they weren’t. I tried to avoid long stretches (over 1000 miles non-stop), even though there were eventually some of those too. I wasn’t too worried about distances up to 1000 miles (1600 km), based on my experience in Europe, where I had driven over 2000 km in 24 hours. In this regard, I was pleasantly surprised at how well the long journey went on half-empty highways (except for traffic jams in cities), really better than in Europe, better than I expected. On the other hand, I completely underestimated and misjudged the size of the national parks in my imagination. Even Zion, which I planned to visit, thinking “if there’s time on the way, we’ll hop over there,” is actually one of the smallest national parks I had planned, but it’s still half the size of the High Tatras. But I wasn’t even considering that at the time…

The decision was made that there would be two loops in total, two cars in total (it didn’t work out, there were more), and we would add one flight from the East Coast to the West Coast. After monitoring prices for a long time, I concluded that the prices wouldn’t go down any further, so all that remained was to determine the dates of the flight and the return trip, and of course, from where to where and from where to home, simple. A ticket was available from the Russian airline Aeroflot from Los Angeles via Moscow to Budapest. Departure from LA on September 7th, arrival in Pest at night on September 8th, which was a Thursday, great, we’ll make it to the wedding on Saturday. After monitoring car rental prices, I knew that the best price per day would be when renting a car for exactly one month. Okay, now I knew when we had to get to LA and that we would have the car here for a month and return it to the same place where we picked it up (even this didn’t work out and ended up differently). All that remained was to figure out where to fly to LA from. We were starting our trip in Boston and wanted to continue to New York. Mainly because we wanted to be in NY for at least 4 days, and we didn’t need a car there, we decided that we would rent the car only in NY after those few days. A concern was added as to how and when to get from Boston to NY. Resolved in a few minutes by booking a Megabus. Even setting the date wasn’t difficult, as we were deciding between Sunday and Monday, where tickets were expensive on Sunday and cheap on Monday, so it definitely fell on Monday. The dilemma remained whether to return the car back in NY, and therefore look for tickets to LA from NY, or the car would be returned somewhere else, probably in Florida, which seemed to work out best for me, and we would look for tickets from there. Most people would probably choose the latter option and consider it unnecessary to drag themselves back such a long distance, but the fee of $500 for returning the car to a different location seemed too high to me. Since, in an extreme case, I can get from anywhere in Florida back to NY in one day, I basically took it as if one extra day in Florida would cost me $500. Yes, I embellished it a bit. I also added that if there’s time, we’ll manage to see and experience more on the East Coast of Florida and possibly Washington on the way to NY. I won’t particularly defend this decision, but it worked out great, even with Washington.

After determining this rough outline, about three months before departure, a month of booking began. A month, because although I bought the tickets more or less quickly (the return flight and the flight from NY to LA), I still left room for cheaper rental cars. Some promotions came up, and even though I wasn’t completely satisfied, two months before the trip, I also booked the cars. I wasn’t satisfied because I had been following the prices for a long time, and I knew that for that price, I could have had cars that were at least one class better. In the end, they were completely different from what they were supposed to be, and as a consolation, we avoided the requested surcharge…

In conclusion, regarding tickets and rough planning, I must say that if I had a complete plan and handled everything half a year in advance, when I bought the first ticket to Boston, I would probably have got everything cheaper. But not so significantly. Even the fact that I bought the tickets separately wasn’t that bad in the end. I was monitoring return tickets through Pelikan, and the price was close to my prices, but always higher, and most importantly, there were terribly long layovers. We had great layovers. It would be different if you need a return ticket with the same arrival and departure, then you can also get to the western USA cheaply. But in our case, when we needed to go from London – Boston and back from LA – Košice, I think I did quite well.

When the price of the ticket from LA to Budapest with Aeroflot rose, I even started thinking about the alternative that we would wait for another promotion and buy the tickets even later, during the trip. That would have been a mistake, but fortunately, I didn’t dwell on it for long. Here I get to the second essential thing that needs to be done before departure. Obtaining ESTA. It’s just a formality for $14, which you can arrange on their website. There’s no problem with that. But for us, the entry interview at the airport in Boston was a bit of a problem. The young customs officer first looked like he would ask us how we were doing and let us enjoy the road trip in peace. But he didn’t quite believe us. He asked all sorts of questions, even less common ones, and occasionally shook his head when, for example, I didn’t know the exact dates of when and where we would be. We were unemployed, had Slovak passports, but were coming from England and supposedly going to travel for two months and then return home. It’s probably not very common. I believe that if I had said that we didn’t have a return ticket yet, he would have turned us around, and we would have gone home immediately. That would have been a fatal mistake, and it would have been really disappointing. Therefore, even if you’re trying to save as much as possible and even if you’re an adventurer who doesn’t really need to solve some things in advance, you simply have to. And a return ticket in such a case probably has to be there.

I don’t like travel that’s precisely planned, but in this case, we already knew that we would be in Boston for exactly three nights and then in New York for exactly 4 nights. And so, some accommodation could be arranged, as usual, through Airbnb. We were planning our next route to Niagara Falls and then to Chicago, where we dared to book accommodation this far in advance as well. And that was all. We only had to stick to some kind of schedule until then. After deducting all these preliminary expenses, I created a rough budget per day from the remaining money that we had set aside for this trip at that time. It came out to about $100 a day. It’s not much, but with 56 days… We were looking forward to camping, but it was clear to us that we would occasionally sleep in the car as well. After Chicago, we only knew that we would go towards Florida, we had a hundred dollars a day, and we had to be back in New York by August ninth. That is, we would return the car on the eighth and the plane to the west would leave on the morning of the ninth. We didn’t plan what we would do in the west, we only had one date, the Sturgis motorcycle rally and the associated visit to friends in Wall, South Dakota.

I will also mention insurance. I won’t go into it in too much detail; we lived in England, so there were many options. We couldn’t have annual travel insurance, as it’s time-limited to a certain length of individual trips. We had to take out insurance for a single long-term trip, which, of course, is more expensive per day. We used the comparison portal moneysupermarket.com to help us choose. The second insurance, which I took out, was already annual and was for rented cars. There was a special surcharge because we were going to America, where the insurance policies work a bit differently, but it was still incredibly advantageous compared to the insurance offered by car rental companies. I didn’t even need this insurance in America in the end, but since it was valid even afterwards and they found minor damage on the car later in England, I used it without any problems. It’s also a bit of a risk to take out insurance from a third party like this because if something happens, you have to pay for the damage yourself, and if the insurance company isn’t in a hurry to process the claim, the money may be missing. That’s already up to everyone to consider their abilities, experience, and the risk they are willing to take. One thing I already know is that in America, they absolutely don’t care about scratches on the wheels, fenders, and so on. All the better if you get an older car that has already been through a lot. Whereas in England, a damage event is probably even a fly stuck on the headlight. Well, maybe not this, but an invisible scratch on the wheel, which was found only by the third employee, who was very suspicious, they have it valued as damage for 160 pounds. I realised that I’m not the first one who has paid them for the same scratch. It is precisely in these cases that cheap insurance from insurance4carhire.com is invaluable.

Now, a little about specific numbers (all total amounts are already for two people):

These were the costs that we paid before we even moved anywhere. The pound’s exchange rate at that time was falling incredibly fast due to Brexit, and it’s difficult to convert it to one currency according to one exchange rate, but approximately it was a total of 3125 pounds at that time, which is around 4300 dollars (4000 euros). I definitely wanted to fit the whole trip under 10,000 dollars, and so I set those 100 dollars a day, for 56 days, that’s 5600 dollars. 5600 + 4300 = 9900. Mathematically, it worked out nicely, I just had to hope that it would be the same in practice.

Boston

Boston was a great choice to start our trip. A very nice city where everything is close and you can get everywhere quickly. We were lucky to catch the ongoing OTB Boston (Outside The Box Boston) festival, which was completely free and took place in Boston Common Park in the city centre. So, we spent most of our time there. Because of the festival, we probably had a skewed view of what might otherwise have been a dull atmosphere in the city, but thanks to that, we felt great in Boston and recharged a lot of energy for New York.

In addition to the classic Boston “landmarks,” we decided to go for something that definitely belongs to travelling and is also typically American. Food! I had already planned a few establishments in various American cities that had appeared in the famous Man vs. Food program. In Boston, the choice fell on Eagles Deli. To my surprise, it wasn’t in the city centre, but that didn’t prevent us from trying a huge burger that I had seen on TV before. Of course, when I saw the prices and pictures on the spot, where burgers that I would never even eat in my life cost over $50, I decided on one of the normal burgers from the menu. It was great, exceptional for me at the time, but I ate so many of those burgers afterwards that I don’t know why I would have this one again.

In Boston, I had my first personal contact with a higher concentration of skyscrapers in the city centre, or as it’s called in America, Downtown. But even here, I realised that more than walking among the buildings, I’m more interested in seeing such locations from a distance, and therefore I searched everywhere I could for places where there was a good view of Downtown. There were several things that we started doing in Boston and later became an unconscious routine in other cities as well. For example, constantly carrying a picnic blanket and our few board games with us, which we always used to relax, whether in a park or in other places where we were likely to get bored.

July 18, Boston – New York

We took the bus from Boston to New York, the only time in the USA we did that. We had purchased it in advance through Megabus, and it cost us only $14 in total. The journey was nothing special, it lasted 6 hours and we had one break in front of Burger King, where we ate. Upon arrival in New York, we crawled through traffic jams, but at least we had a nice view of that crazy city that awaited us in the coming days. The bus dropped us off right in Manhattan near Times Square.

New York

Our first contact with New York was quite hectic. Since we managed to break a wheel on our suitcase in Boston, it was very difficult to handle it, so we wanted to get to the Airbnb accommodation as quickly and easily as possible. It wasn’t difficult to find the subway stop, the problem was realising that here you simply go underground by stairs, no elevators, no escalators. Fortunately, we didn’t have many stairs there, which I still don’t understand how it’s possible that the subway runs so low underground here. Free wifi works at the subway stations, so we found a route and connections to get to Queens, where our accommodation was located. The biggest problem was buying tickets. First, I tried to pay with a card at the machine, but it asked me for a ZIP code, which I didn’t know. I tried random numbers, and it cancelled the transaction, but the money had already left the card. I was quite nervous and tried to solve it somehow. I didn’t know if it was because of my Revolut card, where I had dollars, and I was just testing if it worked as it should. In the end, I paid in cash, and later I also noticed that the money hadn’t left my card yet, but it was still being processed. It was like that for maybe even a week, but in the end, it was returned to me. Otherwise, I had no problem with the Revolut card for 90% of the whole trip, and it saved me a lot of money on fees for withdrawals from ATMs or money transfers, and I can only recommend it.

It is probably unnecessary to write down all the attractions of New York, which everyone knows for sure, even those who have never been there. There are many ways to get to know New York, but in each one you walk incredibly much and still feel like there are many places you would like to go. But you simply can’t go everywhere, to those hundreds of perpendicular streets. Otherwise, the fact that the streets are right-angled and the directions are always marked according to the cardinal directions is completely great and incredibly helpful for orientation. Marking the directions also helped me later when driving, you don’t have to have a map in front of you and look where it is, you just need to be able to imagine which direction you need to go.

My first contact with the skyscrapers in Manhattan was incredible. There were a few buildings that I specifically wanted to see, but that doesn’t mean that the others aren’t interesting or all the same. On the contrary, every skyscraper is exceptional, original, has its style and can be admired for a while. I certainly wasn’t the only one walking down the streets with my head turned upwards and a smile on my face. While walking in the concrete jungle in summer temperatures over 30 degrees, we spent a lot of money on various chilled drinks and refreshments. The problem was also that we had to buy small and expensive bottles that we could carry with us, and not large gallons of water, as we did later when we had a car. After tiring of walking, we always looked for a park where we could sit down and relax for a while. There are several parks in New York where you can do that, but one stands out, and that is Central Park. We only got to a third of it, but that was enough for us to release the energy that we had first charged here. Relaxation on rented boats was again welcome. We ended an incredibly difficult and hot day in the best way we could. At sunset, on the Top of The Rock viewpoint on the roof of the Rockefeller Centre, where we had the opportunity to look at all the places we had visited today from above. In the dark, we stopped at Times Square, where it was still alive with various sounds, lights and colours. The crowds of tourists and fatigue forced us to go to our apartment to rest. This first incredibly difficult day in NY foreshadowed a bit how difficult and a bit rushed the whole trip would be. I had to start looking for a place to rest a little more and be careful not to walk Lenka to death. I’m not saying it was easy for me, but I like to reach the bottom, and even with all-day walking, I’m not getting very close to that bottom yet. Just here, I started neglecting sorting and processing photos, which continued throughout the trip. But with what we saw and experienced during the first day in New York, I was extremely satisfied.

We had perhaps a freer pace on the next days in NY, but despite Lenka’s constant fatigue from walking, we managed what we wanted, and even though the mood was sometimes a bit frosty, the experiences eventually made up for it. A visit to the fountains that remained here after the former twin towers buildings was definitely a strong experience. Next to the huge holes in the ground and the completely new World Trade Centre building, you feel terribly small. The mixture of feelings and the atmosphere of these places, which are constantly changing, where the former icons of the city are replaced by new ones, and even with the apparent crowding of streets with skyscrapers, you can find space for new skyscrapers and buildings are still being added here, left us with strong feelings and certainly curiosity and a desire to come here again and see what it will look like here in a few years.

Even with the amount of changes in the heart of Manhattan, the view of it from a distance will always be equally enchanting. Probably the best such view is offered from behind the Brooklyn Bridge. You can walk among the Manhattan skyscrapers for several days, but only the view from Brooklyn Park reveals how special this island is. When you add to that the incredible structure of the Brooklyn Bridge as it stretches towards the island, it creates an amazing picture that I could look at for a long time. New York is truly rightly called a concrete jungle, because what you can see from these places cannot be called otherwise. I didn’t understand how there could be so many wide streets between those congested buildings and all the urban bustle that we had been engulfed in just a moment ago. An evening rest in these places is one of the best experiences from New York for us and it is exactly what I look for when travelling, to observe the atmosphere of places that I was already a part of a bit from a distance and with a perspective, and this way the experience is better stored in my head as a whole.

New York is a city where, even on my first visit, I felt like I knew many places in it, but personal contact with each of them filled me with travel happiness. I believe that I will have these feelings even during his future visits. I believe that with each visit to New York, I will also learn something new, and I believe that I will have many visits to the city of New York in my life.

July 22-23, New York – Niagara Falls

On the 5th day in New York, on Friday, around noon, we went to pick up the car from the Enterprise rental branch, which was located nearby, in the Jamaica area. The car was supposed to be an Intermediate class, supposedly a Toyota Corolla, or similar. But they didn’t have one, so they offered us something smaller, I think it was a Nissan Note, or something like that. Besides the fact that the car was ugly, I don’t think anyone in America even buys such a thing, the problem was that even our entire luggage didn’t fit in the boot, so we protested. They didn’t have many cars there then, so they offered us a Hyundai Elantra GT. I don’t know what class it was, it’s not a very big car, but the boot was bigger and at least it was a bit sporty, always better than that box. The space in the back seats wasn’t big, we didn’t care about that, but what turned out later, in such a car, where even when driving you have a fairly lying posture, you can sleep quite well after folding the seats. I was surprised by the exterior of the car, so many scratches on the fenders and wheels could hardly be recorded. Based on my experience from England, I started asking and I was told that they don’t care about it at all, they don’t mind scratches on the fenders and wheels, but when returning the car there must be no visible defects on the sheet metal of the car and a destroyed interior, otherwise it’s OK. It was the first time I got a not completely new car from the rental company, and I must say that the feeling when driving is a bit better and more confident than when you have to constantly think about whether something will happen.

I entered the address of The Mills at Jersey Gardens, a huge shopping centre in New Jersey, into the GPS. It was the first time I tried out the American maps that I had installed in my Garmin before this trip. It wasn’t 100%, but we made it. Unfortunately, it was worse when we left from there and had to go north first to bypass New York in the direction of Niagara Falls. Then the GPS was completely malfunctioning; it absolutely couldn’t keep up and was working badly, according to the signs. Many things were new to me, I couldn’t orient myself very well, moreover, it looked like all roads led to New York. And it happened badly, suddenly we were heading for a bridge where we couldn’t turn off anywhere, and there was a toll, 15 dollars for entering Manhattan. Very angry, we just tried to turn around somewhere and cross the same bridge again. Our biggest fears, that we would pay 15 dollars for the return trip as well, were fortunately not fulfilled. This experience at least forced me to thoroughly poke around in the GPS, and why it wasn’t working as it should. In the end, it worked exactly as in Europe after several changes and restarts. With a feeling of satisfaction that I managed to get freely distributed maps running on an old Garmin and thus save in this matter as well, we set out on the first part of a big trip. I was really looking forward to it and enjoyed every second. We were waiting for a distance of approximately 400 miles (644 km), i.e. about 7 hours of driving. Lenka fell asleep after dark. I drove until half past one, parked in the parking lot, and we slept in the car for the first time.

Niagara Falls

Because we slept just before Buffalo, a long journey to Niagara Falls didn’t await us in the morning. But the endless traffic jams and snail’s pace still meant that we arrived at the place before noon. Saturdays and weekends, in general, are certainly not a good time for any American sights, where several thousand people head. We parked in the first possible parking lot for $20 for the whole day. It is said to be better to see Niagara Falls from the Canadian side. We were not allowed to drive to Canada, and we didn’t even think about regretting it in those traffic jams. The view was incredible, even from the American side, with Toronto in the background.

For a while, we just wandered around the park, admiring and looking for good places to take pictures. Then we decided to pay for one of the attractions, a boat trip directly under the waterfalls. The idea was definitely good, and it’s really worth it for $18 per person. It’s a pity about that Saturday and the fact that we waited an hour and a half in line for our boat. The sun was incredibly hot, and it also nicely burned our shoulders and heads. In the crowd of people, several individuals had problems with a lack of fluids, so the organisers ran around with bottles of water.

Before the cruise, we received blue raincoats, which, if you don’t want to be completely wet, it’s really better to put on. Tourists boarding the same boats from the Canadian side received red raincoats, so while waiting and watching the boats under the waterfalls, we could at least conclude that the routes were the same. We enjoyed the cruise, took some photos and videos, our electronics, and we got a little wet, but we were happy. Finally, we had the best views of the waterfalls from the bridge above the “harbour” and access to some paths where we would not have gotten as non-payers. That’s where our best photos were taken. It paid off. Niagara Falls must be seen and experienced.

July 23-24, Niagara Falls – Chicago

Sometime around four in the afternoon, we left Niagara Falls and headed for Chicago. We had approximately 570 miles (920 km) and about 9 hours of driving ahead of us. We planned to camp somewhere tonight for the first time, so we jumped into Walmart. Walmart is a huge chain of hypermarkets, sometimes open 24/7, with the very best prices on everything, and you can really buy everything there (except alcohol in some, who knows why…). In every Walmart, there is also some fast food, free wifi and freely accessible toilets. No wonder it has become a frequent haven for us as well as many other travellers, and parts of the parking lots of some Walmarts looked like campsites. Another positive of this giant’s policy is that they are obliged to refund money for goods returned within, I think, 90 days. It’s a way to get things you only need for a certain period of time, for example, for a two-month trip, essentially for free. Speculators would use it and certainly use it for various things, but I only wanted to solve the possible failure of my GPS and some camping equipment that we planned to buy, but didn’t want to drag back home. I got the GPS running, so we currently only need a tent, which we got there for $24 (I’ll jump ahead a bit, but I have to write that we borrowed it for free). Basic, light, three-sleeper. Of course, we also bought some food, but here is also a bit of a disadvantage of Walmart, because it mostly sells large packages so we often couldn’t buy ham, cheese, milk and so on for the car without a refrigerator, because we simply didn’t want to waste food when we knew it would spoil. But what we bought all the time was a gallon of water, some fruit, vegetables, pastries and some instant food that only needs boiling water to cook.

We stayed longer than we planned, but we were happy that we had a tent. However, not everything went according to plan. We planned to use the freecampsites.net website to search for cheap or free camps. That is absolutely great, but according to it, there were not many camping options in this area. It found some parking lots, suitable just for caravans. I was surprised and disappointed by this, because I expected that along Lake Erie, something for sleeping would definitely be found. We decided to look for something on our own, but since it soon got dark, it was not at all visible from the highway where there was a forest or a bend by the lake where the tent could be pitched, and going down from the highway everywhere and exploring the surroundings would cost us a lot of time, we chose to sleep in the car again. We stopped at a rest area where sleeping in the car was not allowed (like in most rest areas), but it was already night, and we wanted to set off early in the morning, so we weren’t afraid that someone would disturb us at night.

With the first rays of sunshine, it started to get hot in the car, and it was impossible to sleep for a long time. Sleeping at the rest area had the advantage that we could at least afford proper hygiene in the morning. We calculated the journey, even with several stops for refreshments, exactly so that we would arrive in Chicago at three in the afternoon. And so it was, exactly at three, which was the time agreed in advance for accommodation through Airbnb, we rang the doorbell of the apartment. But then it occurred to us that the time had shifted by an hour on the way, and we were here early. We laughed at it, but by chance, we met the owners of the apartment who were just arriving. They still wanted to clean up a bit and prepare our beds, but we were already there with our staff. We were only interested in one thing: to take a shower as soon as possible.

Chicago

We stayed in Chicago via Airbnb and slept on couches in the living room of a small apartment. We didn’t mind at all, the price was good and it was only for two nights. Chicago is a city of many faces, but it certainly made a good impression on us. We lived on the edge of Little Italy, and when we were in the laundry room doing our laundry, we had trouble even communicating in English among the locals. Everyone spoke Spanish, the signs on the walls and shops were in Spanish, and Spanish television was on TV. One older aunt, when we asked her for directions to a laundry, was even able to answer us only “no English”. But the people were very nice and helpful, which we also needed during our first contact with the laundry. In the downtown, we were surrounded by an incredible number of homeless people. I don’t remember them causing any problems or bothering anyone, but they could be seen and felt at every step. And they say there are also a lot of Poles and fellow countrymen living there. That is probably why Chicago is referred to as a somewhat European city. The weather is also typically European. It’s constantly windy, and on the first day, we were surprised by a heavy storm with significant cooling. Fortunately, the next days were sunny and hot to a fault, but probably as it should be in the middle of summer.

Chicago has a lot of interesting things to see. The second-tallest skyscraper in the USA, the notorious Cloud Gate in Millennium Park, many different fountains, and, thanks to the presence of Lake Michigan, also some beaches and Navy Pier, a huge pier with a lot of attractions and opportunities for boat trips on the lake. Thanks to perfect transport, especially elevated trains, it is no problem to move between different parts of the city. However, Magnificent Mile – a street one mile long with incredible skyscrapers, buildings, shops and atmosphere, ending at a bridge over the Chicago River with beautiful views, should be walked on foot.

July 26-27, Chicago – Panama City Beach

We could have spent more time in Chicago, but in our case, we were glad to be leaving. We saw what we wanted, and we were already tired of crowded cities that are money guzzlers. Furthermore, we were looking forward to freedom and travel, beaches, the sea, nature and camping – we were looking forward to Florida.

From this moment, the real adventure was supposed to begin. From now on, we had no precise plans or any reserved accommodation. We only had one date, the plane’s departure on August 9th from New York. Actually, we had to return the car in New York the day before. Either way, we had exactly 14 days ahead of us, during which we wanted to experience and see as much as possible, but mainly to be always close to the sea and have good weather.

A bit broken from long walks in the strong sun, we got into the car around five in the afternoon and set off south, but we still didn’t know exactly where. While driving, we measured distances and calculated when and where we could be the next day. There was plenty of time, so we didn’t rush straight to Miami, but we also wanted to explore other beaches on the way. We read somewhere about a perfect place in northern Florida, and therefore also closest to us, Panama City Beach. The distance from Chicago is almost 1000 miles (1600 km), and the journey is around 16 hours long. The original idea was to sleep somewhere at night and arrive at the destination the next day. But since, again, according to the freecampsites.net website, there were not many opportunities for camping along the way, I decided to pull as far as possible and sleep in the car, again. When Lenka was falling asleep, I promised her that I would stop in a moment and go to sleep too. I was doing well, I didn’t like the idea of sleeping in the car, I was already thinking more about relaxing on the beach, and so I eventually drove for 12 hours, until five in the morning, when I mostly suffer a crisis. It was the same now, and for a few minutes, I had to stop and doze off. It was really short stop, and at nine in the morning, we were already looking for free parking in the streets of Panama City Beach.

On the way, I remember driving through the city of Indianapolis. I always worry before driving through big cities, especially during the day, that I will get stuck in traffic jams. But the drive through Indianapolis was special. Even a ten-lane highway and totally empty. I didn’t understand, I don’t know what it was. The bypass is really huge, and I don’t know if they oversized it so much that it simply doesn’t fill up with cars, or people don’t travel there around eight in the evening. I have never seen so few cars on such huge and numerous highways, neither before nor after. It was strange.

Panama City Beach

We read that Panama City Beach is a popular destination for young people, that it is quite lively there and that MTV even shoots there. These were also the reasons why we chose it as the first destination in Florida. However, the findings acquired later clearly convinced us that we must return to this place and even perhaps mark it as the best in Florida. That is, of course, only our subjective view, and I certainly don’t claim that the most beautiful beaches were there; we can find those elsewhere. In any case, Panama City Beach seemed to us to be the most attractive in terms of price. From food, through seasonal and beach necessities, to clothes, everything seemed cheap to us. We assumed that it would be like that everywhere in Florida, and we didn’t want to have “Panama City Beach” on every piece of fabric right away, and that’s why we didn’t buy everything we liked. Later, however, we regretfully remembered that we could have had this or that cheaper and more beautiful “from Panama”.

Another reason to return and visit Panama City Beach is the attractions. Lots of attractions. Along the several-kilometre road around the beach, everything is possible from merry-go-rounds, through various mini-golf and go-karts to paintball, many rentals for scooters, ATVs and electric mini cars or buggies, and there are also some houses full of mirrors, optical illusions or records. Everyone must find their own there, certainly even during a week’s vacation.

In Panama City Beach, there should be only a few freely accessible beaches and only one or two free parking lots. We headed straight to one of them, outside the resorts. We were there early, already after nine in the morning, so the parking lot was still empty and there were only a few people on the beach. Before entering the beach, there was a house with showers and toilets, which was quite useful for us as homeless people. After the desired rest and perhaps a short sleep, we went on foot to explore the surroundings, buy something and eat. Overall, it seemed quite quiet, with somewhat few people, the attractions and shops were half-empty, and it didn’t look like any big parties either. That’s when we started to realise that we were there off-season, which was really visible. The season in Florida starts in December and lasts until April. Who knows what it looks like there at that time? I would only like to experience it out of pure curiosity, but if there are heads on heads, then the prices are double, and maybe there is a problem with parking, I probably wouldn’t be very satisfied. It’s hard to say, but we liked it as we experienced it. Off-season, we were just risking bad weather, storms and rain. But so far, we have had hot and sunny weather. Too much. After a year spent in England, where our skin barely saw the sun, it experienced an abnormal shock here. With all-day sunbathing without a shirt, my shoulders and back mainly suffered. I didn’t really perceive it in those moments, but in a few days, the damage, burns and pain were fully revealed. Lenka was better off, but even her skin peeled off after a few days. We underestimated it and were also sorry that we are not in the sun more often, and our skin is not used to it. We definitely want to fix that in the future…

After a full day of “relaxing” in the sun and getting into the hot car, we were quite looking forward to, finally, the first camping and nighttime cooling. I remembered that there should be plenty of opportunities for camping in the area, so we visited the local Walmart just before dusk to buy something for tonight and a possible barbecue. After connecting to the internet, however, I found out that the abundance of primitive camps is in a quite distant national forest (Apalachicola National Forest). There were some places closer too, so of course we chose them and wanted to try these. Only after loading into the GPS did I find out that even those closer places were about 40 minutes away from us, and we probably won’t make it before dark. Here we clearly neglected the preparation, and our idea that we would go a few kilometres away from the sea and get to a forest behind some village was simply completely wrong. American distances are just different, it seems that getting somewhere always takes at least an hour. Unfortunately, this was constantly repeated during the entire trip. I precisely calculated the long distances, planned them, and they worked out great, but when we had to get somewhere that we thought was only a short distance, we were almost always surprised by how far it actually was… And so for the first time, purely due to our mistake, since we had enough time to leave earlier, in stress about where we would actually sleep, we went to look for something. The road led us to a forest full of swamps, pools and insects. After arriving at the coordinates, it would have been possible to camp, but what I didn’t like were the signs prohibiting overnight stays. In addition, a car appeared behind us, stopped a little away from us, and we absolutely didn’t know what to do. Whether to pitch a tent, or at least sleep in the car, or leave. I didn’t have a good feeling about it, Lenka was scared, and so we decided to look for the second place, which was supposed to be nearby. It was more hidden in the forest, but we didn’t see much there and couldn’t imagine what the surroundings looked like. It’s a pity that we didn’t meet at least someone who was already camping there at these two places. But even so, I think that the only reason why we failed camping this night was the darkness. I believe that if we came to one of these places in daylight, we would dare to pitch the tent, and the fact that it would then be terrifying after dark, either because of the solitude in the forest, or because of the presence of lights from strange cars, we would certainly not solve by leaving.

We started to come up with a plan B and looked for the nearest motel. But it was full. On the way, we also came across a camp, but there, a night in a tent, which we didn’t even want to build after all that, would cost us 40 dollars. We also tried a purely caravan camp, there we immediately attracted the attention of an older tourist, who sent us straight to the manager, saying that they are probably full anyway (full in caravan camps probably means that there is no free electrical outlet, because there was plenty of space for a car or tent). We didn’t want to bother him at night, and we knew that he would still ask for money. Driven by disgust at the value of a small piece of lawn, we still didn’t want to break the law, and, moreover, when paying tourists knew about our intention, we didn’t dare to pitch the tent illegally. After a total of three hours of unsuccessfully searching for a place to sleep, we gave up, headed for the nearest Walmart and stayed to sleep in the car. We were still terribly hot, both because of the air temperature itself and because of the sunburn, and we felt uncomfortable and disgusted. I fell asleep with the thought that I must learn from my own mistakes, and tomorrow we will sleep in a tent!!!

July 28–29, Panama City Beach – Sarasota

Since my skin was already quite red in the morning, the first thing we did was buy a stronger sunscreen. This day was a relaxing one; we spent it on the beach and walking around the shops. We missed the opportunity to hide from the sun and heat, and since the highest priority of that day was sleeping in a tent, we set off quite early to the aforementioned national forest to explore the individual camping sites that we had found in advance. Immediately after arriving in the forest, we found signs indicating that camping was indeed possible and directing us to various camping sites. We were going to our own, but it definitely lifted our spirits, and everything indicated that we would finally sleep comfortably and for free. In general, it is true that in every piece of American land marked as a National Forest, camping is possible and allowed anywhere, and often you can also find places with some equipment, whether it is a fireplace, grill, or sometimes even a toilet. After arriving at the place, it was immediately clear that we were staying here. We found seating there, an iron grill and a fireplace with a pile of dry wood to burn. Incredible, if only it were like that everywhere and always, because we had quite a problem with wood in the future. It’s a pity that we didn’t really buy some sausages or something to grill. But since we were full, wine, chips, music and fire were enough for us that evening. The only unpleasant moment was again the presence of a strange car, which went to a nearby river. But just as it came, it also left, and we were only left with thoughts of what could theoretically happen and how easy it would be to attack us, rob us or otherwise harm us, in the middle of the forest, where there was no one far and wide. It simply wasn’t the season in Florida, and it was the first and last time we slept in such a way that there weren’t even other tourists nearby. Paradoxically, in the west we often had the opposite problem, namely to find at least a small piece of land for our small tent, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves…

We woke up in the morning, broken from the hard ground. Our thin beach blanket was not enough as a sleeping pad, and we resolved to expand our camping equipment with something better before the next camping opportunity. However, we were supposed to sleep in an apartment tonight via Airbnb, which we had booked the day before. We were heading to Sarasota, we had 450 miles (724 km) and maybe 7 hours of driving ahead of us. We were supposed to arrive just in time for the agreed time after lunch, but traffic jams on the way and another unexpected time shift forward by an hour caused us to arrive only around six in the evening.

Sarasota and Siesta Key

We didn’t stay directly in Sarasota, but a little below it, in the Venice area. Since it was already quite late, we knew that we wouldn’t make it to the supposedly beautiful Siesta Key beach today, so we went at least to the centre of Sarasota. A very pleasant and quiet seaside town. We walked through the main street, ate something, had a drink and went back to Venice to sleep after two hours.

At night, the pain of the sunburned back and shoulders was fully manifested. I knew that I would have a hard time in the sun for the next few days. That’s also why the beach was less attractive to us and, if so, only towards evening. So we had plenty of time to explore the surroundings and started with a walk through the beautiful Venice district. Perfectly maintained parks and lakes, beautiful palm trees, houses and complete peace. It’s great that through Airbnb you can also get to such places, where otherwise you can only see rich Americans. The owner of the house we stayed in was Chinese (that’s just from the photos, we didn’t meet him at all), but he also had everything nice, clean and well-equipped. The next steps led us back to Sarasota, where we took a larger tour of the city, but we didn’t discover anything extra there. What we liked, however, was the harbour and the promenade around the sea with nice sculptures. We hid in the harbour for a while from a short rain, and after the weather cleared up, we finally got to Siesta Key. A beautiful, huge beach with completely white sand and lifeguard booths. We enjoyed the warm sea and the sunset.

July 30–31, Sarasota – Key West

We got into the car only after dark without great expectations. The weather forecasts were getting worse, and we found out that there is almost no possibility of camping in the south of Florida. The freecampsites.net website only found us one possible place, and even that was against the law, as it was necessary to go past no-entry signs to some old bridge in Key West. We wanted to check out the place on the way and assess whether it would work or not. In any case, we decided that we were going to Key West and would spend this night sleeping somewhere in the car. We would spend only one day in Key West, at the end of which we would try camping. Regardless of how it all turns out, we were supposed to arrive in Miami in two days, so we booked accommodation there through Airbnb for two nights.

The distances here were not large, we had approximately 380 miles (612 km) to Key West and up to seven hours of driving. At night, I wanted to bypass Miami and park and sleep somewhere behind it. That’s how it was, but I wasn’t very rested in the morning. It was still 200 kilometres to Key West across several islands connected by bridges. The journey was quite slow, there were a lot of cars on it, and I was constantly overcome by fatigue. Even though the scenery was really beautiful, the sea on both sides and every time I went down from the bridges, I couldn’t get enough of it, I didn’t really enjoy this journey overall. While passing around various small beaches, we were also looking for a suitable place for possible camping. We also checked out the spot that was mentioned on freecampsites, but we didn’t like it at all, and during the day, I didn’t even dare to drive there by car, a clear prohibition and an unkempt, overgrown road. However, we weren’t dealing with it now, we wanted to get to Key West as soon as possible.

Key West

We had the whole day in Key West, and we didn’t want to spend it just lying on the beach. Before noon, we strolled through the streets, looked at various shops, which were mainly of interest to Lenka, and had a drink that every second tourist there drank, a coconut in hand with a straw. Key West is home to the southernmost point in the USA, and of course, we didn’t want to miss the chance to take a photo of it. Looking at the line of tourists waiting for a selfie with a buoy symbolising this point, I lost my appetite. We solved it by standing on a nearby wall and taking a photo with the GoPro. During these wanderings through Key West, we couldn’t help but notice the ubiquitous roosters. Roosters on sidewalks, roosters on roads, parking lots, cars… They were really everywhere and a lot, probably more than dogs in Romania. At first, it surprised us, but over time, we got used to it and had fun with them.

When we had seen what we wanted, we went to the beach. We found a nice piece where there were more palm trees than people. Like others, we also occupied a few of our palm trees, which gave us shade. Right here, I can say that this was probably the most beautiful beach we had seen the whole time. However, the sea spoiled the impression a little. It’s stupid to criticise the fact that it was too warm and you couldn’t cool off in it, but what bothered us were the algae. Maybe it was also the season, I don’t know, but that’s why Siesta Key remained in first place for us.

Again, we didn’t know where we would sleep tonight, and we considered staying right on the beach under a palm tree or in one of the gazebos. With the arrival of evening, however, the beach became quite deserted and only a few individuals remained, with whom we probably wouldn’t want to come into contact at night. And another thing that discouraged us a lot was the ban on parking overnight on the street where our car was parked, and it would remain the only one far and wide. In the end, we decided that we would stay in Key West for the evening and then try to spend the night on some of the small beaches that we saw along the way and had stored in the GPS. First, we went to the huge concrete pier to enjoy the sunset. A strong wind started to blow, and we felt that the weather would probably get worse for the next few days. After dark, we went to the centre of tourism on Duval Street. This street is full of bars, restaurants, music and people. In one of the many establishments, we also tasted the fabled Key Lime Pie, i.e. lime pie. It was quite expensive, but also good, and it is one of the things that you simply must have in Florida. And maybe they really are the best in this place. Otherwise, Key West is a classic, bustling and expensive tourist destination. I like the atmosphere of such places, but for us to fit in there and start behaving and spending like other tourists, we would need a larger group of people. As a single couple, romantic Sarasota was more welcoming to us. We walked the street up and down, took pictures of interesting things, mainly various illuminated and people-filled bars, but we didn’t enter any of them.

July 31 – August 1, Key West – Miami

We didn’t like the idea at all that we should sleep in the car again. We rejected the place where it was supposedly possible to camp right away, mainly because we didn’t know what would await us on that overgrown road, and we wouldn’t see anything there. But we still hoped a little that we would manage to find refuge on one of those small beaches. It didn’t happen. Total darkness, in which we couldn’t even see how far the roaring sea was and whether it would flood us at night, and other similar fears, or the obvious ban on overnight stays, totally discouraged us at about two places that we went to “see” at night. Someone more courageous and experienced in such situations would have no problem spending the night there, whether in a tent or just under the stars, but I found many reasons not to do so. We did break one ban – the ban on parking overnight. It was mainly because there were brick toilets on one of those beaches, which would make hygiene easier for us in the morning. And another reason was that it was already quite late, we didn’t want to look for another parking lot, and I didn’t expect any disturbance at night any more. Anyway, I think that spending the night in complete darkness somewhere where no one else is, whether in a car, a tent or in the wild, can be dangerous if discovered by the wrong people. Negative thoughts went through my head, but because of the noise from the main road, I still didn’t get much sleep. The weather also worsened at night, and it rained a little.

For the first and only time, the small distance to the destination worried us. It is only approximately 160 miles (258 km) from Key West to Miami and about 4 hours of driving due to the low speed limit. We could only check into Miami after three in the afternoon, so we didn’t really know what we would do. We were already tired of it all, we didn’t want anything, we would like to finally have a roof over our heads, space around us and of course also for sleeping. Everything was supposed to come true for us in a few hours. We didn’t rush, but we were already in Miami at eleven in the morning.

Miami

It didn’t really look like going to a beach, but the desire to see Miami Beach live and drive through the famous streets full of art deco architecture still led us to this place. I was thrilled and amazed. The images, views and shots from various films and games were so strongly fixed in my head that it seemed to me that I knew it there, that I had already been there. Yet, I was fully aware that I was fulfilling another dream by driving on Ocean Drive in Miami Beach for the first time. Palm trees lining the road on both sides, a green park to the right, behind which the beach and ocean are hidden, stylish houses, hotels, bars to the left. I felt great and immensely enjoyed the aimless drive through many streets, but mainly through the aforementioned Ocean Drive.

There was still plenty of time, so we decided to see another famous part of Miami, namely Little Havana. I wasn’t prepared for it, but I thought it wouldn’t be a problem to find the interesting things. However, as I circled the streets around the inscription Little Havana, according to Google Maps, I found absolutely nothing that resembled a touristy busy street. We saw mostly empty and dirty streets, where nothing was interesting. We had to stop somewhere at McDonald’s and look on the internet where we were actually supposed to go. Only then did I start to notice and realise how big and fairly poor the Little Havana district is. We found out that we were looking for Calle Ocho Walk of Fame, which is the eighth south-west street and thus still a bit south of the places where we were wandering around. This street finally fulfilled our expectations and we found ourselves in a busy place full of music, colours, cigars and of course, roosters. There is something to look at, and thanks to the specific atmosphere, this place left a very good impression on us and the desire to go and see what it looks like in that real Havana, in Cuba.

At four in the afternoon, we finally checked into a huge house with several rooms, which worked a bit like a hostel, but everything was perfectly clean, tidy and organised. There were many papers and messages all over the house, perhaps also rules, that would answer any questions or ambiguities. We even received detailed instructions by email for everything and a description of the area, connections and interesting places in the area. It was clear that the owner makes a living from this and knows well what and how to do it, and has thought it through in detail. Although some people slept on the couches at night and probably illegally (maybe two people signed up and there were totally four), it didn’t spoil the overall good impression in any way. For me, it was also a bit inspiring and motivating that such a business can be done even remotely, if you arrange it well, and thus have a side income, perhaps without much worry. Only that property somewhere is missing…

During this three-day stay, we mainly wanted to relax as much as possible and gather a lot of new energy for further travel. Also, thanks to the weather, since it looked like it was going to rain every second, we managed to do that quite well. The first evening after we finally enjoyed the shower, we only managed a “trip” to the laundromat, on the way to we even got wet. After a hearty sleep, we managed to get together only around noon and went to the centre of Miami. While looking for the cheapest parking, we were surprised by groups of black people, maybe homeless, who looked like they spent all their time in those parking lots. In the end, we parked on the street and didn’t want to stay long because of the price of parking. And it wasn’t necessary either. Downtown, or the centre of Miami, didn’t impress us much. We were only interested in the number of drawbridges, which we also saw in action, when a huge ship was towed along the river right in front of us. I also liked the small train that runs a few meters above the ground between the skyscrapers. Otherwise, we won’t find any reliable and regular public transport here. We barely managed to get to the car, and a heavy storm broke out. If it hadn’t rained, we would definitely have come up with somewhere else to go, but this is how it was decided. We went home and didn’t do anything any more.

On the third day in Miami, we had to check out in the morning, so we had all day to see and experience more, albeit still at a relaxing pace. Our first stop was the Wynwood area, which was only a few streets away from where we lived. This part is known for its outdoor museum, which should be the largest of its kind in the world. It is about streets, buildings, walls and everything you look at, covered with graffiti and various other kinds of street art. This place is really worth a visit and will surely appeal even to those who may not be such fans of graffiti, because here it is really about art.

For the rest of the day, we had Miami Beach planned, but on the way, we stopped once again in Little Havana. We already knew it there, so we just wanted to eat something, and I bought a cigar, which I hesitated to do during the first visit.

Miami Beach

On the way to Miami Beach, we stopped on a small island – Watson Island, where there was supposed to be a good view of Downtown Miami, and I wanted to take some photos. The skyscrapers with the background of a grey overcast sky didn’t impress me very much again. Overall, Miami was a disappointment for me, perhaps also because the weather wasn’t good for us, but I still think that compared to the cities we have already visited, it doesn’t have that much to offer. That’s why I’m glad that we chose a round trip around all of Florida and didn’t rush to get to Miami as soon as possible.

Of course, Miami Beach is worth experiencing. Among various expensive parking lots, we found a parking house where the price was acceptable, $1 per hour. On the way to the beach, we stopped for a drink in one of the many establishments on Ocean Drive. After the drink, we continued along the street and watched people drinking mixed drinks from huge glasses. It wasn’t a very cheap affair, but we were tempted by a waiter who offered us two shots of tequila if we sat down in his establishment. We couldn’t resist, and we already had two mega glasses in front of us with some sweet, but I must say, really strong drink. We also ordered a pizza, and I reminded the waiter that he had forgotten about the tequila. Lenka had had enough and hadn’t even finished her drink yet, so I drank both tequilas. Well, it was enough for us; we actually got drunk. In this very good mood, since the sun was peeking out from behind the clouds for a while, we finally got to the beach. It was almost 6 o’clock, so we properly enjoyed that moment until the evening, and without shame, we frolicked like, hmm, monkeys. The sea was finally refreshing and clean, the beach huge and beautiful, with typical lifeguard booths.

We returned to the car after dark, and since I had already sobered up a bit, we were ready to continue our journey. Lenka reproached me a bit and still reproaches me that she was most looking forward to Miami Beach and enjoyed it the least. I don’t see it that tragically, and I say that it was just right. We saw what you needed to see there, and we were actually lucky that we got to the beach at all, because it wasn’t raining at the time. If we had planned several days there, it would be a waste of time and money. Such tourist places full of consumption are money vacuums, in my opinion, for little music. After all, we paid $45 for just that one, approximately one-hour sitting on the terrace in the aforementioned establishment. I even wanted to be an obedient tourist and left a tip. Only after a few days did I find out that that establishment had withdrawn two sums from my card, one including the tip and the other without. I had to deal with the given establishment and my bank for several months before one payment was returned to me. Even though I was asking for the smaller one, the larger one came back, but that’s one thing. I don’t like the frequent way of paying by card in America at all. The waiter took my card with him and came back with a receipt, on which I was supposed to write the amount of the tip with my signature, and only after that was the given amount supposed to be withdrawn from the card. The fact that I was charged incorrectly only happened once, and it turned out well in the end, but every time I paid in this style with a signature and without a PIN code, it evoked a feeling of mistrust in me. Anyway, spending half of the daily budget in an hour can happen from time to time during such travelling, but definitely not every day. I comforted Lenka that we have to come to Miami Beach in winter, when there is a season, the weather will be better, and we will be able to enjoy it a little more. Cheap flights and accommodation can be obtained, and overall, a reasonable holiday can be made from it. This time, however, it was about something else… After getting into the car, we did not miss the opportunity to drive around the streets of Miami Beach again and again, this time in the dark and enjoy this place also in the light of the neons.

August 3–4, Miami Beach – Daytona Beach

After a sightseeing drive through the illuminated streets of the centre of Miami Beach, I planned to continue north to Daytona Beach. The GPS was still trying to get me to Miami as quickly as possible and connect to the highway towards the north. However, I didn’t want to move away from the coast yet, and I planned to get as far as possible along the island. I was curious about some billionaire houses, districts or something similar. On the way, we saw an incredible number of resorts, hotels and huge villas. In my thoughts, I imagined what it would be like to be a millionaire and live in such a place. However, such a fairly slow and monotonous ride started to bore me after a while, and so I listened to the GPS, which had recalculated the route several times, but it was still pulling me to the same highway. After less than 90 kilometres, we turned off to a Walmart and spent the night in the car in the parking lot.

It was supposed to be only about 270 miles (435 km) and four and a half hours of driving to Daytona Beach. However, it was not the destination of today, so we did not waste the time. Lenka slept all the way until I woke her up for a late breakfast at Waffle House, just before Daytona Beach. This typically American establishment offers pancakes, waffles, scrambled eggs and omelettes in several ways with various side dishes, where bacon must not be missing. I certainly wanted to try such an overcomplicated American breakfast, but I certainly don’t miss this in everyday life.

Daytona Beach

Daytona is a resounding name for me and certainly for many other motorists. It has a rich history of various motorsport races, in which they used to race directly on the hard sandy beaches. Later, the Daytona International Speedway was built there, which hosts several races that are mainly popular in America, including NASCAR.

I didn’t expect anything extra from this place, I didn’t even want to stay very long, but curiosity and love for engines and fast driving didn’t let me to not stop here. Immediately after parking in the paid parking lot, an incredible downpour started, and we got soaked to the bone. Drying in the shops with the air conditioning fully on was not at all pleasant, and we didn’t really want to shop extra either. After the weather cleared up, we strolled through the streets of the city, and I was surprised that the motorcycle atmosphere clearly prevailed over the theme of automobile races here. Motorcycle shops with not only classic souvenirs, but also specialised stores of various brands, accessories, and handmade things were here somewhat often. Motorcycles could be seen and felt here, which made me very happy, but I didn’t know the reason for it. Only later did I find out that a huge motorcycle rally takes place in Daytona every March. This 10-day rally, as it is called in America, annually complements and competes for the top spot with the Sturgis rally in South Dakota, which I knew about and even had plans to visit…

I was very drawn to Daytona, and even though this stop of ours lasted only a little over an hour, I was certainly not disappointed. Now I know at least exactly what I have to return to Daytona for again and what I have to experience. I will plan the next trip to Florida so that it succeeds and so that I see Daytona Beach Bike Week live. For now, however, the strongest moment from this place remains for me the drive around the Daytona International Speedway complex, as another thing that I could not imagine seeing live sometime before.

August 4, Daytona Beach – Amelia Island

The goal of this day was to get to Amelia Island, where there was supposed to be no problem with camping. However, based on previous experiences, we were sceptical about it and out of fear that we would sleep somewhere in the car again, we wanted to be there as soon as possible, definitely in daylight, and see it with our own eyes. After 120 miles (193 km) and two hours, we were already standing in the parking lot, where everything was confirmed to us, and we knew that camping would really be possible here. According to freecampsites.net, we also went to see other recommended places, but in the end, it turned out to be a waste of time, and we returned to that first and best one.

Amelia Island

We found out that on Amelia Island is allowed to drive and camp directly on the beach. We didn’t really want to drag our small car onto the beach, and in the end, we also found out that it is allowed only for cars with 4×4 drive; moreover, for non-locals, only with a special permit. On the other hand, the possibility to legally pitch a tent near the sea, and for free, we liked very much. We found a place where, next to the huge parking lot, there were toilets even with showers, drinking water and gazebos with seating, from which you went to the beach along wooden elevated paths. We read there a lot of rules and prohibitions, of which we were only interested in the fact that camping was allowed only for 24 hours. But even that was enough for us to deal with until the next day, since we planned to stay for two nights.

For a while we considered pitching the tent right on the sandy beach, but since the weather in Florida was still not the best and at the moment a fairly strong wind was blowing, we would have sand everywhere and it was not even the closest to the car, so it didn’t seem completely ideal to us. We decided to spread it out next to one of the gazebos on a nice flat lawn, just like one American family had already done before us, right at the gazebo next door. Also, thanks to these people, we felt safer and knew that everything was really in order with such camping. In the evening, we relaxed with music and games and managed to take some photos as well. The night was quite busy, but we slept well, also thanks to the inflatables, which we bought after the first, harder camping.

We were woken up by a cleaner or local administrator, who was taking out the garbage and cleaning up the surroundings early in the morning. We were not very happy about that, because he definitely registered us, and we were afraid that there might be a problem staying there for another night. The Americans packed up and left, but overnight, another tent and a few people also slept in the cars, so we’ll see how it turns out in the evening, but we preferred to pack up completely and also fold up the tent. We were supposed to have a relaxing day, we went to the beach with our beds, i.e. inflatables. Then we went to see the whole island and also went to the centre of the city of Fernandina Beach. It was nice there, but quite expensive. But hunger forced us to find a capable restaurant and eat. Lenka had chicken salad, and I had pulled pork with mayonnaise salad, plus some lemonade. All together it cost us $24, which would be fine if what followed had not followed… For the evening, we bought two wines, and since we barely got to the beach and it started to rain, we sat under one of the gazebos and started drinking. The tent from the previous night was still in its place, so we decided to risk it and stay right here. It was still raining, so we pitched the tent under the shelter and only then moved it to the lawn, where the Americans had slept the previous night. We finished our wine, had fun and wanted to go to sleep after dark. But then the pork from lunch started to ring again. It was terribly difficult for me, I couldn’t sleep at all for several hours, and a few times I had to go outside for fresh air, which ended in vomiting. When my stomach was completely empty, I don’t even know how I managed to fall asleep, and so I rested for a few hours. I don’t know what caused it all, but since then I have avoided similarly prepared meat, and even just thinking about this treacherous lunch makes me sick again… Otherwise, on the first trip to the toilet in the dark, I noticed that someone was sleeping on the table under the next gazebo. Only in the morning did I recognise that cleaner from the previous morning. Who that really was, his wife, apparently, slept in the car in the parking lot. Maybe they just liked it there very much, I don’t know, a bit strange people, but friendly, we exchanged a few words, but mainly that they didn’t cause problems and didn’t send us away.

August 6–7, Amelia Island – Washington D.C.

The morning was pleasant, a bit overcast and warm. We only went to the beach to take a walk and wet our feet. We could have stayed here all day, but this time we chose to drive and move during the day. It was 715 miles (1150 km) and over 10 hours of driving ahead of us. However, we had nowhere to hurry, because we had only booked accommodation in Washington D.C. for the next night, and thus the penultimate one on our travels around the east of the USA. After a calm morning hygiene and a shower, we set off on the road with the goal of getting as far as possible, but at a comfortable pace with breaks for food. The reason for one of the stops was also refuelling, and it was on this route that we managed to refuel with the cheapest petrol during the entire trip. $1.63 per gallon, which was only around 40 euro cents per litre. We had a full tank for $18, which is a joy to travel.

I drove until ten in the evening, when we stopped in the parking lot, and after a long time, we were again waiting for a night in the car. We counted on that in advance, but we didn’t really plan to get up after four in the morning. After morning shopping in the empty Walmart and breakfast, we had no choice but to continue the journey to DC, which was only about three hours away.

Washington D.C.

We were supposed to arrive at the Airbnb accommodation after three in the afternoon, and since we were already wandering the streets of the city after nine, we had plenty of time to tour the famous attractions now. We were lucky with parking, as it was Sunday and it was free. Walking in the parks between various monuments, fountains and sculptures left a strong impression on me. The parks are huge, and it would take hours if we wanted to see everything up close. However, we were falling into fatigue, and as time went on, I began to realise that once we got to our accommodation, we won’t leave there anymore. That’s why I wanted to see as much as possible, so that the visit to this city would be worth it and so that I would get a picture of what it looks like there in such a short time. However, Lenka didn’t want to walk any more, so we made a compromise and looked at some places at least from the windows of the car. We also saw several museums in the National Mall Park. I am not very much a museum type, I don’t enjoy walking for hours in closed spaces, but what I almost always like and find fascinating is what museums look like, both from the outside and the inside. Here we saw incredible buildings, which tempted me to look at, and some, for example, the space museum, would be worth a longer tour. However, it didn’t work out now. For Washington D.C., from my point of view, half a day is simply not enough, and you should set aside at least an extended weekend. But I’m still glad that we didn’t bypass the capital of the USA, and it enriched our experiences at least a little.

After arriving at our accommodation, consisting of a huge attic room with an attached bathroom, we had a lot of work to do. All the things that were lying around in the car, including the tent and inflatables, a lot of souvenirs, gifts and new things that we bought, we had to pack reasonably into suitcases. We had one more travel bag, which I had counted on in advance and was supposed to be allocated mainly for camping equipment. But we had so much luggage that we barely managed to comply with the weight limits, and everything was completely filled. However, what we definitely couldn’t take was our umbrella, which we bought in Florida after we got burned. We left the umbrella to the locals, they were quite happy about it, and in return, they helped and printed our flight tickets. In the evening, we fell asleep in bed with the thought that we would have such luxury again, perhaps in a week.

August 8, Washington D.C. – New York

We had increased adrenaline in our blood since the morning. We packed the last things, didn’t stay very long and wanted to set off on the road as soon as possible. It was only about 240 miles (386 km) to New York, and the journey was supposed to take 4 and a half hours. However, we took this assumption with a grain of salt, because we knew that New York can be treacherous, that we can be stuck in traffic jams for several hours, and anything can happen on the way. Our flight wasn’t until the next morning, but we were limited by returning the car and the opening hours of the rental, which were only until half past five in the afternoon. When I chose in the GPS that I wanted to avoid paid sections, it couldn’t calculate the route properly, and when something came out, it took over 10 hours. I thought it was because the bridges to New York are tolled, and it’s really hard to avoid them. So from the beginning, I left the paid sections on, and after a few kilometres, we were surprised by the toll. Then came other fees, until we realised that, actually, probably the entire highway from Washington to New York is tolled. So that’s probably why the GPS couldn’t really handle it, if I wanted to avoid the fees. This whole short journey cost us quite a lot, I think even with petrol it was somewhere up to $100, but it didn’t make sense to think about how to avoid it, we took it as it is and we were quite glad that there weren’t too big traffic jams and we maintained a few-hour reserve.

We arrived in New York before the second hour. Again, we had an incredible view of Manhattan and revived our not-so-old memories of this city. The stress eased a bit, and I was also glad that I had planned it this way, because after everything we experienced and saw in the east of the USA, New York is still the strongest experience. Since we had plenty of time, in the immediate vicinity near our rental, we jumped to eat something and also buy something for the rest of the day and the night, which we had to spend at the airport. We didn’t like this district at all; we didn’t see a white man there at all, and we were a little afraid of the parked car, so we didn’t stay very long. The car return went completely without problems; they didn’t even inspect it properly, and even if they did, it was quite damaged upon receipt already, and I must say that thanks to me, not a single scratch was added to it. Then the rental employee drove us to the nearest train station, which cost $5 per person to JFK airport.

August 9, New York – Los Angeles

When buying a ticket from NY to Los Angeles, I was thinking about several alternatives and times, but in the end it won that we decided to buy the earliest morning flight and spend the night at the airport. It was partly because of the high price of possible accommodation for one night, and also because of the possible complicated morning transfer to the airport with luggage, since we wanted to fly in the morning anyway. And so we were here and had 13 hours until the plane’s departure. JFK Airport is huge; it has 6 terminals, between which a free train runs. First, we got a luggage cart and went to explore what was located at the individual terminals. There was nothing at all at terminal T4, from which we were departing; it just seemed to us that it would not be a problem to find a piece of space on the floor to settle there. At terminal T5, we discovered freely accessible Wi-Fi, so we stayed there for a while because of it, but it wasn’t great anyway. Otherwise, I was quite disappointed that, overall, there was no proper free internet at JFK. The busiest was terminal T1, where there were restaurants on the upper floor. At first, we thought we wouldn’t get there with suitcases, but we succeeded. Then we had something small, sat by the window and watched the setting sun and Manhattan plunging into darkness. I could sit there, watch and think for hours. This is the best relaxation for me, it charges me with energy and keeps me convinced that all that effort, a lot of strength, energy and money, all that travelling, is really worth it just because of such moments!

We returned to our T4 terminal, where many people had already found their places on the ground, and it was clear that we would not sleep alone here. I knew it wouldn’t be a peaceful sleep, but despite that, I found a fairly decent spot, where not many people moved, in the corner between the elevators and the entrance to the building. I also inspired others with this place, so we had some people nearby all night, who came here to settle down. We spread out the blanket, put my backpack with the most valuable things under my head and while Lenka fell asleep quite comfortably, I guarded the luggage with one eye open and at least tried to rest a little with the other. The night passed quite quickly, at four in the morning, we were already getting up, taking turns in the toilet, eating and arranging the check-in of luggage. Everything went smoothly, and at 6:30 we were already sitting in the plane.

The flight lasted around 5 hours, but thanks to the time shift, we already landed in Los Angeles at 9:40. I have to praise the services of Virgin America. We didn’t want to pay extra for food, so we didn’t pay extra for anything, but even so, we had a multimedia panel with a lot of movies, programs and other entertainment available.

August 9, Santa Monica – Barstow

It seemed like we had plenty of time, and we would make it to the car rental reservation at 12 without any problems. But somehow I forgot to check in advance how to get to our rental. I remembered that it was not supposed to be very far, but Los Angeles is not New York, and there is no metro running there. At first we tried a taxi, but it seemed expensive to us, so we tried it with local buses. If anyone happens to come up with the idea of travelling by buses around LA with a lot of luggage, please don’t do it! I will never do it again. We found some wifi connection and planned the route. Already now we knew that we wouldn’t make it to the rental by twelve, but we went for it. Since we had been carrying our suitcases in the car until now, we completely forgot that our largest, overpacked suitcase has a broken wheel. It happened back in Boston, and I said that we would definitely buy a new suitcase, because this one is suffering. Of course we gave a damn about it and now he reminded us of it. In addition, we had one more travel bag, and even just the way to the first bus stop was incredibly difficult and exhausting. The journey by the first bus was quite comfortable, we got where we were supposed to, even though it took it. I was surprised by how impractical those buses are. They looked the same size as ours, but the aisle was terribly narrow, and there were seats everywhere, something like a place for a stroller didn’t exist. That’s why we also had a problem putting our suitcases somewhere so as not to get in the way, it didn’t work. Apart from the front door, there are only tiny doors in the middle of the bus, through which our suitcase probably wouldn’t even fit. I can’t judge whether the buses run on time based on two rides, but they certainly don’t run often, and there aren’t many of them. When our second bus finally arrived, we were glad that we only had to follow the map again and get off at the right stop. But the reality was much worse. On the way, the bus started to fill up, and I had to constantly dodge with the suitcases and move them. In the end, we managed to fit on two seats, with me standing and holding the suitcase on one seat and always dodging when someone went. It was really getting on my nerves, and I was also worried about how we would get off, because it was no longer possible to weave between people. When you couldn’t even move in the bus anymore, a Hispanic family jumped on, where the young man, probably a father and an idiot in one person, started making a fuss. He started shouting that the woman with the child in her arms had to sit down, and he didn’t like that there were suitcases on one seat. We were there like sardines, but he didn’t calm down even after I told him that we were getting off at the next stop. He kept shouting and tried to physically attack my luggage, which apparently surprised him with its weight, and he barely moved it. But that pissed me off a lot, the adrenaline kept rising, and that moron deserved it. But I didn’t know what to do first, we really had to get off, and I still didn’t know how we would do it. It comforted me a bit that the other passengers, all Hispanics, we were the only whites there, were on my side and were shouting at the psycho. However, I didn’t feel safe there, and Lenka also had fear in her eyes. Our stop came, there was really nowhere to turn, and since no one even thought of getting off and clearing the way for us, with two 20-kilo suitcases in my hands, I don’t even know how, but a few people had to be hurt, pushed off the bus.

We had it behind us. We needed to calm down, catch our breath, drink and orient ourselves. It looked like we were at the right stop, just find our branch of the Enterprise car rental. I reached for the tablet to verify the exact address and the direction we were supposed to go. At that moment, a police car pulled up to us, and the policeman started asking us what we were doing here, what we were looking for, etc. After answering his questions, he told us that we should be careful and I should rather put the tablet away. He said we are in a bad neighbourhood with high crime, and that even during the day, they have no problem robbing people here. We shook our heads in disbelief and disappointment. I told him that there should be a rental just a short distance from us. The policeman assured us that there was no rental here until I showed him the contact phone number, which he called and confirmed. Meanwhile, I found out the right direction, and it was supposed to be really just a few minutes from us. We set off in that direction with a police escort going slowly alongside us. We didn’t understand what was going on, whether it was really that bad here, or the policeman was exaggerating, but thanks to him, we felt safe. But overall, our first contact and feelings about Los Angeles and California were very, very bad. We arrived at the rental, thanked and said goodbye to the policeman, and finally wanted to take a breath. The negotiation at the rental was great again, it’s just that, again, they didn’t have the car we had ordered. We were supposed to have a car in the west that was one class higher than the car in the east of the USA, mainly also because of the second luggage. They just had such a one in the yard, a Chrysler 200, but they couldn’t find the keys to it. We waited for a while for someone to bring those keys, but it didn’t happen. As a solution, they offered us again the same Nissan as before in NY. I laughed at them in no way. Another option was some SUV for a surcharge of $5 per day, which I didn’t like, because I thought that in such cases the customer doesn’t have to pay extra if he gets a higher class. This probably didn’t apply to this branch, and I didn’t see any other options. I thought it would be a Toyota RAV4, which was standing in the yard, but the worker showed us a beautiful white Nissan Rogue standing on the road. I immediately knew that it would be a great month spent on the road in such a car. I didn’t drag it out for a long time. I just negotiated the surcharge price to $4 per day and arranged a ride to the airport after returning the car, so that we wouldn’t repeat that scary bus ride. After the later events, the surcharge never happened, and the ride to the airport turned out differently than they said. Anyway, all this is the price of small rentals with the lowest prices, their location, unclear rules and that you have to take what they have. You have to consider whether it is better to take a car from the airport branch, albeit for a higher price, but without worrying about transport and the offer. I must admit that in retrospect, I would rather solve it in the second way, especially in cities like Los Angeles…

After getting acquainted with the car, we headed to Santa Monica, where Route 66 officially ends. However, we wanted to start it here and travel along it at least some distance towards the east. First, we stopped at a small snack bar and then looked for parking for the lowest possible amount. Fortunately, we found a parking garage, where even the first 90 minutes were free. I consider this a very important moment, because as I know myself, I would definitely park somewhere on the street otherwise, which I didn’t realise at the time, but it didn’t have to be very safe, and it could have spoiled the first impression of this city even more. Enough negativity, Santa Monica is beautiful. We strolled along the pier, and I was especially delighted with everything that bore the inscription Route 66. I liked the symbolism and atmosphere of this place. What repelled me, however, were the incredible crowds of people. I have never seen such a crowded beach as was around the pier. My original plan to return here to the beach later, since our main stay in LA was supposed to come before our departure back to Europe, now we didn’t want to stay here very much, just to start our journey to the centre of America, was subconsciously changing and I knew that in order to return here, we would have to be very bored.

After a quick tour, we got into the car with the aim of travelling at least a few kilometres along Route 66 behind LA and camping somewhere along the way. But already now we had a proper time delay, and this plan seemed difficult to keep, but we’ll see. The clear stop sign for us was the traffic jams during the entire transfer through the metropolis. Even after three hours, we still hadn’t got out of Los Angeles, and after the longed-for sighting of the Hollywood sign, which I had been turning around and looking for all this time in the hills, because I knew we would be passing it from a distance, it all fell on us. We were hungry, thirsty (we still only had water from the plane), tired and exhausted from a day that was really physically and mentally demanding. It was slowly getting dark, and we knew we would be changing plans. We stopped at a shopping centre on the way to eat and pull ourselves together a bit. We also needed Wi-Fi and a plan for where we would sleep tonight. The first thing I wanted to see on Route 66 was the city of Barstow with the thematic Route 66 Motel. The price for one night was $50 for two people. We liked it very much at this moment, and we immediately booked it. It turned out quite well, since the interesting thing was supposed to start only after this city and even though I originally wanted to get much further on the first day, I was also glad for such a compromise, that I am forced to get at least there and again on the other hand, so that we wouldn’t miss anything if I decided to go further at night. Overall, from Santa Monica to the city of Barstow, it is around 140 miles (225 km) and theoretically 2 and a half hours. After three hours of driving, that is, mostly standing, we still had two in front of us. It was an endless two hours, I couldn’t stand it anymore, I couldn’t keep my eyes open, and I felt very bad. Of course, we somehow got there and checked in at 11:20 pm. I was the happiest in the world that night.

August 10, Barstow – Albuquerque

From the city of Barstow, we planned to continue with a sightseeing ride along Route 66 to the east, and at the same time, to reach at least Albuquerque in New Mexico. I was looking forward to this ride the most in advance, but only now I began to realise that it would be quite a chase with time, and it wouldn’t be possible to do everything. We were being pushed by one date, namely Saturday, August 13, when we had to be in the city of Wall, but mainly on the last day of the Sturgis motorcycle festival, which I longed to visit for at least one or two days. Originally 4 days for the transfer from LA to Wall in South Dakota seemed to me to be enough time, but since we practically lost the first day in LA and I inserted a visit to the Rocky Mountain into the plan, which we were supposed to have on the way, I only had this one day left for Route 66. Despite that, I enjoyed it and savoured it quite a bit.

Road 66, or its other name, Mother Road, has been my dream since forever. The original road led from Chicago to LA and was almost 2500 miles (4000 km) long. It has always been a symbol of travelling and freedom for me, and actually also overall a symbol of my American dream, in which I only saw empty roads through the desert and beautiful scenery. It still remains my dream to travel along this road on a motorcycle, preferably a Harley, but I have already fulfilled part of it. And what is important, my ideas got real outlines and the reality left them nothing owed. Simply, travelling on empty American roads surrounded by dry land with the greatest feeling of freedom is really possible. Alternately, we crossed from the highway to the historical Route 66 and back. At first, we spent more time on the old road, but it was already in quite bad condition, at least our selected sections literally had a roller blind on them, and I was quite worried about the car as well. Somewhere, you can’t even go along the old road, because it doesn’t exist anymore; that is, they actually built a new highway exactly over it. Other sections we voluntarily went along the highway and only went down to the old road if there was something interesting there, mostly small towns – Ludlow, Needles, Kingman, Seligman, which were always marked and there were a number of interesting motels, cafes, shops in them, but also abandoned old gas stations with wrecks of old cars. Some things were really authentic with a rich history, others seemed to us to be artificially created, kitschy attractions for tourists. In any case, there is something to see, what to do and where to sleep and spend more days travelling there. I can’t say that one day was enough for me, but here too it was mainly about the experience and my inner feeling, which told me that I am enjoying it and that I will definitely return here sometime. And for Lenka to take away the strongest possible experience, she also, albeit without a licence, still tried what it is like to drive along the Main Road of America.

After dark, we knew that it wouldn’t be for big stops with taking photos, but we still didn’t want to miss some places, such as the Wigwam Motel in Holbrook. A bit of a pity that we couldn’t end this amazing day right here, again sleeping in beds, moreover in rooms that were shaped like large Indian tents. A few photos had to be enough, after which Lenka settled down for sleep in the car, and I continued further towards Albuquerque. There, I already wanted to see at least from the outside at night what the famous restaurant 66 Diner looks like. In addition, driving through this city at night is an experience in itself, because everywhere you are illuminated by signs and inscriptions reminding you that you are on Route 66. But it was right here that I had to say goodbye to this road and set off north, slowly, also thinking that I would finally stop somewhere and get some sleep myself. I did so after a few kilometres, at three in the morning, in front of Walmart. I practically spent this day behind the wheel all the time and travelled approximately 800 miles (1288 km).

August 11, Albuquerque – Rocky Mountain

We woke up to a cold morning, the coldest we had had so far. On the way, I had been surprised for a long time by the altitudes we were at, often over 1500 m above sea level. I knew we were heading into the mountains, but so far I hadn’t realised that the west is generally high up and what impact it has on temperatures. But also thanks to that, the view of the map on freecampsites.net was very comforting. On our route to the north, and thus towards South Dakota, there are supposed to be plenty of opportunities to spend the night for free under the stars. We definitely resolved that we would camp today. We were only complicating it by having to get to Rocky Mountain and spend the night there, because it was halfway to our destination city, Wall, where we wanted to arrive tomorrow. Overall, it was supposed to be around 500 miles (805 km), including a ride to the Great Sand Dunes National Park, and over 8 hours of pure driving.

On the way, we accidentally came across a small town, Antonito, where a small steam locomotive was just starting, pulling a few wagons with tourists. We managed to park, wave to the passengers and take a few photos. Then we found out that we were quite lucky, because it is a scenic ride through the mountains, and that was the only train that leaves like this in the morning and returns only in the evening. In the local “travel agency” and souvenir shop, we learned more information and they also persuaded us that we should definitely come the next day, that it is a really nice experience. The price seemed high to us, but I liked it very much, and maybe I would be persuaded. Cumbres and Toltec Scenic Railroad has remained in my memory, and I don’t want to forget about it, so maybe next time.

After lunch, it was working out quite well for us, and we were supposed to have enough time to find a suitable place to spend the night. With a beautiful view of the mountains, we were coming to the city of Denver, but there we got stuck in a traffic jam and our mood was falling. Time was passing faster than the kilometres were increasing, and we slowly started to worry about our camping. In the end, we were arriving in the city of Boulder, which was supposed to be our starting point towards the mountains, just before dusk, and we had to act quickly. Fortunately, we had saved a few primitive camps in the area, so we headed to the nearest one. We were climbing into the height, the asphalt turned into a gravel road, and we really appreciated for the first time that we had an SUV. We were a little worried about what the place would be like and whether we would dare to stay there overnight, because we didn’t have time to look for something else any more. To our surprise, there were about 10 cars parked at the destination, and there were quite a few people already camping. This is definitely a better case than if nobody were there. We were relieved, and even though the best spots were of course already taken, we knew that we were staying here. The last thing we managed to do while it was daylight was to find a piece of flat ground and pitch the tent.

Great Sand Dunes

What we were planning to do before Rocky Mountain was to visit the first national park, namely Great Sand Dunes. Upon entering the park, we purchased a ticket to all national parks in the USA for $80, valid for one year. There is space for two names on one such ticket, and of course, the entire crew of the car can go with the registered person. This means that we could then sell such a card to someone else, which we also did. In such a case, the purchase of a yearly ticket is worthwhile even when visiting only two national parks. A really very sensible purchase.

Great Sand Dunes are actually dunes of sand on a meadow between mountains. A very strange place. We arrived there around noon, and it was quite warm; what was worse, however, was that the sand was so terribly hot that every contact with it was very painful. We had trouble walking there, even in our sandals; you definitely need to wear full shoes. Furthermore, we took a miniature bottle of water for the walk into this desert, which we then made fun of, but it was quite enough for us, because we didn’t want to go far, and we weren’t there long either. After the walk, showers to wash off the sand, which we had everywhere, came quite in handy.

Rocky Mountain

The night was cruel. We slept at an altitude of 2000 m above sea level, and the temperature in the morning dropped to only 10 degrees, maybe even less. We were not prepared for this; we didn’t have any sleeping bags, and our one blanket was not enough. Likewise, we were shivering from the cold all night, and we had to go out many times because of the need to go to the toilet. After this night, we decided to buy a sleeping bag as well. After the sun finally shone on our tent and it was finally pleasant there, and it was possible to take a nice nap, we had to pack up slowly to make it all for today.

But in Rocky Mountain, I failed with my planning. I don’t know what I was expecting, but the Rocky Mountain are huge mountains, a huge national park, and I didn’t know at all where to go and what to do there. We didn’t want to go on hikes, there was no time for that, but I started to think about how we could see at least something nice, or at least some views for taking photos. On the road leading under the mountains was a turn-off to the entrance to Rocky Mountain National Park, so we went in that direction, hoping that we would find something we were looking for there. There were supposed to be some waterfalls. After a few-minute walk through the forest, we arrived at the river. I don’t know who called these waterfalls; they were just stones in the river, but in any case, we were in the right place. Not that it wasn’t nice there, but I expected more, and it turned out quite a waste of time for me. We returned from the national park and continued on our way until we found another entrance to the national park. It annoyed me terribly that I didn’t know where we were going, what would be there, whether it was worth it and so on. There was no chance for the internet, and we couldn’t really afford aimless wandering. After a few kilometres of driving, we stopped at a nice place, took a few photos and, disappointed, I gave up. We decided to turn around and set off on the road to Wall.

And this was a huge mistake. As I found out retrospectively, which I didn’t know at all at the time, we were at the beginning of Trail Ridge Road, which is the most beautiful scenic road in the Rocky Mountain and supposedly overall the most beautiful road with the best views in the mountains in the USA at all. Exactly what we were looking for, what we wanted, we had right in front of our noses, under our feet, and we didn’t know about it and turned it around. After this finding, I was terribly sorry and I still regret it, but it is also another reason to return to America. And if I am ever here again, I will plan to stay some day also in Denver, it looks like a very nice city. But for now, my experience from the Rocky Mountain is equal to the view of the High Tatras from the highway in front of Poprad, and that must not happen again.

August 12, Rocky Mountain – Wall

After a rather unsuccessful morning in Rocky Mountain, I wanted to refocus on the main goal of the day, which was the way to Wall. I hoped that I would also manage to go to Sturgis in the evening for the motorcycle rally. We had to have 425 miles (684 km) to Wall and almost 7 hours of driving. We were a little closer to Sturgis, but on the other hand, it would be a detour from Wall. I thought that these towns were close to each other and that it wouldn’t be a problem to make it to both, but it wasn’t so. I tried to convince Lenka that we were going to Sturgis, where we would then spend the night in the car or a tent, and we would only go to Wall tomorrow, because it didn’t seem very appropriate to me to arrive there at night. Our friends were also writing to us, where we were, when we would arrive, that we had everything prepared and that they were looking forward to seeing us. Unfortunately, common sense and Lenka won, and we decided that we would go to Wall first. Sturgis tempted me very much, but I knew that in that case we wouldn’t go there today, it would be too late. Never mind, the next day, on Saturday, was supposed to be the last day of the festival, which we will definitely not miss.

We got out of the mountains quickly, passed a few towns behind Denver, and were already in the state of Wyoming. We were passing some city and several gas stations, where I only glanced at the fuel level. We didn’t even have half a tank, but I didn’t want to stop, because we hadn’t even been going for long, we weren’t even hungry, so we would stop later. Kilometres were increasing, and I started to notice that there hadn’t been any exit from the highway for quite a long time, no city, pump, nothing. All around, only steppe and emptiness and one road. An incredible landscape, when someone asks me where I liked it the most, I jokingly say in Wyoming. But I slowly started to deal with that refuelling. GPS found me the nearest pump about 100 kilometres away. This quite surprised me, since we only had a range of about 60 miles, and therefore it wasn’t even enough for us to get to that pump. We could still turn around and go back, since it was a bit closer to the nearest pump in the opposite direction. But that would be a waste of time. We still have to somehow manage to get there when I slow down a bit. I announced all these facts to Lenka, and she started to stress incredibly. At first, I wasn’t very sure about what I was doing myself either, but when I saw, after watching the consumption for a few kilometres, how I was gaining time and approaching the pump faster than miles were running out to the empty tank, I knew that it would be okay. But Lenka wouldn’t be told and stressed further, so I started making fun of her. It was fun for me, but it must have been a terribly long hour for her watching the kilometres, the tank and waiting for the pump. But at least she was finally alert, and I had some distraction while driving, since otherwise she usually slept during such long transfers. We got to the pump in the nearest town probably already on the last litre, it seemed to me that we had a reserve of maybe 10 km, since the onboard computer didn’t show me this information anymore. But we arrived, and that was essential. Such things also liven up the otherwise sometimes quite boring long transfers, especially through countries like Wyoming.

Wall

Wall is probably not a very well-known or big attraction for ordinary Europeans going on a trip to the USA. It is a thousand-strong town, basically just a junction from the highway with a few attractions, where probably every car that passes by stops, in the southwest of the state of South Dakota, which at first glance may seem that it doesn’t have a much to offer. For me, however, Wall was an attraction, and I also found out that South Dakota can be interesting. For years, my friends and acquaintances have been going there for a summer job through the Work and Travel program. I already knew this small town well from photos and stories, and I hoped that one day I would look at it myself. In addition, when my Lenka was there two years ago, I kept imagining how I would somehow miraculously end up there and surprise her. It didn’t work out then, but since there are still a lot of people there now, for whom it is worth coming, Wall couldn’t be missing when planning this trip. Actually, I had to adjust the entire planning, not so much to Wall, but to the motorcycle rally in nearby Sturgis, around which all the events in Wall and other nearby towns revolved in the second week of August. Everything was well planned, successful, and fulfilled, and I ended up in the town of Wall.

We arrived in the town of Wall in the evening, at 7:30 p.m. We immediately ran to Wall Drug Store, which is a complex of shops, cafes, restaurants and attractions for tourists, where shifts were slowly ending for our friends. They later accommodated us on a mattress in the living room in one of the houses where they lived. They apologised to us that they couldn’t offer more, but even this was a luxury for us. We were a little afraid that we would have to hide all the time so as not to cause them problems, but they even announced to one of the bosses that they would have a visit and assured us that we could stay as long as we wanted. That was great and very tempting at that moment, because we were already quite destroyed from travelling, but we still had enough to look forward to and what to see. After they announced to us that they have a day off on Tuesday, we decided that we would go on a joint trip then, and that will be our last day in Wall. So we had 6 whole nights ahead of us without fear of where we would sleep and 4 whole days to rest and relax, recover from the previous difficult days and prepare for the rest of our trip. Of course, we also wanted to walk around the area, and since Lenka already knew a lot here, I mainly wanted to see and experience as many interests things as possible.

The first interesting event that we had planned was Sturgis, of course. Although only the last day of this week-long festival, but still. The fact that something was happening could be seen already on the way from Wyoming to South Dakota, where we met a lot of motorcyclists, probably leaving the rally to go home. I was even afraid that nobody was left there. But they stayed! Even the town of Wall was full of motorcycles on Saturday morning, so I was already enjoying it quite a bit here. These motorcyclists found accommodation in Wall and travelled daily to the rally, even though Sturgis is 80 miles (130 km) away from Wall. On huge motorcycles, mostly Harley-Davidson, this is absolutely no problem for them. And almost always without a helmet and proper motorcycle clothing. The perception of distance and travel in general is completely different in America than in our country. It’s really great if you go straight from a thousand-strong village onto the highway and you know that you will reach the destination on it. I gave myself that route four times on this day, just to pick up my friends after work and make them happy, because none of them had been directly at Sturgis yet. And what was it like? They told me that last year was the 75th anniversary of the rally and there was a record attendance, and that’s why there are fewer participants this year. I can’t compare it, but I was satisfied; it was enough for me like this. Motorcycles could be seen and heard at every step, at every turn of the head. Everything revolved around motorcycles, and therefore mainly around one brand, probably also because it had an incredible familial atmosphere. Harley-Davidson is a symbol of motorcycles for Americans. I am a biker, I love motorcycles, and they belong to my life, but I won’t go on and on too much. It was an incredible experience, I felt in my heart that I belonged to those people, and I hope that I will experience it once as a direct participant.

The next two days, Lenka and I went alone to the surrounding attractions, in one direction to Badlands National Park, in the other direction to Black Hills National Forest. This national forest (Black Hills National Forest) is a perfect example of how Americans can turn every hole, stone, village… every silliness into a very successful tourist attraction. As the first of these, I will mention Mount Rushmore. Yes, those 4 heads of American presidents (T. Roosevelt, G. Washington, A. Lincoln, T. Jefferson) carved into the rock, which everyone must be familiar with, are located right here. And for a person to be able to look at them, they ask, of course, for an entrance fee. From the many other attractions, to which you are tempted by billboards at every step, we visited Bear Country and Reptile Gardens. Both were very interesting and worth it. In Bear Country, we drove in our car on a one-way road among various animals, of which the biggest attraction was bears, of course. They sometimes even pass between the cars across the road. It’s such a zoo, where they actually let you into the cage by car. Reptiles Garden is also about animals, mainly about reptiles, where you can also learn a lot. Among other things, we saw huge turtles there, an educational show about snakes and a show with crocodiles.

The Tuesday trip was with friends who borrowed a car, so there were seven of us, again led us to Black Hills, now to its northern part, to the area around the city of Sturgis. We were looking for a zip line, which was supposed to be there somewhere, but no one could tell us where, and even after searching and walking up and down, we didn’t find it. Local people recommended us to go to see Spearfish Canyon, which is nearby, so we were satisfied at least with this. After the tour of the canyon, we headed to the town of Deadwood, which is known for its casinos and its main street, bearing a western style. I liked Deadwood very much, it looks like an old film, there is even a regular show on the street, a shootout between a few gunmen. We ate in one of the local saloons, also went into some casinos and shops and went home satisfied. I was tempted to see one more attraction, which was in a completely different direction, namely, even 60 miles (100 km) behind the Wall. I talked about it to my crew and we thought about it a little, until we approached our exit from the highway to Wall, when the decision fell that we would stay on the highway and continue further. The City 1880 is completely artificially created, and as the name suggests, it should show us what such a city actually looked like at that time. Unfortunately, when we arrived there, the attraction was already closed, and the gatekeeper didn’t let us in. So we looked at least at the surroundings and looked for every hole in the fence, to peek inside.

Our stay in Wall was coming to an end. We fulfilled everything we set out to do and spent a great few days here. I finally experienced what I didn’t manage during my student days. Even if only peripherally, because I didn’t work there, but I tried to get into the atmosphere and skin of my friends. Work and Travel is great, perhaps also because of the strong community of Slovaks in this place, which is again a disadvantage when improving English. As for money, it’s quite decent there, I think. Also, because in South Dakota, in a hole like Wall, it’s simply hard to spend money. But as I also found out, South Dakota is not so uninteresting, and you can also find a lot of attractions there for curious tourist eyes. But what we were looking for was mainly rest. And it worked out, we didn’t even want to leave. But unfortunately, we were waiting for last night and tomorrow morning, the continuation of free travel.

Badlands

Badlands is a national park near the town of Wall. It is characterised by many rocks of various colours. A single road leads through the entire national park, which offers very nice views. There is easy access, and even with not a very long time spent in this park, you will leave quite satisfied. It is also worth coming to the Badlands at night, since there is minimal light pollution here and you can observe the stars excellently. However, this did not work out for us completely, since it was raining the night we went there.

August 17, Wall – Yellowstone

One of the things I definitely wanted to manage in Wall was to properly plan the rest of our trip. After the experience from Rocky Mountain, I was a little wiser and knew that the style “I’ll come and see” simply doesn’t work. It seemed to us that we had enough time, but with the number of eight national parks, which we wanted to visit, and to allocate at least one day for each, we knew that it wouldn’t be easy. The parks are huge, the distances are big, and we also had some cities waiting for us, of course. While improvising on the road and mainly while looking for camps, we were supposed to be helped by the finally purchased SIM card with data. That we would go from Wall to Yellowstone, we had a clear plan. From there, we wanted to go to San Francisco, and in order for us to have as much interesting as possible on the way and alternate between sleeping in beds with sleeping in camps, we also planned our first stop in Las Vegas. Something worked out better, something worse, but still, the most beautiful part of the whole trip was waiting for us.

From Wall to Yellowstone, we had 516 miles (830 km) and roughly 8 and a half hours of driving. The goal was to only get to the camp before the gates of the national park, spend the night and leave the tour for the next day. It turned out as it should, the road was okay, even with a stop at some waterfalls, and the camp was great. We knew that there would be a fee of $10 for an overnight stay here, which is paid in camps that someone also takes care of, are organised and where there is at least a toilet, drinking water, or some equipment. Here were even two toilets, and each site had a fireplace, a wooden table with benches and a metal container for storing food as a prevention against bears. There were signs and inscriptions everywhere that we were in an area with a high incidence of bears, that we should pay attention to food and what to do in the event of contact with a bear. We encountered something like this for the first time, and it was a bit frightening. We studied everything, talked about it, and I scared Lenka a little. I remembered the fairy tale where Yogi Bear steals picnic baskets from tourists, and only now did I realise that this really happens here. Even though it might seem quite dangerous to camp here, the two basic things again helped us to be sure of what we were doing, and that was that we were not alone here and that we came in daylight. I’m glad that at least here it worked out, because later we had quite a problem managing to look for accommodation in daylight. Here we even managed to look around the area, and at one of the fireplaces we found a pile of usable wood for the fire, which someone had left there. We didn’t hesitate and gathered some, and what we didn’t burn that night, we dragged around in the car. I was glad that the planning paid off, and this day went completely without stress, and everything was okay.

Yellowstone

We didn’t have far to the gates of Yellowstone National Park anymore. Upon entering, we received maps with descriptions of famous places and the biggest attractions. According to the map, it was clear that you can go on two circuits around Yellowstone – one smaller and the other larger. We chose the larger one, of course, since we were also attracted by the more remote places. The very first attraction and surprise for us was a bison, to which we first got very close. Then, for a long time, we met herds of bison on the prairies, which we passed around. Famous places followed, such as the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Tower Falls, at which we stopped for a while and took a short walk. However, other natural beauties such as Mammoth Hot Springs, Norris Geyser Basin and especially Grand Prismatic Spring, which was probably the top of the entire Yellowstone, were like something from another planet. Springs of incredible colours from deep blue to orange were complemented by strange scents and billowing steam. It was already a little drizzling and cooling at this place, but the heat radiating from the springs was quite enough to warm up sufficiently. Our last stop was the geyser Old Faithful, where we waited for the regularly recurring eruption at sunset.

August 18, Yellowstone – Grand Teton

At first glance, it looks like there isn’t that much to see and it can be quickly passed through. But at every point of interest we stayed a bit, and after lunch we were quite in a hurry to manage to pass through everything at all. It doesn’t seem like it, but this whole circuit has over 120 miles (200 km) and with the low speed limit, it takes quite a while to get from one place to another. Everywhere are tourist paths of various lengths, which you can use to get closer to the attractions, and where an hour of walking runs very quickly. Additional time can be spent in tourist villages, of which there are several, and you can shop, eat, stay and so on there. Overall, we were surprised by the perfect organisation of everything that was located in this national park. And in this spirit, it was also in other national parks.

Yellowstone can also be passed through in one day, but two would be more ideal; the pace would be more comfortable, and we would also manage to bathe somewhere. There are plenty of camps there, but all are paid, so we wanted to sleep only in the selected primitive camp between Yellowstone and Grand Teton National Park, which was free. Because of the geyser Old Faithful, we sacrificed arriving at the camp in daylight, and it almost backfired on us. Although the camp was huge, in this case it was a bit of a disadvantage that it was divided into individual sites, where when it was marked that it was a site for 3 cars or caravans, it was simply no longer expected that someone else would come there, even though there was plenty of space there. And so all the sites were already marked as full. We didn’t see much in the dark, but in the end, we managed to find one abandoned bench, where, although one car was parked nearby, the people were probably sleeping in that car, and there was plenty of space for our tent. We didn’t have our food box, but we didn’t mind; we just wanted to spend the night, and it was possible here.

Grand Teton

Grand Teton National Park attracts mainly hiking, but we didn’t want to stay there very long. I had planned only some nice views and finally some scenic road, which I knew about this time and didn’t miss.

August 19, Grand Teton – Salt Lake City

After two nights in a tent, we started thinking and combining how we would continue, when we would sleep normally and take a shower. It was still far from Las Vegas, and we also wanted to visit Zion National Park on the way. I was thinking that we would pull it as close as possible to Zion, we would camp again, and after tomorrow’s tour, we would then arrive in Vegas at night. The third night in a tent didn’t tempt us very much and so we finally came up with a more leisurely alternative, namely that we would book accommodation somewhere in Salt Lake City, where we would easily arrive today, then we would leave one night for camping near Zion and to Las Vegas go only then in two days.

Due to the price, we finally booked accommodation in the town of Nephi, behind Salt Lake City and therefore, after the tour of Grand Teton, we still had 385 miles (620 km) and over 6 hours of driving waiting for us today. We were supposed to have enough time also for a short stop at Great Salt Lake itself, which we preferred to the centre of Salt Lake City. I don’t know if it was the right decision, because the lake didn’t impress us very much. It is the largest salt lake in the Northern Hemisphere, and if we don’t count the Great Canadian Lakes, it is also the largest lake in America. I was hoping a little that I would also try the density of its water, but after arriving, I immediately knew that it wouldn’t be so. The lake smelled terribly, and there were probably billions of flies on the shore all around. After every step, it looked like the earth was rising. It was interesting, but overall it didn’t attract us to the water at all. The water level was quite low in this period, and that’s what gave a chance for such a proliferation of flies, or what actually was it, on the shore. We enjoyed the sunset over the lake at least and we continued in good time to our motel, where we arrived at half past ten in the evening.

August 20, Salt Lake City – Zion

We didn’t have far to Zion National Park, only 230 miles (370 km) and over 3 and a half hours of driving, and therefore we didn’t hurry very much. We left the motel only at eleven and immediately looked for somewhere we could eat. GPS led us to a side street, where there was a pizzeria. While waiting for the pizza, we noticed that right next door there was a hairdressing school, or simply a hairdresser, where students cut hair for good prices. That came in very handy for me, as I had been thinking for a week that I should get a haircut. I even borrowed a clipper in Wall, but somehow we couldn’t find the time for Lenka to do it. However, my thoughts were heard, and a young student cut me for $4. She recommended that we also should visit nearby Bryce Canyon, but it didn’t work out for us in terms of time anymore.

Zion

The combination of long sleeping and several stops on the way caused us to arrive in Zion only around five in the afternoon, and we didn’t understand where the whole day had disappeared. Never mind, we wanted to pass through Zion quickly, and we would still have time to come back tomorrow. But it surprised us that you can’t drive by car in the national park, but there is a shuttle service everywhere. It is certainly slower than moving by car, plus you have to wait from time to time at the stop and count on the fact that we won’t always fit into the small bus. But I must admit that again the Americans came up with it well, and it wouldn’t be a very good idea to let all the cars along the narrow road between the rocks, with not many parking options. This way, we parked in one of the huge parking lots at the beginning of Zion in such a welcoming village. There were also a few camps there, so it occurred to us that we would pay for this night, pitch a tent and be in Zion until the evening. But the camps were full, and I wouldn’t have stayed there for that price anyway. We were sure we would find something for free outside the national park, and I would just like to look for it in daylight.

After studying the map of the shuttle service and based on pre-stored places as well, we decided to ride to the last stop, where supposed to find more interesting stuff, and then on the way back, we would get off at places that we liked, or for which we simply had time left. Already, the ride in the minibus train was interesting, and there was something to look at. Really beautiful red rocks stretched up along the road. After getting off at the last, ninth stop, we also understood here that Zion should be enjoyed best with longer hikes. As usual, we didn’t have time for that. So we at least had a closer look at various rock formations, some of them even had a name. After moving back to the seventh stop, we did a shorter walk anyway. Fortunately, the Americans have always designed it so that even really lazy people can see the best, or so that it is not difficult even for families with children. And so in less than half an hour, we were in one of the most beautiful places in Zion, where we got to the edge of one of the rocks with a beautiful view and falling water over our heads.

After returning to the car, we still had a while before it started to get dark. During the ride in the bus, I noticed that before the turn-off onto the road where only these buses were allowed, there was another road where normal cars also drove. I was very tempted to go there and find out what was there, because according to the map, that road looked quite interesting. It turned out beyond all expectations. The road was incredible, full of turns, with a passage through a tunnel and with incredible views. For me, driving along this road was the most interesting thing in the entire Zion, and I rate it as one of the best roads I have passed in the USA.

After this experience, we didn’t have much sunlight left, and we rushed to find a site for camping. I had saved some places in advance, so we rushed to the nearest one to us right away. While driving around, we saw a lot of tents and cars just freely appearing on a large area between the road and a bay. When we finally found the exit from the road, we understood that this was not any organised camp, which suited us, because you just need to find a small piece of free land, and we knew that we would definitely manage to do that. With the last rays of the sun, we intertwined through several alleys among dry shrubs, stones and trees, until we found a sufficient place for our car and tent. After unfolding, we started a fire, cooked something and watched the insects and bugs living in this dry red soil. The night at this place was quite busy, partly because of the music and partying young people camping nearby, and also because of the constantly arriving cars, which were looking for a place to spend the night here. Even though we arrived in Zion quite late, we enjoyed it to the fullest, we liked it very much, and we were also very satisfied with this free primitive camp near the national park.

August 21, Zion – Las Vegas

It’s not far from Zion to Las Vegas, we’ll make those 165 miles (265 km) in peace in 2 and a half hours, so we still have some time to stay in this rocky national park. We decided that we would continue along the road, in the vicinity of which we were camping, and we wanted to go around Zion from the other side than yesterday, hoping for some nice views. This road was supposed to lead us to the lake, which I also had saved as a possibility for camping. We did well that we didn’t choose to camp there, because we climbed over 2000 m above sea level, and it was still quite cold there, we would definitely be cold at night. There was also supposed to be a view of Zion at the nearby place, Lava Point, which could be easily reached by car. Although the view was good because of the altitude, it was not so interesting. We only saw the greening peaks of the rocky hills.

On the way to the lake, we noticed a turn-off to a place where several hiking trails started. We decided that we would go on a smaller hike after all. After about an hour of walking, we were supposed to get to another viewpoint, a little closer to Zion, hopefully with a direct view of the rock formations. We quickly looked at the map on the pole in the parking lot, and, hoping for good signs, as we had been used to so far, we set off. After half an hour of walking, we reached the first turn-off, which we, however, ignored on the map and thought was our correct direction. The signs did not confirm it, but did not deny it either, but after another half an hour, we concluded that we were still going deeper into the forest, and it did not look like a road to the edge somewhere, to a view. We hadn’t even met anyone the whole time, so we decided to return before we got completely lost. Back in the parking lot, we looked at the map again and found out that our turn-off was supposed to be just a short distance after that wrong one, which, according to the map, I wouldn’t even have thought would confuse us so much. Such things annoy me quite a bit, I would most like to go back and then along the right road. The fact that we walked for two hours was nice, it’s just a pity that we didn’t reach the destination and didn’t say goodbye to Zion according to plan, with a nice view. For a hike, and therefore also for the whole morning, we should have gone back to the national park, where the other tourists are. But sometimes it turns out like this, if I want to manage as much as possible in the shortest possible time, I realise late that I am unnecessarily wasting time walking around looking for something I have right under my nose. I often repeat this mistake when travelling, I am tempted to do things differently than others, but mainly at well-known places and attractions, the best route is exactly the easiest one, and it is not very worthwhile to invent alternative routes.

We threw it behind our heads and started looking forward to the rest, the clean hotel room and the illuminated Las Vegas. The way back under the hills was great, full of turns, no cars and high speed. I at least enjoyed the ride, since Lenka kept complaining that she would get sick. Those views were only a bit behind yesterday’s. The continuation of the journey was also quite interesting, and it again had that right wild American flair. It quite surprised me that also Las Vegas is relatively high up, over 600 m above sea level, and there are mountains all around. As a city in the desert, I imagined it maybe a little differently, but at least I am a little wiser again, and as for other ideas, for example, temperature, they were fulfilled, and it was hellishly hot there. We checked in at half past four at the hotel Circus Circus and went out into the streets in the evening. We were quite tired, so we only went lightly and for a short time, since the wind picked up later and a storm was approaching. But we managed to capture the incredible atmosphere of the city, and at least for a little while, we devoted our gaze to most of the famous hotels on the Strip. But already now, I was looking forward to exploring it a bit more since Lenka had already spent a few days in Las Vegas before and knew the city quite well.

Right opposite our hotel, I noticed a yard where a lot of American military equipment was parked, and so we started the second day right there. In the yard, we had the opportunity to look at various jeeps, tanks and also helicopters. But probably the biggest attraction of this place, Battlefield Vegas, is the opportunity to shoot from any of the weapons they have available. Of course, for a not small fee, the price includes transportation by military jeep from the hotel and back. Definitely an interesting thing, but we didn’t have money to spare for something like that.

Las Vegas sleeps during the day, the streets are empty, and it is quite quiet. Mainly because of the terribly high temperatures, people stay either in hotels or in air-conditioned shops. We only drove around a bit in the car and spent the afternoon by the pool. In the evening we got ready to go back to the Strip, but the storm came earlier this time so we were only in our hotel until night, fortunately Circus Circus is very rich in attractions and you really don’t get bored there even after several hours, even if you don’t play in the casino. We knew that we would come back to Las Vegas, and we would have enough time for everything that came to our mind, so we were quite satisfied with this, more or less, only hotel stop, and it came in handy. But the real Las Vegas is still to come!

August 23, Las Vegas – Death Valley

The plan for the next trip was quite simple – to get to San Francisco and visit a total of four national parks on the way. We were still postponing the accommodation in San Francisco and were looking for various other alternatives, since the accommodation is incredibly expensive right in this city. So we were not being pushed by any date, but we were giving ourselves about three days for it, and again, we wanted to camp as much as possible.

The first stop, right after Las Vegas, was Red Rock Canyon National Park, where you don’t spend a lot of time. It suited us, as the main goal of today was Death Valley National Park. That is also not very far, but already a bit worse are the distances directly in the valley, since Death Valley is the largest national park in the USA. At first, it was quite interesting and fun. First, some views from a height up to 1700 m above sea level and then winding roads that led us below sea level. Then followed a long and boring transfer through dry land towards the exit from the park, where there wasn’t really much left.

We had planned to get as close as possible to Sequoia National Park, which we wanted to visit tomorrow. After dark, I was already reconciled with the fact that I would be pulling as much as possible, and then we would just sleep in the car. But suddenly we passed a turn-off to Red Rock Canyon and camping. We didn’t understand what a place with the same name as we visited in the morning was doing here, but later we found out that this is just a state park and there is a huge camp here. That was, although for a fee, but since we came at night, we pretended that we didn’t know about the fee and went to look for a place to spend the night. Pitching the tent was quite complicated this night, since the wind was blowing terribly and we were not succeeding. In the end, it turned out well, and when we finally took a breath, we started to realise what a special place we were in. This camp was amazing, we were camping directly under huge rocks and enviously watched our tent neighbours with a fire, thanks to which a beautiful light and shadow show was taking place on these rocks. This place had a really great atmosphere, and in the morning, when we finally saw what kind of scenery we had, it only multiplied our feelings. The presence of running drinking water and toilets only enhanced the impression that we were at the best camp during our journey, and probably we would have to try many more camps to find something better and quasi for free.

On this day, we actually went from Red Rock Canyon National Park to Red Rock Canyon State Park, and we made just over 330 miles (530 km).

Red Rock Canyon

Red Rock Canyon National Park is small; there is only one circular road leading there, from which you can see a huge red-coloured rock. It is an interesting natural phenomenon, but in my opinion, it is quite enough to just fly by it.

Death Valley

The biggest attraction of Death Valley is definitely Badwater Basin, which lies 86 meters below sea level and is thus the lowest point in America. We had an incredible 46 degrees Celsius there, and the heat really took its toll. Before arriving in this valley, we had the opportunity to look at it also from a height of almost 1700 m above sea level from a viewpoint called Dante’s View. We also stopped at Zabriskie Point, where there is a beautiful view of yellow rocky formations like something from another world. Next time, I would also go to see Scotty’s Castle, which, however, was almost destroyed in 2015 by a flood and is currently closed. We didn’t even know that then, but fortunately, we didn’t go there just because it would be a several-hour detour, and we didn’t have that much time.

August 24, Death Valley – Yosemite

The coincidence that we found a camping spot for the night and slept comfortably in the tent was great, but now we still had quite a distance to Sequoia National Park. It may seem according to the map that Sequoia lies right next to Death Valley, and that it is on our way, but it’s worse that you can’t cross it, and so we have to go around this national park completely in order to get to the entrance, which is on the western side. This detour took us approximately four hours, but a visit to Sequoia National Park is definitely worth it. The detour for us was actually a passage through Death Valley, but I didn’t want to skip that just to make it easier for us to get to Sequoia.

There is only one main road leading through Sequoia National Park, which is not very long, but due to constant turns, driving through it takes quite a while. When exiting the park, there were still many turns, but they were no longer as sharp as before, and when there wasn’t much traffic, I enjoyed the ride quite a bit. Lenka complained again that she would get sick. In the end, I was also glad that we were finally on the plain and finally getting closer to our destination faster. We wanted to get as close as possible to Yosemite National Park. We managed to do it, and in the end, even though with a bit of trouble and in the dark, we managed to find a place to spend the night in a tent. There were a few sites next to the river, where again we were supposed to pay, this time even $26 for the night, but we didn’t pay anything and hoped that no one would come to ask us for the fee. We unfolded at the last available spot, and even though we had quite far to the car, we made quite a nice evening by the fire with wine and baked sausages. The presence of a metal box for food made us realise that we were again in a location with bears.

So today we drove from Death Valley to Yosemite National Park and spent a few hours in Sequoia National Park. We covered over 370 miles (600 km).

Sequoia

Sequoia National Park is the second oldest national park in the USA, and its main feature is the sequoias, the largest trees on our planet. The most attractive tree in the park is the largest tree in the world, General Sherman, which is 83.8 meters high and has a circumference of 31.3 meters. It is an incredible giant, and the view of it is breathtaking. But there are many other trees that are huge and next to which a person feels very small. A big attraction is a tree that fell across the road, and instead of clearing it away, they just cut a hole in it, and cars drive through. I had never actually gone through a tunnel in a tree before in my life. Climbing to the Moro Rock viewpoint, where 400 wooden steps lead, is also an experience.

The national park is located at an altitude of over 2000 m above sea level, to which an incredibly winding road leads, where there were definitely the sharpest turns during our entire trip through America. If you come across a caravan or a bus, you literally go at a crawl, and it gets on your nerves. The elevation compared to Death Valley is over two kilometres, and we also felt it when a packet of chips bought somewhere in the valley burst by itself on the way. I was even scared that what kind of rock had fallen on our car, and it took me a while to figure out what actually happened. Even the inflatables, which we always carried only slightly deflated, were almost empty in Death Valley, and here suddenly they were about to burst, and because of their inflation, I had no view to the rear. But thanks to the high altitude, it was very pleasant and refreshing for us here in the shade of the trees after yesterday’s hellishly hot day in the valley.

Yosemite

At the gates of Yosemite National Park, we were in for a surprise. We found out that this week they are celebrating Yosemite’s 100th anniversary of the founding of services in this park. The fact that the entrance was free because of this was quite indifferent to us, thanks to the card that we used a lot anyway at the entrances to other parks, but we were pleased that maybe we would catch some additional attraction or program from the park rangers, which is usually not the case here. But somehow we didn’t have any luck for anything like that, and so the only thing that influenced us by being here during this jubilee week for the park was the incredible crowds of people and a lot of cars.

The biggest attractions of the park are huge rocks and beautiful views. This park can also be passed through with one circular road with several turn-offs. Along this road, there are many stops with views, hiking trails and park villages with camps. The most famous views include Tunnel View and Glacier Point, which definitely need to be seen with your own eyes and are so characteristic that later, when looking at any photograph from this place, you will immediately know what it is about. As in Sequoia, here you can also see huge sequoia trees and several waterfalls. However, waterfalls can also dry out completely in the summer, so only bare rocks awaited us after a short walk to Yosemite Falls.

August 25, Yosemite – San Francisco

After lunch, Yosemite National Park literally began to become overcrowded. It was difficult to find a parking spot, and due to some traffic restrictions, there were also quite often traffic jams. On the other hand, I really liked how Americans with families spend their free days, and this was a place definitely suitable for a week-long holiday. I’m not saying that people back home don’t go to the mountains or the forest, but camping as such and all the equipment about it will probably never be at such a level in our country. I would really like to return to this place later also with my family and children and enjoy a few days spent in a caravan or even in a tent, in a fully equipped camp with water and showers and just a step away from beautiful nature, hiking trails and swimming in rivers.

We slowly started thinking about where we would spend the night. We would still manage to get to San Francisco at a reasonable time, only the price of accommodation was quite discouraging to us. Sleeping in a tent as such didn’t bother us, but after two previous nights in the wild, we desired at least a shower. When we suddenly caught sight of a sign leading to one of the many camps in Yosemite, where a shower was also shown, among other things. We definitely wanted to try it and we were also willing to pay some fee. In the end it turned out that even though you were supposed to pay $5 for using the shower when renting towels, we took our own towels, avoided the office and took a shower for free and with luck, since the afternoon cleaning was just starting and the showers were supposed to close in a moment for about two hours.

After this bodily purification, we were completely okay again, we rejected the idea of booking cheaper accommodation somewhere in a smaller town around San Francisco, and we were ready to spend the night wherever it came. But it was still our goal to get as close as possible to San Francisco, which we wanted to run through at least in one day, tomorrow. One place I found through freecampsites.net kept nagging at me. It was a possibility to spend the night, probably on free parking, right behind the Golden Gate Bridge. Since there are no other camping options in the area, the website only offers some parking lots, so why not go directly to the one that is closest to our goal, that is, even behind it and probably with a view of the icon of San Francisco. I knew that you don’t pay for crossing the bridge out of the city, and so we decided to try it. We arrived only after dark, and it got quite cold, windy, and it was also raining. But the place for spending the night in the car was really great, it’s just that even in such bad weather, quite a lot of tourists were going there, and it was quite busy. From time to time, we watched some strange people and cars, but the police were always present in the parking lot, so we didn’t feel fear. We were definitely not the only ones who planned to spend the night here, but my eye was caught by a young couple of surfers, who came to spend the night here in an old VW bus. The best thing about it all was that we were falling asleep with a view of the beautifully red Golden Gate Bridge in the background, which was lit by the hilly San Francisco. I would definitely choose this place to spend the night in the car again.

On this day, we only passed around 220 miles (354 km), and I really liked the environment we were passing through. Mainly the departure from Yosemite National Park, winding roads from the mountains and then passages around some water surfaces. On this road I was thinking that California is not only about cities at all, of which we haven’t seen many yet, but even just such Los Angeles didn’t welcome us in a good light at all, and we didn’t even know what was waiting for us in San Francisco, but California is mainly about nature. If I had to choose a place to live in this state and maybe even in the entire USA, it would probably be right here, in the middle of California, where it is not very far to the big cities and the sea either, but mainly it is in the heart of perfect nature.

San Francisco

We woke up to a cold and cloudy morning, but we could finally fully enjoy the beauty of the Golden Gate Bridge. I had several different views of this majestic bridge marked on the map, so we went straight to the most famous and best one. Almost everyone knows the view of the red bridge from this place, it is regularly repeated in photos, on television and in films. Taking your own photo of the Golden Gate Bridge from this angle was just a required task, but the feeling that I am again standing in a place that I had only dreamed of before and which was always a symbol of my desire to get to know the USA, and the feeling that it is precisely because of things like this that I like to travel and that it is worth it precisely because of that, was simply incredible.

We had already decided that we would only be in SF for this one day. Not that it wasn’t interesting or beautiful, but we couldn’t fit it into our budget limits for the day and accommodation, and the few places that we had marked as must-see were not so many that we couldn’t make it in that one day. After we had solved the sleeping arrangement in this overpriced city quite elegantly, simply and above all cheaply, we still had one difficult task, namely to find parking for a reasonable price. But the parking prices made our heads spin again. It was quite common to have parking lots where you paid $10 per hour. I will also mention that even when looking for accommodation in “cheap” motels, parking was not secured, and you had to solve it at your own expense.

Our first stop was supposed to be Pier 39. Of the many piers that are located here, this was supposed to be the most interesting. We drove around it by car and saw with our own eyes that the parking situation would really be bad. When we were going on the second street south of the pier, along Bay St., one of the cars in front of us, parked along the road, left its place, and so I stopped there so I could look at the map and take a better look at the parking options. But we started to deal with this place where we were standing, because it looked like it was outside the paid zone, there were no lines on the road and no machines or markings along the road expressing the obligation to pay for such parking. We walked around the car for a while and looked for something that would refute or confirm our thinking. A guy went by, a bit of a weirdo, but he assured us that we can park here for free without any problems. A little unsure, but since we didn’t have anything else to cling to, we only took a camera and some small things and headed towards the Pier, which was supposed to be quite close. I have already mentioned several bad decisions during this road trip, but this decision, to leave the fully loaded car here, was definitely the worst during the entire trip. After a few minutes of walking, I had such a strange feeling, and I was overcome by uncertainty about whether I had locked the car. We were only just around the corner, so we turned around and repeatedly convinced ourselves that the car was indeed locked, as it always is with such feelings. This time, more certain and happier, we set off for our goal for the second time. On the way, I watched the parking cars, thought and was quite happy about the luck that someone had freed up a place for us right in front of our noses on the otherwise hopelessly full streets, and that we had again tricked the system a bit and saved where it seemed impossible.

Pier 39 is very nice, huge, and full of colours, scents, music, and people. The sun finally peeked out, so we enjoyed the views of Alcatraz, the Golden Gate Bridge from a different angle and various other attractions. Certainly one of the biggest was the seals, which had floating pontoons on the water here, where they were just basking or showing off in front of people. In the two hours that we spent here, we also visited a few shops and ate something. Our next goal was to walk a bit on the crooked streets for which San Francisco is known, we wanted to see and hopefully also drive the most famous and winding of these crooked streets, Lombard Street, and park somewhere again where you could ride the trams typical for SF. All these plans completely fell apart after returning to the car. The first thing we noticed was a small piece of paper behind the windscreen wiper, and it immediately occurred to me that we had received a parking ticket. When I held the paper in my hand and read that we were supposed to contact the nearest police station, it only strengthened my belief that it was really a parking ticket. Only when I looked through the car and saw the broken glass on the door to the trunk, I completely froze, then I started shaking and announced to Lenka that we had been robbed. She didn’t even have time to properly ask what I was talking about, and we were already standing in front of a broken, half-empty trunk. An incredible stream of thoughts started swirling in my head, Lenka burst into tears in a moment, and while I started to comfort her, I managed to check whether we had at least the backpack with the most valuable things, passports, tablet, photos and the like, which I always carried with me, but this time I left it under the rear seat. Fortunately, the backpack was untouched, and in the car we saw that we also had our largest suitcase left, which the thief probably couldn’t carry anymore, didn’t manage to lift or simply didn’t fit through the rear, not very large, window. Since I had absolutely no overview of how we had packed our things, that was Lenka’s job; through tears, I forced her to answer questions about what we even had in that huge suitcase. The first questions concerned souvenirs, gifts, magnets and things that we had acquired during almost two months on the road and had a great mental value for us. Fortunately, I got a positive answer to almost all the questions that I had. Lenka very reasonably packed into this large suitcase everything that we didn’t use much, didn’t need or just wanted to transport home and give to someone, so that we wouldn’t have to take that suitcase out and open it unnecessarily often. The second round of questions began on the things that were stolen from us. It immediately occurred to me that we don’t have our carry-on suitcase with things for every day use, but somehow I forgot that we already had a new travel bag, in which, among other things, there was also a pile of dirty laundry that we had been wearing for 10 days since Wall and hadn’t managed to wash yet, and that was also missing. So we worked our way up to the fact that we lost the complete drugstore, cosmetics and almost all the clothes. I didn’t have even one pair of briefs or socks left, only one pair of shorts, which I was wearing, and a few t-shirts, which were left lying on the seat, or were newly bought, or very little used and packed in the large suitcase. Lenka was no better, apart from one pair of jeans and a few t-shirts, she had nothing at all. Only both of us had new sweatshirts left, since it was quite cold in San Francisco, and so we were wearing them.

After those findings, although we were in a bad state, we had everything really important, and it was necessary to solve the situation with the car. Firstly, I called the rental company, and they only told me to go to the nearest branch and settle it there. The second call was to the police, and they also only told me to report to the nearest department. First, I went to the police, and it was all quite strange and unprofessional. While writing down the things that disappeared, I realized more and more that although I will never see those things again, nor will I probably arrange any money from the insurance company, but that in essence we are not missing anything precious and we can continue on the trip, I just need to have the police report, because of possible insurance for damage to the rented car. One thing at the police station, however, annoyed me terribly, and that was that I gave them the original paper that I found behind the windscreen wiper, where the case number was clearly written, and it was advised to report to this police department. I hoped that the policeman in question, who wrote it out, maybe saw something, or even caught the perpetrator, or at least would know something and when I started asking about these things, I only got answers that they have no idea who wrote out that paper, why someone left such a paper to me and they didn’t even know where that paper actually is. I got a new case number, everything was written down, and they would let me know if something was found out. I called them again the day before leaving America, but they still couldn’t tell me anything new.

After dealing with the matters at the police station, we headed to the Enterprise rental branch. It was this transfer that ultimately was our only experience of the crooked streets of San Francisco. What I noticed a little more, however, were the passages through all sorts of, not nice districts, where we saw open suitcases on the sidewalks a few times, and people of darker skin were selling things there, or were dealing with some similar business. It immediately occurred to me that this is probably quite common here, and they earn money in this way from the staff of tourists. I would like to know how our mostly dirty and smelly clothes ended up. We didn’t have much luck at the branch of the rental company nearest to us, since they didn’t have a car for us, and somehow they couldn’t even deal with the fact that I didn’t have insurance from Enterprise, but from a third-party insurance company. While we were there, however, other tourists came with exactly the same problem as us, a broken rear window and a robbed trunk. Even when we were on the street where it happened, an older gentleman went by, who lives not far from there and sees at least one car robbed in this way here every day. He just told us that in San Francisco, we must not leave absolutely anything in the car, so that we don’t have to be afraid to park on the street. Here at the rental, a guy told us that about ten cars are robbed in this way and come to the largest branch of Enterprise, which is at the airport, every day. And that is where he sent us as well, so that they will definitely have a car for us there.

At the airport, it went quite smoothly; it was clear that they dealt with something like this often. They didn’t deal with my insurance at all, extra that I don’t have to do anything, they will take care of it. I was very pleased about that, because I was afraid that I would be missing the money until I arranged it back. This way, I didn’t lose a dollar, and in addition, I had absolutely no paperwork on my shoulders. The worst was that even here, they didn’t have any free cars in our class. They solved it by offering us an even bigger car, of course, as it should be, without a fee. So we got a beautiful, huge SUV of the Dodge brand. I was quite looking forward to it, but after a while, we found out that it is quite impractical for our needs. The car was a seven-seater, but the rear seats could be folded, and so the trunk was big, it’s just that I couldn’t imagine having to sleep in this car and also refuelling would cost us more than we were used to. However, our joy from this car didn’t last very long, since after a few kilometres after leaving the airport, the engine failure indicator light came on and the strong engine suddenly almost stopped pulling. We immediately got off the highway and returned to the airport. We were already quite desperate, stressed and destroyed, and it was certainly visible on us too. They issued me new papers about another car exchange in a flash, they assured me that I didn’t have to deal with anything about it, and since they already had more cars available, they let me choose. There were various interesting pieces there, but when I saw a brand new Nissan Rogue, a newer model of the same car that we had been driving for over two weeks, I knew it perfectly and considered it completely great, I didn’t hesitate for a second and chose it. Only after getting into this car did we finally take a breath a bit, the stress eased a bit, but all what happened this day weighed down on us, and we were a little sad and disappointed with how things are sometimes not fair, how bad people are and the world, unfortunately, is spoiled.

So that’s how I will remember San Francisco. I would definitely like to give it another chance, but I will have to prepare suitable conditions for it. Without accommodation, it probably doesn’t work in such a city. But as long as my limits don’t change, what I’m willing to give just so that I can sleep somewhere for a few hours, San Francisco is not a suitable city for me.

August 26-27, San Francisco – Las Vegas

When we finally got back on the road, in a new car and two suitcases lighter, it was already slowly getting dark. We didn’t want to return to San Francisco, and so we continued with our plan, in which we had selected a few places to spend the night along the Pacific coast. We didn’t need anything else now, just to stop and rest. Theoretically, I could have rushed and continued on the road, I don’t know where, but we preferred to let everything run through our heads and adapt the rest of our trip to the situation. Moreover, the drive around the coast was supposed to be an experience in itself, and so I didn’t want to waste it at night, when we wouldn’t see anything. We simply stopped where several cars were parked by the coast, and it wasn’t forbidden, and reconciled ourselves to sleeping in the car. We even met the young couple of surfers here, who were spending the night with us yesterday behind the Golden Gate Bridge.

The original plan after visiting San Francisco was to set out on Road 1, named California State Road 1 and nicknamed The Pacific Coast Highway, towards Los Angeles. After Route 66, it was the second road that I was looking forward to the most. The distance to LA is not particularly large, and so we imagined that we could easily spend 3 days here, enjoy the road with supposedly the most beautiful views in the USA, enjoy the sea, the beaches and the sun. We knew that this coast is supposed to be a bit stormy, windy and more favourable to surfers than classic vacationers, but we certainly didn’t expect that it would be barely 20 degrees here. Moreover, after yesterday’s events, we had to change our plans a bit anyway. It was out of the question to sleep in the car or camp somewhere for another night. We needed to book accommodation and go for essential shopping. During a stop for breakfast, we tried to figure it all out and had at least a certain accommodation. I definitely wanted to continue on the road along the coast, but Lenka was quite nervous that she urgently needed to buy some things and was afraid of what I would come up with again and in what hole without shops we would end up sleeping. I explained to her that we don’t have big cities in the area anyway, and probably no Walmart either, and so in the end, she agreed that we would get to at least Santa Barbara, and we would look for accommodation right there. However, the accommodation prices were also higher here than we expected, and so we also tried to look for accommodation in other locations. However, we were not very successful; we could not combine suitable accommodation with the guaranteed presence of Walmart. Overall, we were quite desperate and disgusted with the weather, the prices and that we actually have nothing to do until Tuesday, when we have had a hotel reserved in Las Vegas long in advance. So we decided to simplify it all and book another hotel in Las Vegas, where we know what services we will get for our money, that it will be warm there, and there is probably no better place for shopping far and wide. Only that Las Vegas was more than 620 miles (1000 km) away from us, and the ride would definitely take over 10 hours. But we both liked this decision the most, and so I was determined to do it, even with the fact that we would continue along road number 1 for a while.

Road 1 is really special in how it lines the coast and offers beautiful views and an unforgettable ride, just quite often interrupted by repairs, traffic lights or just constant driving in traffic jams. But I couldn’t help it, but at the few stops that we had, I always had the feeling that as far as purely the scenery of the coast is concerned, I have already seen better and more beautiful, whether in England or elsewhere in Europe. Apart from one beach full of seals and several hippie and surfer symbols, nothing extra amazed me. And maybe I was just disappointed that we can’t lose too much time with stops, or I was already nervous that the road along the coast is really dragging terribly, and we still have quite a large distance to Las Vegas waiting for us. In any case, we also passed this road, although not all the way to LA, but only a little before Santa Maria, but only after turning off and connecting to the fast highway did I finally have a bit of a better feeling from travelling and the only thing I maybe regretted was that we would not manage to visit Santa Barbara.

The journey started to pass by quite quickly, and we were enjoying it. When driving on empty highways through hot and parched land, I had a much more American feeling than when dragging along the coast with English weather. Moreover, we were heading to Las Vegas, which is a symbol of everything possible, only not boredom. In this direction, we were passing huge oil fields, certainly also with hundreds of oil rigs. The passage around was again a strong experience, again something new that this American road trip brought me. Also, the arrival in Nevada from this direction was magnificent. We were greeted by a huge resort with casinos, where, however, we were most interested in a brutally looking roller coaster. Lenka didn’t like it at all, but I said that we definitely have to come here and try it, since it’s only a stone’s throw from Vegas. After reading some reviews of this coaster, however, we preferred not to do it, since being all made of iron and already quite old, it makes itself felt quite a bit, and many people leave there with back pain. After a day-long ride and a good dose of kilometres, we finally arrived at our destination at half past ten in the evening, in the illuminated downtown of Las Vegas.

Las Vegas

When looking for accommodation in Las Vegas for these first three nights, we were addressed by a very interesting offer for a hotel, which was supposed to be very close to downtown Las Vegas, which we liked quite a bit, since we had already passed the Strip and our next hotel was supposed to be on the Strip again, so we definitely wanted to spend this unplanned stay also right in downtown. We didn’t know then that the Four Queens Hotel is located right in the heart of downtown, and we were coming out of it straight under the largest screen in the world, onto the famous Fremont Street. The good price was probably because the hotel already had a bit older equipment, and in addition, most of the rooms were being renovated, so on the way from the elevators, we were passing by open, sometimes even bare to the walls, rooms. Apart from the missing feeling of luxury, which was unimportant for us, we were a little missing Wi-Fi, which was only available for a fee here. However, it was completely outweighed by the pool, which was although in the next hotel, but on its roof, which we gladly welcomed, and relaxing by it was also quite an experience.

When we were carrying things from the car to the room, we must have looked like all sorts of people, only not like civilised people. It’s no wonder, because we actually left Las Vegas five days ago, passed through four national parks, slept twice in a tent and twice in the car, to be robbed in San Francisco and to return unplanned, again here to Las Vegas, completely like wrecks. During one of the turns car – room, a pair of Americans approached us in the elevator. The older lady was measuring me with her eyes and when she saw that in one hand I have a gallon of water and in the other a few paper bags from Walmart, where there were all sorts of things, but mainly she could smell and see a still quite fresh, uneaten roasted chicken, she only uttered, maybe even quite jokingly, whether we are having a picnic in the room. It was terribly funny to me, but I also felt quite embarrassed and couldn’t come up with anything to tell her. We were leaving the elevator with laughter on our lips, and then we had fun all evening at how we must have looked to them. We were very happy that we would finally sleep like people, and thanks to this stay, we will start to look like people as well.

Overall, we were very satisfied with the choice of hotel and mainly its location. Downtown Las Vegas, and mainly, therefore, Fremont Street, is completely incredible with its atmosphere. It would be a great pity if we didn’t visit downtown due to a lack of time, but fate arranged it so that we lived here directly. Whenever we left the hotel, we felt like we were at a big party, or like at a festival. Different genres of music were playing from several stages, or other performances were taking place, complemented by many street artists and extravagant people, or other fools who were asking for attention. People fly over your heads on a zip line, and the whole thing is roofed over by the already mentioned, the largest screen in the world, which is 457 m long. If that wasn’t enough, neons or LED lights shine and blink from each side, which all together creates incredible feelings of happiness, joy, and it is an incredible experience, which I definitely want to experience several times in my life.

This is exactly what we needed. In these three days, we had everything that helped us forget the unpleasant events and tuned us to enjoy the journey again. Shopping and some new things, which made us happy and only strengthened the fact that there is definitely no point in mourning over clothes, were also a matter of course. It went a bit into the money, but we didn’t think about it very much, and in essence we didn’t even have to, since starting with the stay in Wall and subsequent travelling through the national parks, our costs nicely decreased and a quite decent reserve was created. After shopping, we relaxed by the pool, where, to our amazement, almost nobody was and at the same time it was quite nice, with a really great view of the hilly surroundings of Las Vegas. And the evenings belonged to the already mentioned soaking up the atmosphere and experiences on Fremont Street Experience, with occasional detours to nearby hotels and casinos.

On the third day we had to move to the Hooters hotel, where we had a stay reserved for this term long in advance, mainly because of the wedding, which Lenka had planned all together with the assumption that it would be another unforgettable experience, even though we didn’t want the wedding to be valid. She planned and organised the whole thing so that a limousine would come for us to this hotel tomorrow, on Wednesday, August 31. We didn’t really know what would happen next. But today we finally had an evening ahead of us, when we set out into the streets, that is, onto one street, onto Las Vegas Boulevard, better known as the Las Vegas Strip. We finally had more time for it, we visited a lot of hotels with sonorous names and took a lot of photos. The Strip certainly has a lot to offer; you just have to walk a bit. But it’s worth it. Someone would say that it’s always the same thing, a hotel and a casino under it. But in my opinion, there is so much more to discover there, what to look at and where to gasp in amazement. The beauty, luxury and diversity of the hotels cannot even be described with words, and the camera also cannot capture everything; you have to go through it and experience it. Probably the most amazing experience is the fountain in front of the Bellagio hotel, where we also spent the most time, probably so that we wouldn’t forget about it so soon.

On our holiday day, we didn’t want to walk outside very much in the incredible heat, but I had one plan: to ride the roller coaster at the New York-New York hotel. After we rejected that old, huge roller coaster at the entrance to Nevada and also the attractions at the Stratosphere hotel, since I wouldn’t get Lenka there for anything, and it seemed so silly to me to go there alone, it was the only possibility to spice up travelling with such an experience as well. And here too I had to go alone, since Lenka had already tried it, she felt bad, and I won’t get her on such attractions any more. However, I liked it very much, and I have certainly experienced worse rides on my stomach as well.

After lunch, we got ready and a little nervous, but armed with a vodka with juice in a plastic bottle, we went to the hotel at the agreed time, where the limousine was supposed to come for us. When Lenka was planning this wedding for us, she was choosing from several possible packages, including various services. She liked the package for approximately $200 the most, which included, in addition to the ride in the limousine, a ceremony in the chapel, a bouquet of flowers, a photoshoot and a video. The ride in the limousine lasted quite long, and we enjoyed it to the fullest. But then the ceremony in the chapel was quite disappointing. Probably also because we didn’t even get out of the car, we just parked near the window at the chapel, from where the governor stuck out his head, and we repeated what he was saying after him. Behind the governor stood someone who was filming the whole thing, and in the limousine opposite us, a photographer was sitting and taking photos of us. In conclusion, we were asked for a tip, which was supposed to cost us a total of 90 dollars for the driver, the governor and the photographer. We gave them $40, saying that we are travelling low-cost and we don’t have more money. They didn’t really want to believe it and didn’t understand that someone comes to Las Vegas without money, but we didn’t care, and they didn’t deserve even that much for the quality of services. The ride in the limousine back to the hotel wasn’t as interesting to us as the previous one, partly probably because we ran out of vodka and also because we evaluated the whole thing as quite embarrassing. But we have an experience, which is not so common for Slovaks, and also some souvenirs, which will remind us of our first wedding, the wedding in Las Vegas.

After arriving at the hotel, we still wanted to enjoy our wedding clothes a bit and at the same time celebrate a bit. At the bar, where we were served by the famous Hootersky, we ordered some drinks and discounted roasted wings. From time to time, we heard some congratulations and registered smiling glances. Fed and again a bit in the mood, we went to get ready so that we could set out into the streets. We were finishing the remains of the vodka and were walking towards the Strip, when we realized that we actually don’t want to walk around the hotels at all, or look for some interesting bar with acceptable prices, and it is quite enough for us to stay in our hotel, where it is not that bad. We had fun our way, played some slot machines, where we were getting small beers for free, bought something and in the end ended up again with drinks and wings. They mixed up our order a bit, and so we had a double dose of wings and fries for that discount price, as a few hours ago. We weren’t that hungry, but taking it to the room was not possible, because we would be strange again, having a “picnic in the room”, and so I decided that I would eat all 20 wings. Lenka helped me with about three, but otherwise they were quite going into me, and I didn’t have the feeling that I was overdoing it, even though I knew for a long time that I had enough. In the end, it all weighed down on me at night, and it was quite difficult for me, because of which I couldn’t sleep.

Our last day in this city was only about relaxation and mainly without any plans, since everything that we wanted and that could be done, we had already managed, walked around, photographed and enjoyed. We spent almost the entire day by the pool, where I finally also slept a bit, and even the headache finally passed. In the evening, we set out into the streets again and, with our gazes, said goodbye to those hotels, which were the most for us, and mainly to the amazing fountain in front of the Bellagio. Las Vegas is definitely not a suitable city for everyday family life, but I would be very happy if I had the opportunity to visit it whenever I felt like it, whether for fun, but mainly for me, for the atmosphere, which is actually, in my opinion, exceptional.

September 2, Las Vegas – Grand Canyon

It was hard to say goodbye to the city in which we spent the most days during the whole trip, and in which we probably also had the best time. From now on, we began to realise that the end of the whole adventure is approaching, and in a few days, we will be flying home. But one more place was waiting for us, which could be considered a symbol of the magnificent American natural beauty and at the same time, the last two nights in a tent were waiting for us. We set out from Las Vegas towards the Grand Canyon.

After a few kilometres behind Las Vegas, the first stop was waiting for us, namely the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. The air temperature was terribly high, and Lenka came up with the idea that she felt bad from the heat, and she didn’t want to walk, do anything, or even just be in the sun. However, I pulled her out for a while, and we walked around a bit. For us, there wasn’t much to do there anyway, but it’s a place that you definitely have to see. Paradoxically, I was most interested in the huge bridge, which is part of the highway and towers high above the entire dam and the Colorado River. We didn’t stay long at the dam, and I was already enjoying the ride across the bridge, from which, unfortunately, unlike my expectations, there was absolutely no view due to the high concrete edges.

In less than two hours and 100 miles (161 km), we were supposed to arrive at today’s destination, which was the western edge (West Rim) of the Grand Canyon. We went to this place because I thought we had quite enough time allocated for the Grand Canyon, so we could look at it from several sides. West Rim was also supposed to be very interesting because it belongs to the Indian reservation and the Indians take care of it, and I also knew that there are some attractions, for example, the Skywalk, which is a viewpoint with a glass floor. I didn’t inquire about anything else, which was again a mistake. Upon arrival, we were surprised by huge parking lots, where we understood that we couldn’t get any further by car. That wouldn’t have been so bad, because we know that the shuttle service in the national parks works well. But only in the welcome centre did we get enough information to understand it all. The only way to get to the edge of the Grand Canyon in this place is to buy one of the offered service packages, where the cheapest one, which only included entrance and shuttle service, was $50 and a more interesting one, also including entrance to Skywalk, would cost us over $70 per person. We were very disappointed about that. We generally don’t like paid attractions, and probably, even if we should only pay for that Skywalk, we would skip it, and definitely wouldn’t pay for the entrance to the Grand Canyon at all. I’m not saying that it’s not worth seeing it here, it’s good that the Indians are taking care of it, and it’s normal that they are inventing attractions and attracting tourists, we thought about paying for a long time, even if I knew that it’s again just about business. But in the end, we were completely discouraged, mainly by the fact that we wouldn’t have much time anyway, since it was already around five in the afternoon. It still occurred to us that we can camp somewhere nearby and pay for this entrance tomorrow, which would mean that we have the whole day for the tour. But that would mean that we have to completely skip the southern edge of the Grand Canyon, which was out of the question. We decided to return to the road and get as close as possible to the southern edge (South Rim) of the Grand Canyon, which we knew was the most visited, and our card is enough for the entrance, so we don’t have to pay anything extra.

It looked like a peaceful two-day tour of the Grand Canyon, but again, it changed into a chase with time for us. We were in a hurry, because although we found out that there are enough camping options before the southern entrance to the national park, it was 242 miles (390 km) and 4 hours of driving away from us, and we wanted to arrive so that we would at least see something. And we definitely wanted to sleep only in these places, so that we wouldn’t have to waste time travelling on the second day. We arrived only after dark, but at the branded Ten-X camp, which was great. Around the huge camp, there is an illuminated circular road, from which you can go down to supposedly up to 70 sites. Even though there are so many of them, we had quite a problem finding something free. In the end, we managed to do it, and we were very satisfied with the environment and equipment of the camp. There were several toilets, drinking water and at each site wooden seating, a fireplace and a grill, for which, however, we were not prepared, and we didn’t have anything to start a fire or anything to roast if necessary. Only one thing didn’t suit us, that the camp costs $10. We automatically didn’t deal with this somehow, since it was already dark, and we didn’t attract attention with the fire either, because there was no freely thrown wood here at all. We calmly pitched the tent under a tree, on which I hung a light bulb, and it illuminated our site. But the morning wasn’t so calm. Quite early, we heard a quad bike circling around the camp, and we figured out that it was checking the individual sites and the payment of the fee. In the first round, the guard was probably only finding out the occupation of the sites, and by the time he was heading to us, maybe for the second time, he didn’t find us there anymore. While packing, I was cursing that we are such cheapskates that we are not even willing to pay $10, and now we are stressing. Fortunately, it turned out well again, but I just didn’t manage to take a single photo. We told ourselves that we would come back here even today evening, a little earlier, pay politely, and we will be prepared to start a fire and grill, and we will at least feel a bit better. After all, it also had one advantage: we got to Grand Canyon National Park quite early in the morning.

Grand Canyon

The Grand Canyon is really magnificent, incredible and beautiful. At first, we just went over this place and took a number of similar-looking photos. With its area and mainly length of 446 kilometres, its size cannot be captured even with the eyes and realised, even when a person is standing there and especially not from photos. It’s also difficult to describe this valley in the middle of colourful rocks, at the bottom of which flows the dirty brown Colorado River. Here you simply have to come, stand on the edge above the canyon and perceive the whole thing with your senses.

The South Rim Grand Canyon has a lot of views, most of which can be reached by shuttle service. So we moved up and down there and were always amazed by what we were seeing. It was great, it’s just that after a while, it was always about the same thing. There is something to do there, from helicopter flights over the canyon, to hiking on mostly quite difficult trails, to rafting or boating. But again, you would have to spend a lot of money and have more time. We decided to go to the nearest city for a late lunch, buy something for the evening and then come back, but already by car and to other places, towards Desert View, where I was mainly looking forward to the setting sun. I was a little unsure how to combine the sunset over the Grand Canyon and at the same time be in the camp still in daylight. But since it was getting dark very early, we changed it from daylight to at least not complete darkness, because we already knew the camp and took it as a certainty. So it was, and after a few stops at the viewpoints, we quite enjoyed it, and in the end, with a view of the setting sun, we were already sitting in the car and slowly saying goodbye to the Grand Canyon.

The Grand Canyon was not intended as the final destination of our trip around America, but it turned out that it was such a symbolic ending to exploring American beauty and nature. And we couldn’t have wished for a better place for this farewell. When we stood there at sunset above the amazing natural scenery and remembered all we had seen, experienced, what and how much we had passed through, we had incredible feelings of happiness and satisfaction. Even after less than two months on the road in the USA, I was still realising how I am fulfilling my dreams here and how the whole thing still fills me.

September 3-4, Grand Canyon – Los Angeles

When leaving Grand Canyon, we managed to buy a few pieces of wood in one of the shops to start a fire in the camp we were heading to. We managed to arrive while it was still dusk, but to our great disappointment, a sign was waiting for us in front of the camp that it was full. At first, we were surprised that such a huge camp managed to fill up completely, but when we realized that it was Saturday and how many people were actually in the national park today and what a problem there was with parking, we were again only left to praise the American love for camping and just hope that we would sleep in a tent at all today. We also realised that we could have easily occupied some spot in the camp in advance, and now an already pitched tent could have been waiting for us. It’s a pity that it was supposed to be our last night in the wild; next time we will definitely do it this way. The only positive thing was that there were supposed to be several other primitive camps in the area, and we even found instructions on how to get there directly here on a few of them. We found the nearest camp quite quickly, but there were several roads there and as we set out on one of them, leading deep into the forest, and passed the individual sites, at each one we were met with the announcement that it was already occupied. We would have been able to fit easily everywhere with our, by American standards, small car and small tent, but it would be like entering someone’s imaginary private land. Maybe some people wouldn’t mind, but others maybe would, and so we wandered there for over half an hour and searched in vain for a free spot. In the end, we decided to return and stay quite close to the main road, where, although the site was not marked, there was enough space for a car and a tent, and the fireplace indicated that we were not the first ones who spent the night here. The light of the fire of our tent neighbours provided a sense of security in the foreseeable distance, and on the other side, again from time to time, the sound of a passing car. I started a fire as well, probably even sooner than I pitched the tent, because on one hand I had that bought wood and there was no problem to also collect wood from the ground. We sat outside for quite a long time in the evening, since we had enough to drink, eat, and it was our last night in this style, so we tried to enjoy it.

In the morning, we set out for our very last destination, Los Angeles. The last dose of 500 miles (805 km) and seven and a half hours of driving was waiting for us. I absolutely didn’t care that we would kill almost the whole day with this transfer, and immensely enjoyed again the passages through pieces of Route 66 and overall the way to the west. We also made a number of stops, during which it occurred to us to try to return some already unneeded things to Walmart. So we started with a sleeping bag, which was in pretty good condition, just had a torn cover. We had been saving the receipts for similar things, and so the return of the sleeping bag went completely smoothly. It emboldened us to attempt to return the tent, which we originally wanted to leave somewhere by the container, but since we were still within the period when we could return it, and simply Walmart’s policy is such that they should take it, we wanted to try it. But it was a terrible embarrassment, and even now I am ashamed of the whole thing when I remember it. I had to wait in line for quite a long time and all the time I was thinking about it, but I didn’t change my mind and in the end I got to the counter, where when I put out that worn, dirty and smelly tent, in which we had slept for a total of 12 nights, I started to feel like the last cheapskate. The saleswoman barely touched the tent; it was clear that she didn’t like it at all, and she asked me for the reason for the return, to which I replied that it was leaking, and I was not satisfied with it. So I got the money back, and despite everything, this is also one of the possibilities of how you can save, just thanks to the policy of the huge retail chain. It’s probably quite cheeky to return a worn tent, but otherwise, I have no problem taking advantage of the possibility to borrow something for free again.

In LA, we had already booked accommodation in advance, from Las Vegas, through Airbnb, for the last three nights in the USA. After we had an unpleasant experience here on the way from the airport, I was quite careful about what neighbourhood the accommodation would be in. In the end, when considering how huge Los Angeles is and what we actually mainly want to do there, I decided to look for accommodation a little outside, in the northwest, where it will hopefully be okay, and we will hopefully also avoid traffic jams when transporting to the places of interest to us, which are certainly more accessible from there than from somewhere south of LA.

Los Angeles

We had already been in Los Angeles, but apart from Santa Monica, we had seen almost nothing, and so we still had quite a lot of plans. Among other things, we also wanted to swim, finally, after exactly a month, in the ocean and even for the first time in my life in the Pacific, since so far we had not succeeded on the west coast of the USA, also due to certain circumstances.

The first places we set out to look at were Beverly Hills and Hollywood. First, we went to the quasi-official view of LA and the Hollywood sign on the hill at Griffith Observatory. Lenka had already been here two years ago and said that the observatory itself is great, but now it was closed, and the views from there disappointed me a little. Downtown LA was sunk into fog and could hardly be seen, and the Hollywood sign was terribly far and tiny. We were only there for a while, and since I wasn’t satisfied with what I saw, I started looking for other places on the map where the view might be better. We headed straight under the hill with the Hollywood sign, and it was much better. Not only that, but we also went out into the streets of Hollywood, where I was a bit surprised that there aren’t a lot of similarly-minded tourists here, but even those few wandering cars that we met there are probably enough to bother the locals. And truthfully, I don’t even blame them when foreigners come there every day and block incredibly narrow alleys winding through the houses up the hill with absolutely no possibility to park. In front of one of the houses, a local managed to tell us that if we continue, the police will stop us. And we actually met the police later, but they only turned us back. More police patrols were there, another told us to go back under the hill, park there and return on foot, which was not very tempting. But then I started to realise how stupid it is of us to bother them and that this place really couldn’t handle more tourist traffic, and it is good to take measures to keep foreigners from going there. On the other hand, thanks to my curiosity, we again had some more experience, and we drove the streets where the Hollywood sign was already terribly close to us, and we saw how huge it is.

In the Beverly Hills area, we didn’t have anything specific to go for, we just went to drove around the streets and tried to capture the atmosphere of a lucrative area where many famous people live. The streets surrounded by palm trees were perfectly maintained, clean and incredibly beautiful, but we didn’t have much opportunity to see more, since the plots and houses were always behind high walls, which is quite unusual, since elsewhere Americans don’t have fences around houses. After a while, we found out that there is actually nothing to do there, and we headed straight across LA, which took us over an hour, and we passed probably also a hundred kilometres south to Newport Beach, where we spent the evening on Newport Beach Pier and in its vicinity. On the way back north, we planned to visit the illuminated Downtown, because of at least to take a few photos, since otherwise there is nothing to do there. We met a group of Czech women there, with whom we chatted a bit and helped them take a picture.

The next day in LA, and the last day of our trip, was supposed to be really relaxing. Since we lived near Malibu, we first went there, drove around a bit by car and also went to one of the beaches, where it was quite cold, however. Later, we moved to Venice Beach, where we were until dusk, and for us, it was definitely the best thing we saw and experienced in LA. A beautiful beach, even though even here the water was a bit cold, not as we were used to from Florida, and even the air temperature was not always as we expected, but despite that, we sunbathed for a while and were finally in the Pacific Ocean. Then we strolled along the promenade, which finally had that right Los Angeles vibe and atmosphere that we were looking for here. Where there were no shops and restaurants, there were apartments or hotels just a few meters from the beach, and you could easily see into them. I really liked this style of living, and one day I will hopefully manage to stay in some such apartment, maybe even through Airbnb, who knows. There were several attractions directly on the beach, some skate parks and gyms, but also quite a lot of homeless people and hippies, who had their small tent city here. I had mixed feelings about that, and I don’t know how it is with safety, because after all that happened to us in California, I was looking at everything a bit suspiciously. We also walked through the Venice Canals, where it was different and like an architectural catalogue. Incredibly beautiful houses with maintained small yards, where the most common flower was a black rose. Some houses had the lower floor, and therefore the living room and the kitchen, completely open, without any doors, windows or walls; it would be enough to climb over the fence and sit down on the couch. It was so beautiful that I sometimes doubted whether any people actually live here. We enjoyed the sunset again from the pier, where we concluded that if there were only one place to see again in LA, it would definitely be Venice Beach.

September 7–8, Los Angeles – Moscow – Budapest

We woke up to the last morning in the USA. There was nothing on the plan anymore, just to get to the airport, but still in the American way. We were driving a completely new car to the rental, the older version of which we rented there exactly a month ago. We still had a bit of worry whether the broken glass or the car exchange would be dealt with additionally. Other unresolved things were the unpaid toll for crossing the bridge in San Francisco and the surcharge for the fact that we had an SUV and not a car of our class, which we had agreed on in advance to be $4 per day. And we were also worried about how we would get to the airport, because they certainly wouldn’t remember the verbal promise that they would drive us there. At the settlement and issuance of the blocks, showing how much would be withdrawn from my account, none of these things were mentioned, and they withdrew approximately what they should have. I was most pleased that those $4 per day were somehow forgotten, which were written in the old contract only by hand, and when they issued us a new contract in San Francisco, they of course didn’t write it there again. The fact that the insurance event would no longer be dealt with on my part occurred to me immediately when I found out that they didn’t even know that something had happened and that I had brought them a different car. They only found out about it from my story, so they didn’t even have anything in the system, and the employee at the airport in SF dealt with it alone, and I really have no idea whether it went through my insurance at all. The toll for the bridge with the fine was withdrawn additionally three times, and it seems to me that also a bit more than it should, about $20 in total, but it didn’t matter to me anymore. The last thing remained: transportation to the airport. When I mentioned it to them, they only told me that if I want, I can take the car myself and return it to the branch at the airport myself, that there is no problem. I was surprised about it, but in the end, after asking for confirmation that I would not pay anything extra for returning the car at the airport, in the form of manually writing this thing into the contract, I agreed to it. We loaded all the things back into the car, I unpacked and plugged in the GPS again, and we were off again. Only for a short time, only to the airport, which was close. Everything turned out well, and there I said goodbye to the car for good and to the American roads, which I will be missing very much.

The flight itself with the Russian company Aeroflot lasted almost 12 hours, and due to the time shift, we lost almost the whole day. We were taking off at 4:55 PM from LA and landed in Moscow the next day at 2:35 PM. Fortunately, with this flight that was half as long as we had towards the USA from Central Europe, the services were much better, and we were quite satisfied. During such a long flight, I managed to watch 4 movies and also doze off a bit. Of course, we also got some food.

I have never been to Russia before, and visiting the airport certainly doesn’t count, but even so, while walking around the airport shops and buying cheap vodka and later drinking beer in one of the airport bars, I still felt the traveller’s charm. That passed only on the flight to Budapest with the same company, where we knew that our fathers would be waiting for us and that we were almost home. We flew to Budapest at 7:40 PM, and that was the official end of our great American trip.

I think that overall, this journey of ours turned out quite well. Even though it was quite difficult, I know that I would easily give it again like this, because that’s exactly the kind of travelling that I enjoy, travelling where the journey is the goal. Thanks to this trip, I know what I would maybe skip next time, what I would maybe add, and I believe that I will still manage to have several similar trips around the USA again, where there is still enough to admire and discover. Maybe everything didn’t work out according to plan, maybe somewhere the planning completely failed, or it was thwarted by the weather or a break-in to the car, but overall I am satisfied with how we managed the whole thing and even with such a low budget as we had, we even had a few hundred dollars left. And what is most important, this journey gave me a lot into life and is very important in building my personality and realising what is the most important thing in life for me and what happiness means to me.