Legend:
The red star at Denver, Colorado shows the start point of the tour.
The second red star at Las Vegas, Nevada, is the end point. Although a
bee-line from Denver to Las Vegas is not very long, with the slight
detour via Vancouver, Canada, the total distance covered was more
then 4300 miles.
The green diamonds on the map denote the National Parks and other points
of specific interest. Those which I visited on this tour are listed
here "in order of appearance".
| Rocky Mountain NP (near Denver) | diary | gallery |
| Grand Teton NP | diary | gallery |
| Yellowstone NP | diary | gallery |
| Vancouver | diary | gallery |
| Olympic Peninsula NP | diary | |
| Mt. Rainier | diary | gallery |
| Mt. St. Helens | diary | gallery |
| Oregon Dunes NP | gallery | |
| Redwoods NP | diary | |
| San Francisco | diary | gallery |
| Yosemite NP | diary | gallery |
| Death Valley NP | diary | gallery |
For those, who prefer the brief version, here a short summary of the tour:
[16-Jul-2005:] Plenty of hardship on this tour. It already started in Chicago (ORD). All connection flights to Denver (DEN) were so hopelessly overbooked for days (!) to come (I travel standby), that I decided to take a Greyhound bus to Denver instead. 25 hours on the road. And all my lugage was in Denver already ! In Denver I lost another day waiting for a Greyhound Express "Priority" package from a friend in Las Vegas, which arrived 24 hours late. Great service ... First day on the road I wanted to get through Boulder and up Boulder Canyon to Nederland (from 5200 ft to 8300 ft), but there was such a storm blowing down the Canyon that I had to abort and try again next morning. That day it worked just fine, but due to wrong information from an employee at the gas station in Nederland (Ward is not "a couple of hundred feet higher" than Nederland, but 1000 ft, and the Campground is not in Ward but yet another 1000 ft higher in a State Park) I ended up at 10.300 ft above see level, having climbed almost 5000 ft in one day, and that on the second day of the tour. I was beat ! (Next day downhill was great though.) After that I kept running into detours, State Parks with campgrounds where the actual campsites where only accessible with a 1 mile hike, impossible by bicycle and most of all: headwinds ! I have never, on no tour, experienced headwinds even remotely like this. I have been on the road for 14 days now, of those, two days were pretty much without any winds and all the remaining 12 days I had headwinds almost all day. Today they were so strong that I needed 3 hours for a 15 mile stretch of basically flat road ! [26-Jul-2005:] Meanwhile almost reached Seattle. Two more days and one more pass (4000 ft) to go. Apart from the ongoing headwinds, the tour is running smoothly, now. Just a pity that I didn't have the time to visit Glacier NP. Looking forward tremendously to finally see Yuchuan again. Regrettably, I did not have the chance to put any photos online, yet. Hopefully within the next month. [01-Sep-2005:] First time in over a month that I have on-line access and time to update the diary. Yuchuan & I have been on the road for 1600 miles together now. We had a great time in Vancouver B.C. and in Mount Rainier NP (great hike !). Along the entire Washington and Oregon coast we had almost nothing but fog - many vista points, but the all looked the same: grey - but all the inland stretches were sunny and warm. Did a two-day excursion to Crater Lake NP by rental car; the time would have been too tight to cycle there; with a nice swim in the lakes and two short hikes. We passed through the Humbold Redwoods on the Avenue of the Giants and since two days we are on Highway 1, now, just 200 miles north of San Francisco, and finally the sun is coming out even on the coast. Hopefully it will stay that way. [08-Sep-2005:] We reached San Francisco meanwhile. Regrettably the city is covered in fog and clouds - having a good time, anyway. Now heading for Alcatraz. Yuchuan returns to Berlin day after tomorrow.
