NOV 21, 2015 –  On the way to Bryce Canyon, I passed Red Canyon, which was too amazing to skip. I walked through some of the rock pillars, or hoodoos as they are called. Many of them reminded me of something, so the photos are captioned with how I would name them. By sunset I was at Bryce Canyon and got a first glimpse of the breathtaking rock formations there.

NOV 20, 2015 – I left Las Vegas with lots of groceries and set up camp in Zion National Park. It turned out my Ford Focus had enough space in the back for my camping mattress, so I didn’t bother setting up my tent as long as I was with the car. In one day, I hiked the somewhat challenging trail to Angels Landing, then ran to the Emerald Pools, and went up to Observation Point for sunset, hiking back down in the moonlight. The next morning I drove towards Bryce Canyon and took some more pictures along the way.

NOV 19, 2015 – Since I had decided to start my roadtrip through US National Parks in Las Vegas, I felt like I almost had to spend a night there. The city is a caricature of the American mentality – everything is possible if you got the cash, bright and shiny is beautiful, and fake is okay. In Vegas, you’ll find lots of fake boobs, lips, and people in general, but also a fake Eiffel tower, fake streets of Paris, and a fake statue of liberty. And many shopping malls have a fake sky to suppress people’s urge to go outside (and stop spending money). I stayed at Stratosphere hotel, which saved me the entrance fee to the city’s highest observation tower. In the evening I went to see Cirque du Soleil’s Zarkana show, which was a very impressive mix of many art forms: Apart from good circus artists and funny clowns, the show featured crazy stage settings and good live music, and everything was blended together to feel like a coherent narrative. Later that night, I walked through the Strip and visited the Mandalay Bay hotel, which had a good rock cover band playing. Overall, I didn’t notice that it was a Wednesday night – Las Vegas is always alive. Nevertheless, I was glad to leave it the next day, and not have to walk through mazes of slot machines and shops any longer. (As a sidenote, my total investment in gambling amounts to $2.)

NOV 18, 2015 – After a relaxed night on the Amtrak train, I arrived in San Francisco on a Saturday morning. I met my friends Andres and Müge there, and stayed in their flat on Stanford campus for four nights. Having been in San Francisco before, I was happy to discover some areas less crowded with tourists, such as Mission district. I hadn’t visited Alcatraz before, though, so I went there with Müge on a weekday. The prison island is managed by the National Park Service, which does a good job at preserving it and making its history accessible to visitors. From my visit to San Francisco in 2011, I remembered the impressive Chinatown, which is home to the largest Chinese community outside Asia. There are entire streets full of Chinese grocery stores, butchers, bakeries and the like. Some of the employees there hardly speak English, which can make shopping in this Chinatown feel like a trip to another continent. On the other hand, there are also streets with souvenir shops and Chinese arts & crafts stores, which clearly target the tourists. Of course I also visited the campus of Stanford University, whose architecture and abundant palm trees give it a Mediterranean feel.

NOV 13, 2015 – I spent four days in Portland and stayed with Matty and Kimberly, whom I met on my US roadtrip in spring 2011. Portland was interesting to me because of its open-minded people, high density of microbreweries, large cultural offering, and because it is reportedly a hipster capital. The city is a lot smaller than Boston, but nevertheless I was glad to have a bicycle because most of the interesting places are not in the center. One of the most inspiring things is the “City Repair” movement, where people break the city anonymity by creating meeting spaces at street intersections in their neighborhood.

PS: Sorry for the late post, I had to recover some of my photos from a corrupted memory card and still have a bit of a processing backlog.

NOV 10, 2015 – The cold season has arrived in the Idaho Panhandle. I spent ten days at my friend Ryan’s house 12 miles north of Priest River, ID, and only one day was sunny. While Switzerland enjoyed uncommonly warm spring weather way into November, temperatures dropped below freezing here, but it was enjoyable nonetheless. We went hiking twice and spent the rest of the time cutting and splitting firewood, starting to insulate Ryan’s house, cooking, baking, eating and drinking. I also tried out the new running shoes I had acquired in Seattle – the area is full of nice forests and trails. My train to Portland was reportedly delayed 13 hours, so I decided to take a flight from Spokane instead. In the meantime, I made more detailed plans for next week’s National Park roadtrip, which I am really looking forward to.

OCT 30, 2015 – I visited my friend Sonia in Seattle for a few days. We went hiking on the Olympic Peninsula for three days, and were relatively lucky with the weather – it was raining less than half of the time. At the end of a two-day loop hike near Elwha, leading us to Happy Lake and Boulder Lake, we came to a group of hot springs. Taking a bath in the natural stone pools was a great reward, and it felt special to walk around in the autumn landscape in a swimsuit to look for more hot ponds along the trail. We then drove to a campground near Forks and hiked along Bogachiel River the following day. The forest there was much more humid and full of chanterelle mushrooms, of which we picked a pound – luckily this area is not part of the National Park. On the way back to Seattle, we visited Port Townsend, a hippie town along the coast with a nice historical center. I then spent the last three days in Seattle and went to visit Marisa and Sam, whom I hadn’t seen since my last US trip. Today I am heading to Sandpoint, Idaho, where I will do more hiking with my friend Ryan. I probably won’t have any Internet access in the next ten days, so please be patient for the next update!

OCT 24, 2015 – Milwaukee was really just an intermediate stop – part of the reason to go there was that I could save $100 on my flight to Seattle that way. But I was very lucky to be hosted by a guy named Jim there. I had decided ahead of time to make my first Raclette of the season at Jim’s house, so I bought cheese and other ingredients in Chicago before leaving. Once I found a way to melt the cheese without a raclette grill (a toaster oven worked fine), we were both very happy with this Swiss dinner. Jim then showed me some of Milwaukee’s nicest bars: Patty’s Irish Pub, with a lovely interior full of little details to discover, a set of old church windows, bathtubs with bronze figures in them, Irish live music, et cetera. And a German-themed bar, again with a stunning interior, and with a larger selection of German beers than the “Bavaria” in Lausanne. Apparently even German visitors were impressed! After a good night’s sleep, we spent most of the Saturday in the city, discovering the Public Market, the riverside walk, and a sausage factory, among other things. When Jim dropped me off at the airport in the afternoon, I felt very satisfied with my short visit to the state of Wisconsin, and grateful for the great hospitality that I had encountered.

OCT 23, 2015 – I was surprised by the warm weather when I arrived in Chicago. Even though it is called the Windy City, it was much warmer than Detroit, where I had needed my jacket most of the time. When I walked through Millennium Park and looked back at the skyline, I got my first impression of Chicago’s amazing architecture. The park itself played an important role in that, with its art installations that interact with the skyline, and a climbing wall that fits perfectly into it. I spent a lot of time walking and biking around, and enjoying the look and feel of the city. Since evenings with my host and with other CouchSurfers had kept me away from Detroit’s nightlife, I wanted to make up for that, so I went to see a theater show and a musical, both of which I liked. The “Million Dollar Quartet” with impersonators of Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins was the shorter of the two shows, but probably the more memorable one. After the theater night, I went to Kingston Mines, where good blues music was played even on a weekday. My CouchSurfing host worked late, so I was still able to spend time with him after these cultural events. All in all, it was an intense couple of days, but I left with a very positive impression of a city that I hadn’t known what to expect of.

OCT 20, 2015 – I spent three nights in Detroit, which is often called the “Motor City” or simply “Motown”. This poorest city of the US was interesting in many ways: Its downtown has a few spectacular buildings like the Renaissance Center, which is General Motors’ global headquarters. The city has one of North America’s largest theater districts and a remarkable nightlife. And because the crisis has taken away many jobs, there are probably more grassroots movements, citizen initiatives, and alternative life approaches than in any other American city. I went to visit a few interesting places by bike: The Heidelberg project, a big art installation around abandoned and destroyed houses; the Universe Building, a community center, home and guesthouse in a poor neighborhood, and the Golden Gate project, which occupies, renovates and decorates a number of abandoned houses and runs alternative businesses such as a bike shop. One of the biggest issues for me as a visitor was how to get around – it might have been worthwhile to rent a car, but instead I used the infrequent buses, a rental bike, and Uber cars. It was my first time using Uber, and I was somehow forced into it because I went to a CouchSurfing potluck one evening, and suddenly realized it was 50km away without any public transit option to get there. The quality of service convinced me, and while I do still have some doubts about the ethics of Uber’s business model, I chatted with my drivers about it and got the impression that they get paid enough to be able to work full-time for Uber.