West

Now we have to go west and cross the Sierra Nevada, the longest and highest mountain range of the USA. Our destination is Sacramento, the capital of the state of California. Around the state capitol and especially in Old Sacramento there is a lot to see. Near San Rafael, the next stop on our route, you will find Muir Woods National Monument with 800 years old sequoias and the Point Reyes National Seashore, a bird paradise right on the Pacific Ocean.

On US 101 we roll over the most famous bridge in the world, the Golden Gate Bridge. This time we skip San Francisco; instead we drive directly to Silicon Valley and visit the headquarters of Facebook, Google and Apple as well as the renowned Stanford University.

Next to Santa Cruz begins the 17-Mile-Drive. The toll road starts in Monterey and ends in Carmel-By-The-Sea. We follow US 1 along Big Sur, a coastal section of approximately 100 km. The Bixby Creek Bridge is impressive, framed by one or two state parks. The Piedras Blancas Elephant Seal Rookery is an absolute highlight. Depending on the season, up to 15.000 (!) elephant seals populate the beach close to each other. It is an incredible sight! What follows is Hearst Castle, the fairytale castle of former newspaper tycoon William Randolph Hearst. As a touristic counterpart to the hype about Hearst Castle, our next travel tip is Nit Wit Ridge, an enchanted house built from all kinds of waste materials.

At Arroyo Grande we leave the coast and head again for the Sierra Nevada. Our destinations are the three national parks Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia, where we will spend the next four days. To make our round trip a full circle, we travel around the southern part of the Sierra Nevada now. If you are interested in raisins, you can visit the Sun-Maid raisin factory in Kingsburg. Bakersfield is the center of country music in the west; fans of this music style will visit Buck Owens Crystal Palace.

The detour to Edwards Air Force Base is only worthwhile for aviation enthusiasts; more exciting in any case is the visitor center of the Rio Tinto Borax Mine in Boron. Here, half of the borax needed worldwide is mined. The last highlight is the Hoover Dam, whose gigantic wall dams up the Colorado River right on the border between Arizona and Nevada. The result is Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States. From here it is only a one hour’s drive back to Las Vegas.