Yosemite National Park
From Kings Canyon, we headed north to Yosemite National Park, located in the heart of California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains. It is one of the places we’ve most been looking forward to for the past couple of years. It is a stunning World Heritage Site known for its outstanding beauty, and I had vivid memories of the hikes I had done in the park a dozen years before. We weren’t at all disappointed – it was even better than I had remembered!

Naturalist John Muir remark.. Read More »

Death Valley, Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks:
After three weeks with Aaron in Venice Beach, we decided to rent a car to explore California. We didn’t have enough time to tour the state by bike, but we definitely didn’t want to miss out on California, either. So we compromised with a car rental, and found an unbeatable deal on the Internet.

Our first stop out of L.A. was Death Valley, a seven-hour, 300-mile car drive northeast of the city. As the drivers in L.A. were among the mo.. Read More »

Los Angeles:
Los Angeles wasn’t at all the city that I had imagined: the one of smog, multi-level bypasses, congested freeways, of wannabe actors and half-starved actresses, and stuck-up, image-conscious people. Of course, you can still find all those things in L.A., but I discovered that there was so much more to our second-largest city than that. L.A. is not like other cities; it is actually an agglomeration of over 80 different communities, each with its own distinct personality and charac.. Read More »

Venice Beach:
The United States is the last country we’ll tour by bike. Arriving in California was like starting the last leg of our trip. We were both excited. Our 8-hour flight from Tahiti wasn’t too painful and I was thrilled when my friend Aaron, whom I hadn’t seen in four years, came to pick us up at the airport so that we wouldn’t have to bike through L.A. traffic. He’s living in Venice Beach now (a neighborhood of L.A.), which is an awesome beach community just south of Santa M.. Read More »