80 Days in America

Because I enjoyed my own cinema in the back of my car till late in the night, I didn’t wake up early this morning. It felt good to sleep in for a bit. After a fresh shower (which is a nice luxe these days, even if the shower is way to small for a tall Dutch guy like me) I started the day with some work that needed to be done. There was a public wifi connection at the camping place which I thankfully used. Around 01.00pm I started my journey again, but already stopped after a couple of miles because Dawn had told me to stop at the other side of the lake to get some Clam Chowder, some kind of seafood soup. I didn’t ate that before, so it was a nice new experience. On Dawns advise I also got myself some Salt water taffy, which is a nice candy that I enjoyed during the rest of the day.

After about ten miles of driving I stopped the car again, because I saw such a beautiful scenery. The place was called Goat Rock Beach, a beautiful beach surrounded by hills and big rocks. I hiked some hills, walked on the beach and met some people who told me other places in the area to see. I climbed one hill of which I was sure that not so many people would climb, it was a big adventure with a lovely view as reward. Some guy I met on the way back told me that I probably would already stop in less then ten miles again. He was right, because I crossed by another interesting place called Fort Ross, and old Russian fort at the coast, build somewhere around 1812. It was nice to look around in the fort, but then I decided that I should drive further because I didn’t make so many miles the last days. There are just so many beautiful things to see. Driving today was really enjoying to the max, just try to imagine: you’re driving on a small road, almost no other cars, sun is shining bright, you have a view over the pacific ocean, the radio on and one window open. Looking around and driving through the beautiful landscape! 😎

The rest of the journey became way more exciting than planned or wished for… I drove for many miles and saw my gas meter slowly running back. I crossed a gas station in a small village, but the gas was so ridiculously expensive that I decided that I would go to the gas station in the next town. The problem was that the gas station in the next town was closed and so was the gas station in following town. The ‘running out of gas warning light’ (is there a word for that?) turned on and I started to worry now. I drove as economical as possible and started praying a short prayer for a gas station. Suddenly there was a gas station in the middle of nowhere! And the cool thing was that the prices were very low for this area (about 50 cents per gallon lower than average), isn’t that a great miracle? 🙂 Although I was completely happy with the gas station I totally learned my lesson today to get gas earlier… At least I now know how far you can go with a full tank and how more miles you have after the gas warning. 😉

Still completely happy with the gas I found a Mc Donalds a little later and decided to go there for diner. It’s a good thing that I walk and hike so much these days, else I would already have been a big fat American… In the Mc Donalds an old scary man ask to join my table and since I was alone anyway I was ok with that. It was ok till he started telling me a lot of scary stories about the area where I’m right now. He was telling about native Americans who still eat human meat, about that the government in this area has big marihuana plantations and about how many people get killed here and more things like that.

Although I only believed the half of what he was telling, it was enough to make this little dark town look a little more scary. After I finished my meal I continued my journey, but it was getting really dark. In these areas there is no streetlight and the roads were surrounded by big trees. If that wasn’t enough yet, it also started to become really foggy. It was a perfect setting for some spooky movie. I decided that it wasn’t save enough to go further anymore, so I returned to the small town. There I found a small camping place, but also there everything was really dark. I just parked the car somewhere, hoping I wouldn’t meet any native Americans or other scary people that night.

P.S. The nice thing of you reading this blog is that you already know I’m still alive… 😉 But tomorrow you’ll read about today again.

P.S.2 Here is a short movie of me showing the west coast: