California & Nevada 2021

Los Angeles

We had been wanting to take a month of holidays in December 20 and travel to Australia, still hoping that would be possible in 2021. Then we thought well if Australia is closed we could go to Hawaii and when the US announced they were going to re-open in September I immediately booked everything and then Omicron hit a week before our departure. First countries were only banning South Africa but then country after country started to shut down again. We couldn't believe it and thought that's it! no more US this year! To our big surprise Biden decided otherwise and were unsure if not suddenly he changed his mind so we changed our flights and left 5 days earlier than planned. And instead of doing highway #1 we had time to visit our good friends Marji and Isa in Reno.

So we departed on December 4th from Zurich to Los Angeles. I thought to myself with the testing and thousand forms we need and OMICRON I only believe we are actually going when we are stiting on the plane or actually passed immigration in the US. But no problems at all, we were boarding that flight and off we were after 2 years to the US of A. We were standing in line for immigration for over an hour and then when it was our turn the officer asked do you have any food with you and I said yeah I think some snacks from the plane. And he goes what kind of snacks? well hmmm don't know let me check. So I found a few cereal bars, chips, chocolate and an apple. He was like you got an apple?!?! Like I had just pulled out a gun! so he calls border patrol, which got me really worried. He gives back Leilanis and Debbies passport but keeps mine, not one but two border patrol officers arrive and they escort me to baggage claim! I mean I do watch border patrol and usually it's drugs but yeah I forgot I had ONE apple, so arrest me! They checked all of our luggage and wrote down my name address and everything. Then they told me because I was honest about the apple I wouldn't be fined $500 and let me go! Stuff like this always happens to me and only to me!

We were just glad that after such long trip we were able to pick up our car, drive to our hotel and go to bed. Then of course the 9 hour jetlag woke Leilani and myself at 3.30 and we were desperately waiting for any store to open so we had something to do. Luckily, Pavillion opened at 6 a.m., so we did some early morning grocery shopping.

The first day we walked through Hollywood early in the morning and we were the only ones, there is also a really cool farmers market where we bought some goodies and then went to the Grove Shopping center. At the Grove is another farmers market with a lot of food stalls, great options for lunch.

hello Iceland

jetlag shopping 6 a.m., we’ve been up since 3.30 and desperately waiting for the store to open

cuties

Hollywood

mamas girl

@ the Grove

Melrose Trading Post

LA by night

On the second day in LA we tried to drive up to the Hollywood sign but Leilani all of sudden got really sick and vomitted all over the car, it wouldn't stop so it was obvious that she had some kind of stomach flu or ate something that didn't agree with her. poor thing. So we took it easy and stayed in the motel so she could sleep it off. However, she was sick and didn't eat anything for 4 more days until she was better.

Bishop

From LA we drove through the desert to Bishop, but stopped in Alabama Hills, which is nestled in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada just west of Lone Pine, is one of Hollywood's favorite filming locations especially for Western movies. It was such a great place to visit because we were the only people for miles and miles and could enjoy it just for ourselves. I guess that's one of the upsides of this whole pandemic. I've been to places in the past couple of years that usually are super crowded like Chichen Itza in Mexico, but you get to take a picture with you and the pyramid. When is this ever gonna happen again.

After lunch we headed to Bishop, the City of Bishop is a small town in the spectacular Eastern Sierra region of California. The Eastern Sierra region is about the middle of the state along its eastern border with Nevada and about halfway between Yosemite and Death Valley National Parks. We strolled around town, went bowling and had lunch at a Texas BBQ, keeping in mind that we were not in Texas but still in California lol

Alabama Hills, famous set for western movies

bowling in Bishop

picasso on the road

brrr it’s cold in California

Bodie Ghost Town

Our friend Marji suggested that from Bishop to Reno take a little detour to Bodie State Historic Park. Bodie is a ghost town frozen in time. Today it looks much the same as it did over 141 years ago when the last residents left. To preserve the ghost town atmosphere, there are no commercial facilities at Bodie, such as food or gasoline. It is already creepy when you leave the main road and drive through dirt road 13 miles into nowhere, then we also realized that we were low on gas, if that's not what horror movies are made of haha. When we got there we were actually the only people visiting at that time. There is always some rangers working, to protect and preserve the ghost town but other than that we walked down the deserted streets of a town that once was a bustling gold mining town. It started with about 20 miners and grew to an estimated 10,000 people by 1880! By then, the town of Bodie bustled with families, robbers, miners, store owners, gunfighters, prostitutes, and people from every country in the world. Definitely one of the most special places we had visited so far.

Bodie, once a thriving gold mining town in the 1860’s, since then a ghost town frozen in time

soo special

the old school

Reno

Luckily we had enough gas to get out of the state park and drive to the next gas station which was about 30 miles away. We were super excited when we arrived at our friends house in Reno. Marji and Isa became really good friends over the years, they also came to our wedding in Tuscany and always come to stay in Switzerland for a couple of months in summer because Isa is originally from Switzerland. We stayed with them for four nights and explored Reno and its surroundings, did a lot of shopping and went to the movies. Marji has a big, beautiful cat named Thibaud which became Leilani’s new best friend.

I’ve heard so much of Lake Tahoe and this had been on my bucket list of the places to visit in the US. So the next day Marji took us there. The drive is so beautiful, driving from the desert through Tahoe National Forest. The lake ranks one of the most beautiful lakes in the U.S. and in summer the water is turquoise, an all-around stunning place and from dramatic lakefront estates to elegant ski cabins you can rent anything.

visiting dear friends in Reno and Lani found a new buddy Thibaud

Reno

shopping in the States be like...

and like...

gotta love American movie theatre

Virginia City

Roughly 20 miles southeast of Reno lies a little nugget of history In Virginia City. Viginia City is an old west town that's famous for 1859's Comstock Lode silver ore discovery. In 1859, miners, suppliers, businessmen, deep-pocketed investors, and other fortune-seekers followed news of what could be (and was) the greatest discovery of silver ore in American history, and flooded to the Virginia Range from San Francisco, all over the American West, and world. booming the settlement of Virginia City into existence, practically overnight.

The success of the mind-bogglingly large “Comstock Lode” shaped the town into a bustling, rough-and-tumble mining center that overflowed with unimaginable wealth and prosperity, rocketing Nevada Territory into statehood, and earning Nevada their famous nickname: the Silver State.

If you are lucky you will see wild horses on the way. The Virginia Range is home to approximately 2,000 wild horses.

San Francisco

Then it was time to say goodbye to our friends and the State of Nevada as we made our way to San Francisco. The drive from San Francisco to Reno is approximately 218 miles and it took us about 4.5 hours with traffic and a stop for lunch at Taco Bell 😊 Just before the Golden Gate Bridge we exited so we could take pictures of the bridge and we were so lucky because the sun was shining, no clouds and especially no fog was covering the bridge.

The tricky part now was checking into the Union Hotel at Union Square which was right downtown but still having the car that we had to return a few blocks from there. So of course we couldn’t park in front of the hotel, so we had to go to a parking garage, get all of our trillion luggage to the hotel, then I went back and had to make my way through rush hour and one-way streets to Thrifty, just making it in time before they closed. I was absolutely loving our hotel, we “only” paid $130 for the night but it was right downtown, spacious, clean and quiet rooms. With the weather on the other hand we were not as lucky, it just poured down every day we were in San Fran so we didn’t do as much of sightseeing as we planned to do. Luckily we were here a few years ago.

The Golden Gate Bridge without fog

glad to be back in this awesome city

room view

Union Square

Chinatown

the firefighters in San Francisco are super nuce! she got a hat and t-shirt for X-Mas and could sit in the truck

next stop: Maui, Hawaii

After three nights it was time to leave California and fly to Hawaii so we called a taxi which didn’t show up for more than an hour, calling an uber or lyft was also not possible because they were all busy because of the heavy rain, so I really started to freak out because I really didn’t wanna miss our flight to Maui. Then the cab eventually came and we made it on time, also getting the pre-clearance for Hawaii at the United Airlines gate went smoothly. Afterall I had prepared a whole folder with travel documents, so we were well prepared, it’s just that with Covid you just never know what’s gonna happen last minute. The flight time to Hawaii was about 5 hours and then we landed in Maui….

Los Angeles