Melanie, it’s time to keep going!

With a little delay it’s now also about time to recall and say goodbye to my (our) beloved California! So even if it has already been my third time, it’s crazy that I still can’t get enough of it. And I am sure Melanie couldn’t agree more after this trip!

From working and staying at a friends place during the first week in Santa Cruz (blog post), to finally seeing some good old friends from back home again and hitting the roads of California, Nevada, Arizona and Utah in quite a maaaassive campervan with them. It’s always crazy to see how fast 4 weeks can pass if you spend and share your time with those who are important to you. Especially if the one or the other surprise was waiting along its way. But more about that in a bit!

It was exactly one month ago when everything slowly started. Melanie and I picked up Hannes and Angelina (two friends from back home) from the airport, checked-in at our Airbnb in SFC and jumped into some beautiful days of sunshine, a free airshow and some city exploration around downtown San Francisco. Two days later, we already sat in our campervan hitting down the road towards Los Angeles and the beginning of our “little roadtrip”.

So while Hannes and I slowly had to adapt to our new choice of transportation (damn – I was never so scared about driving a vehicle), Melanie and Angelina immediately started to plan our upcoming stops for the rest of the trip. From a beautiful coastline with crazy cliffs (always love you California State Route #1), nice beaches with breathtaking sunsets, to endless roads towards our first bigger destination: Los Angeles!

 

Our time in the “City of Angels” was quite packed with activities. From having fun at the world famous Universal Studios (again), walking along different beaches and piers, chilling at pools, watching a Basketball game, trying to find Jessica Alba, to just hang out at random places we always wanted to visit. But the biggest surprise (at least for me and Melanie) was still to come. As we were already about to leave off to Vegas, Hannes still had to pick up some important medicine he forgot back home that was delivered to the airport (he was speaking about that since San Francisco). So he jumped off at the arrival hall, was gone for some minutes and all of a sudden, super randomly came back with Christian, another close friend from back home. The surprise for me and Melanie couldn’t have been any bigger as we absolutely didn’t expect anything. Everyone being excited and lots of laughter involved, we weren’t 4 anylonger but now 5 hitting the road and jumping into new  adventures.

The next couple of weeks were just crazy. We drove almost 4500km, visited more than 7 national parks, went wild and lost quite some money in Vegas, had some lovely nights in our camper van playing games, having some good conversations and always ate way more food than we actually needed. So to sum things up, we really had an amazing time finally seeing some of our friends from back home again. Not only did we have a lovely road trip, but also memories we probably won’t forget in a lifetime.

Speaking about that, it is even more crazy that we now already had to say goodbye again and jump to our next destination. A destination, that is not only New York City, but also the stop where my family is visiting us right now from back home. While being super excited about that, it also makes us realize that we are now only two more countries aways from back home and that this journey is slowly but steady getting to an end.

…but hey, it’s not over yet and we still have almost two more months to go!

So hopp hopp Melanie, it is time to keep going!

Cheers,
Philipp & Melanie