Los Angeles

You may say now this was not a National Park tour anymore. You're right, there were no plans to visit any more national parks. For us there are almost no national parks left to be visited in the southwestern USA and California. The only ones we missed are Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Park and Mesa Verde National Park. The first two we would have visited if Tioga Road had already been closed, the latter one didn't want to show us its cliff dwellings because they were laying under snow. Anyway, Mesa Verde is situated in New Mexico and as such not in our target area of the southwest of the USA. So we decided not to go there. There would have been lots of other interesting places, but in a way we had enough of travelling around. So it was a welcome change to visit two major cities at the end, interupted by the great drive along Highway 1.

This was my second visit to Los Angeles. The first time was in 1999 when this was the final destination of the trek. That time I really disliked this city that mainly consists of concrete. That's why I had left Los Angeles the very next morning to got to San Francisco by train.

This time we had decided to stay here. We booked the Venice Beach Cotel for two nights. That's a kind of a youth hostel, situated almost directly at the beach. And now I liked Los Angeles! Venice Beach and also Santa Monica are very beautiful. You don't even need your car (our stayed in the parking lot the whole day). It's much better to rent a bike or stroll along the coastline. But that was for the second day.