West Coast Road Trip – Fall 2023

Where the Pacific and the Trees Make You Small

San Francisco → Big Sur → Yosemite → Sequoia → Los Angeles → Las Vegas → Grand Canyon → Albuquerque · September–October 2023 · approx. 3,500 mi / 5,600 km

Some trips you plan. And then there are trips that shape you.

Our first major USA journey begins in San Francisco — with jet lag, a rental car, the smell of salt water, and the certainty that over the next two weeks we'll see more than words can hold.

San Francisco greets us with fog, steep streets, and an Alcatraz tour that turns out to be quieter, heavier, and more moving than expected. We drive across the Golden Gate Bridge and pay eight dollars in toll. What we get in return is priceless: that moment when red steel beams fly past on both sides and the Pacific disappears in every direction.

Big Sur arrives like a promise the coastline makes to you. Highway 1 climbs and plunges. Cliffs drop into the sea. We stop at every viewpoint — and then one more. Neptunes Net, a roadhouse somewhere between LA and the edge of the world, makes us happy with a film-location breakfast: the restaurant from Fast & Furious 1, proper picnic vibes, bikers, views, coffee.

Yosemite rolls over you. That's the right word. We park, get out, look up — and go quiet. Half Dome. Tunnel View. Waterfalls that are already quieter in October but still speak. We hike until our legs ask when it ends. The answer: after the next viewpoint.

In Sequoia National Park we stand in front of the General Sherman Tree — the largest living thing on Earth by volume — and understand that size can take on a completely different dimension. These trees are so old that European history fits inside their rings.

Los Angeles is loud, vast, beautiful, and overwhelming. Universal Studios with the Harry Potter tour — Butterbeer, the Hogwarts Express, the full dose of childhood memory. The Griffith Observatory at night. Hollywood Boulevard, which is less glamorous than expected and still somehow pulls. And Willow Springs Raceway, because some things you just have to do.

Then the desert. Joshua Tree, Calico Ghost Town, the Mojave — the landscape grows wider, emptier, warmer. Las Vegas arrives as contrast: lights, noise, Fremont Street, a shooting range. We fire weapons we know from films and leave early the next morning before the city keeps us.

The Grand Canyon is the only moment on this trip where neither of us speaks. Horseshoe Bend. Antelope Canyon, narrow as a breath. Monument Valley in the last light. These images sit deeper than any description reaches.

Albuquerque is our final stop — Breaking Bad pilgrimage included. We drive the film locations, recognize corners, marvel at how real it all feels. Then the flight home. The suitcases are heavier than on the way out. Our eyes too.