From Anchorage to Ushuaia by Bike

We finished off our road trip by visiting three more national parks: Death Valley National Park, Yosemite National Park, and Sequoia National Park.

Death Valley is impressive because of its altitude: 86 meters below sea level, and entirely surrounded by a mountain chain. Inside, it’s easy to lose your bearings, and climb up and down without knowing (in a car though!). One of the valley’s most distinctive features is its inhospitable environment and extreme temperatures of up to 57°C… how typical of the US: they have to hold the record, and be the “hottest/highest/driest/coldest/lowest/wettest in the world.” If it’s not true, then they’ll settle for being the “-est in North America,” or even the “-est within the United States.” So here we learned that Death Valley wasn’t the lowest valley in the world, but in the Western hemisphere! There was a little explanation with a world map showing the US in the West and France in the middle, just to make the point clear. We wondered whether we missed something back in elementary school when we were learning about the East and West hemispheres.

To tell the truth, we found Yosemite Park distinctly underwhelming. It was pretty touristy, and seemed quite similar to Lake Tahoe and to the mountainous countryside that we’d already visited. We weren’t impressed like we had been in the other big national parks. Actually, we learned that one day isn’t enough time to visit any of these parks. In order to really appreciate their secrets, you have to take long trips in the interior, but we simply didn’t have the time.

Sequoia National Park was another park where we could have spent several days driving around. But we did get a chance to see a shelter hollowed out of a giant redwood and the biggest tree in the world ... by mass!). As we were leaving, we saw a car stopped by the side of the road with all its passengers craning their necks looking at something above their heads. We stopped and looked too, and saw what everyone was staring at: a bear cub up in a tree! It’s mother wasn’t far away, keeping a close eye. And to think that we’ve been advised that when travelling through bear country to hang all our food up in a tree!!

In Fresno, we met up with Ben and Nathan, our two friends that we had biked with for 10 days. They had biked all the way down the Pacific Coast to the Mexican border, and had only been back 3 days. We had a really nice time with them, and cooked them a real French dinner which they definitely enjoyed!

In the past 3 weeks, we’ve sat in the car for 109 hours and driven 7712 km. We got to “try out” 3 different cars and saw 9 national parks. We’re back now with Thea in Aptos, where we left our bikes. We plan to rest up this Sunday, reorganize our packs and check the bikes. We leave tomorrow morning (Monday) to take on the second half of California.

Sara & Sébastien

Our road trip is separate from the Association Planète Durable et Solidaire, but don’t worry, we are still going to post our adventures on the website to keep you all updated.