Californian landing

Here we are on the plane, getting close to land to San Francisco, and I should be thinking that our trip has finally started. But no, I just watched the kitesurfers along the bay riding, and feeling that I was just landing to one of my numerous "home" in the world. I mean somewhere where I've been often enough to feel like home. Anyway, it was only the beginning of our adventures, no more Europe for a certain time, let's get this rental car and start the road trip!

The rental car, yes I can call it "The" car we finally got after 3 hours at the counter... The guy tried to persuade us to get another type of car because in my opinion I did the mistake telling him we will sleep in the car. So we saw different car and being told that there wasn't any Chevy Tahoe left at the airport (apparently). But after discussions, and him getting tired I guess as well, we got The car and. He made us pay for some extra stuff which were included in our booking since he wanted to go home and not to redo all the typing in his computer. He even left us with the keys of another car we said we didn't want. So yeah, after 3 hours we were finally getting a large SUV as we wanted, to have space in the trunk to sleep and have our bags, even though it will consume quite a lot of fuel. We ended up with a Ford Expedition. After an incredibly "hard to focus" drive to Truckee, with my eyes and brain trying to go to sleep due to the jetlag and 2 previous short nights, and not much sleep on the plane, we were welcome by Greg who stood late for us. Finally, we could sleep, thank you!

We spent 3 days in Truckee, to go around Lake Tahoe, chill out on Donner lake, do some shopping in Reno for the road trip and to see some friends, or to surprise others who weren't aware of our visit. We tried hard to get a SIM card that we could also use as a 3G hotspot during the road trip, but there's simply nothing to do both in the US. And the 3G cards are kind of expensive. Eventually we decided not to get one, and only use a few times our Swiss phones, and the free wifi we will find along the road.

Since we had in mind to get a Chevy Tahoe, we tried to exchange our car at Reno airport, but the guy had only a simple truck left for the night... No luck for now! The reason is that the back seats don't fold as flat in the Expedition as in the Tahoe... But we'll try at another location to exchange it.

Going board paddling on Donner lake

Emerald bay, Lake Tahoe, CA
Driving around in our SUV...
Erin, William and little Layne.