Max Nikitchenko pics

To The West, New Year Trip, 2008/09

It was a wonderful family trip, on which we embarked on the 27th of December 2008 in Las Vegas, crossed the New Year line while driving in the car in the icy Yosemite area and finished in San Francisco on January, 5 2009. We covered 2000 miles (3200 km) in 6.5 days and visited deserts, mountains, canyons, several National Parks and the Pacific ocean. That was nice! For this short trip summary, we tried to communicate the spirit of the trip in a selection of pictures and videos, we made on the way. Hopefully the cut from some 3000 photos, will not be too drastic... In any case, we certainly recommend to all the readers to repeat the journey. It's a lot of fun!

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Below is the map of the trip. Starting of course from A in Las Vegas airport (LAS) and ending in San Francisco Airport (SFO).

Day0, 2008/12/27 (/morning 28)

The first night of the trip and the next morning in Las Vegas.

Day1, 2008/12/28

After some shopping and last glances at the city we finally hit the road! Unfortunately we were well behind the schedule (which, I should admit, would be better to have more relaxed :)), and as a result could only glimpse the beauty of the Zion National park in the sunset lights and completely missed the Bryce Canyon pinnacles. Well, maybe next time... Somebody wanna go!?

It was quite a scenic road, filled with vast, dirt, but still pretty deserts, mountainous horizons, artificial oases and finally snowy top of the Zion National Park. We started in the desert Las Vegas valley, surrounded by mountains, and headed east-north toward Utah, steadily gaining altitude. While we were in the desert the road went more or less straight, but as soon as we reached the canyons land, it started meandering and spiraled up to 3000m - the highest route point in the Zion NP, in about an hour.

Unfortunately, since we were in a rush, the pictures here are predominantly made from the car. Most of them are supposed to leaf quickly through to hopefully convey some of the beauty of the area.
The pictures correspond to the stretch B-C on the maps.