While traveling through the National Parks in the Southwest, along the West Coast and in San Francisco people I stepped into, asked me “what was the best place you’ve been so far?”

Well, one could mean the question shouldn’t be too difficult to answer, just say something like ‘I loved Canyonlands NP or Acadia NP or probably Las Vegas, Chicago and so on‘. OK, I guess nobody expected me to say: the Midwest with all the endless corn and soybean fields and huge cattle farms. 😉

As I know what people meant, when they asked me, my reply was mostly ‘that’s not easy to answer, cause every place is different and beautiful for its own reason’.

Most of you know that I’m a Mountain-person, so I loved driving over the Rocky Mountains, even when it was snowing, and Yosemite has been a highlight at the end of my travel too.
The Canyon plateau is fascinating for my European eyes, and then there is the ocean with all the beautiful kinds of blue, the open view into the endless sea, the woodland with its hidden animals and colours of the foliage, and even the desert with all the shades of brown, captured my eyes.

The best answer eventually should be: there is no such place as the ‘best’, diversity is what makes it special!

But if I would take the question literally and give an honest answer (I did once, just to watch the reaction, it was priceless ;-)), the reply would be Racine County, Wisconsin? !

And there are some other places where I had the chance to ran into open-minded, interested, nice, warm-hearted, lovely people, as in Santa Barbara or Monterey. Even random talks on campgrounds, in National Parks, on the Airport Shuttle or the train in San Francisco will accompany me for much longer and might have more impact in my life, than a breathtaking sunset at Arches NP!

Today I can confess I valued every minute of my adventure!

The reason I can say that now easily, is that I have not had any bad experience during this eight weeks travel through the US.
Sure, there had been (many) people not talking with me and there had been some ‘lonely moments’, someone bumped into my rental car and cities are definitely not made for single female travelers, but these are just unimportant trivialities, not even leaving a glimpse of clouds.

What I want to tell you here, is not that I am blind on the other eye, but that I’ve seen the good parts, met the nice people and was more than once taken by surprise by the hospitality and frankness of some special ones.

Yeah, I know, I’m the lucky girl?

So, thanks to everyone involved!“