Jackpot, Tag 3 + 4

"Große" Auswahl bei BK

Jackpot, Tag 2

Als der Doc sagte, ich hätte den Jackpot gezogen, glaubte ich noch, er meinte das positiv...
Dann kam der Hammer: Typ-III-Allergien gegen

• Stärke 4 von 4, "sehr stark": Kuhmilch
• Stärke 3, "stark": Sauermilchprodukte, Ziegenmilch, Schafsmilch, Gluten, Dinkel, Gerste, Hafer, Roggen, Weizen, Vollei
• Stärke 2, "deutlich": Haselnuss,
• Stärke 1, "schwach": Rind, Gurke, Tomate, Himbeere, Labkäse, Senfkorn, Meerrettich, Sonnenblumenkerne, Honig

Was da übrig bleibt? Auf den ersten Blick nicht viel... Was der zweite Blick bringt, wird sich in der nächsten Zeit herausstellen... Mindestens 3 Monate auf die Nahrungsmittel mit Stärke 1 und 2 verzichten, 6 Monate auf Stärke 3 und 1 Jahr auf Stärke 4. Dann hat mein Körper die Allergien vielleicht "vergessen".

Super Timing, so kurz vor Weihnachten! Aber genau genommen habe ich es so gewollt.
Seit 8+ Jahren schlage ich mich immer wieder mit Darmpilzen rum. Wenn der Leidensdruck hoch genug ist, geht's zum Arzt. Der verschreibt Nystatin, aber damit ist's nicht getan, wie ich jetzt weiß. Die Ursache muss beseitigt werden. Diesmal war ich beim Heilpraktiker, der (standardmäßig?) von Schwermetalleinlagerungen und Nahrungsmittelallergien sprach. 200 € später hatte ich ne hübsche Tabelle mit rotgefärbten Feldern in der Hand (Ok, die Rechnung kam noch nicht, ist aber angekündigt). Neben der Ausleitung verzichte ich jetzt also auf die obengenannten Lebensmittel - und auf Zucker, denn der Pilz ist ja auch noch da.
Wie das geht? Keine Ahnung. Werden wir sehen.

Herausforderung Nr. 1: Brot. Überraschend große Auswahl im Bioladen um die Ecke, aber die erste Kostprobe war nur mittelmäßig lecker. Dafür war die Verkäuferin im Laden total lieb.
Beim Brot soll ein Toaster helfen, steht jetzt also auf dem Einkaufszettel. Ich besaß bisher keinen, wollte aber sowieso einen kaufen. Trifft sich gut.

Herausforderung Nr. 2: der tägliche Mensa-Besuch mit den Kollegen. In unserer Mensa kann man glutenfreies Essen vorbestellen. Nicht schlecht! Habe ich gestern und heute aber nicht gemacht, sondern einfach mal so probiert, was ich finde. Gestern waren es Kartoffeln, Hühnchen und Bohnen, heute Bratkartoffeln mit Erbsen und Möhren (pur, nicht angedickt). War gar nicht schlimm ;)

Bilde ich es mir ein oder geht's mir heute tatsächlich schon besser? Keine Ahnung, welche Rolle die Psyche dabei spielt. Sicher keine unwesentliche.

Damit geht's auf ins Wochenende.

Geocaching Treasures - Coole Dinge in Dosen

Manchmal findet man wirklich coole Dinge in einem Cache. Heute: Eine Zeitungsente.

Here's one of my favorite items I found in a geocache: a canard (newspaper hoax).

10 Jahre! Rostock, Germany

Wir feiern 10 Jahre Geocaching und lassen die Cache-Entwicklung in MV einmal Revue passieren.

Die folgenden Tabellen listen für die verschiedenen Cachetypen auf, wie viele Caches jedes Jahres noch aktiv sind, wie viele in den folgenden Jahren archiviert wurden und folglich wie viele Caches insgesamt pro Jahr gelegt wurden.

Die Zahlen stimmen wahrscheinlich nicht 100%ig, Tendenzen sind aber in jedem Fall sichtbar. Danke an xylanthrop und SiGMa04.

April Fool's Cache

For our traditional kebab event on Holy Thursday ("Dönerstag" = kebab day), we were invited to go for a First to Find on a new multi cache. The listing was sent to anyone who logged a "Will attend" for the event the night before. The story sounded interesting enough, air-raid shelters underneath an old park/cemetery in Rostock. Equipment to get the cache included a roll of toilet paper or paper towels and about 1m of ribbon. Curious enough! The cache owner and event host promised kebab coupons for the FTV (sic!).
I thought there were letters missing in the first paragraph, but postponed a closer look until the next day. I could still go caching after work, before the event.
Still I thought about the new cache all next morning and decided to take a closer look. The missing letters spelled "april"! I knew it! I asked the owner, if FTV would mean First to Verarscht (=kid, sh**) and while first trying to tell me it was a typo since F and V are very close to each other on the keyboard, he soon asked me not to tell anyone. I learned that the box at the 2nd station, which, according to the listing, would contain instruction notes, held a note saying "April, April" and a number of laminated medals to be attached to the ribbon.

What a great idea! Now we both looked forward to seeing who would be the ones wearing those medals for the kebab event! It even felt quite weird not to "have to" go caching before the event :) More time to spend at work.... *rollingeyes*
When I arrived to the event, I learned that one of Rostock's newbie geocachers won the FTV (= First To Veräppelt) and a few more had tried to find it. One even wanted it to be his 500th find!
Most people kept quiet about it, so other teams left early to go for the cache. In the end I went with a close friend, another team, the owner and his girlfriend. She knew about the fake geocache, so it was only 3 people who "really" went geocaching. We followed the instructions and collected all information until we reached the box at the 2nd station.
You've been fooled! :D

This April Fool geocache was a lot more fun than my radio station telling me it was one hour later than it actually was, more fun than another radio station telling me 13 secret Beatles songs have been discovered, playing one of the exclusively - which I could sing along immediately (I forgot what it was) or telling that a Dutch millionaire got Jens Lehmann (1st Bundesliga) to play for Hansa Rostock (2nd liga and fighting)... Thanks to the owner!!!

Wall Tattoo Project (Part I)

Here's Yet Another Wall Tattoo Project (YAWTP):

I started out with a set of wall tattoo stickers I have bought a while ago but have never used. Actually I moved away from the place I intended to use the tattoos at and in my new place the color just didn't fit in.

Luckily I still found a way to use them :)

I have bought pink paint for my bedroom which sported plain white walls ever since I moved in.


However, painting the whole room in pink would be boring - even a whole wall would be, so decided to use the wall tattoo as some kind of inverted stencil.

Before painting the wall, I stuck the different parts of the tattoo to the wall.

The only nasty part about this project was the fact that the tattoo has a transparent border - to make the delicate parts more durable I guess. This transparent border would spoil my very own version of the tattoo, as the paint will not show all those litte details. The only way to deal with that was to cut away the border.


I used small scissors and all this cutting hurt my thumb... So this is probably easier with wall tattoos with less details or without transparent borders ;)

When all stickers were placed on the wall I painted it in pretty pink, generously spreading paint all over the stickers. Afterwards I removed the stickers dumping them into the trash (Sorry stickers!).

Make sure to tightly press the edges to wall so the paint won't go between the wall and the stickers! You can see it didn't really stick to my woodchip walls...

I tried to fix some of the not-so-nice edges using Q-tips and a small paintbrush until I decided to just go with the funny effect.

And here's the final result. Not too bad, eh?

Geocaching Cookies

Christmas is over, I know.
Still, it doesn't have to be Christmas to prepare a treat for your geocaching friends!
I made them for our "mulled wine event" held at Rostock's Christmas Market on December 12.

Actually, you can use your favorite cookie receipe; any receipe that is good for cutting cookies. So the cookie dough is the easy part ;)

When you're ready, roll out the dough with a rolling pin (or a glass bottle, if you don't have a rolling pin. I don't have one and an empty wine bottle works just as well!).

I came up with 3 different shapes for my geocaching cookies: A "micro cache" film canister, a GPS device, and the geocaching.com logo.

For the micro cache and the GPS device I cut their shapes from cardboard and used a knife to cut the dough into shape.

While starting to cut the micro cache cookies, I found there's an easier way: Use a (juice / water / wine) glass to cut circles, then use a knife to cut the circle into 3 parts, the middle one being the micro cache cookie.

The little GPS devices are hand-cut, sorry. But it's not too much work, really.

What's really easy, is cutting squares for the geocaching.com logos. Just cut the size you want them to be.

Here they are - ready to go into the oven! See the little witches on the right?

Unfortunately their brooms broke off and they didn't look too nice with their chocolate cover, but they were quite tasty anyway ;)

When you're done, bake your cookies according to receipe and let them cool off.


Next comes the fun part: decoration!

I dipped the little GPS antennas into melted chocolate and let them dry before continuing with the names on them. I also dipped the micro cache cookies into the chocolate to make it look like the lid. And guess what: the micro cache cookies are done!

I used Schwartau Zuckerschrift to write the names of the geocachers onto the little GPS cookies according to their "will attend" logs in the cache listing.

I decided to make one cookie per team plus a few "Cacher" cookies for those who would attend without "will attend" log.

For the geocaching logos I used Back- und Speisefarben to dye the frosting. I only made one color frosting at a time starting with yellow (so I could reuse the rest for the red rosting). It was fairly easy to put the frosting on the cookies using a simple teaspoon. Just make sure it is not too runny - use more powdered sugar if it is. After the yellow frosting I made the red one as the fields are opposite each other on the logo and I didn't have to worry about the frostings running into each other. While I let them dry I continued with writing names to my little GPS cookies. Blue and green were easy to do, too. When everything was dry I used the rest of the chocolate to make the circles symbolizing the details on the logo.

The cookies were a big success at our geocaching event. People marveled at the effort and were delighted with finding their names on the GPS cookies. Plus they were a nice treat to enjoy along with the mulled wine :)

(c) TeddyOnTour

What do you think? Wanna give it a try?

Candy Flower Bouquet

Ever wondered what to give someone who already has everything or who doesn't want anything?
I was invited to a wedding in Singapore and the couple didn't want anything as their biggest gift from their friends for them was us coming to Singapore for their special day.
Still I didn't want to come empty-handed, so I came up with the idea of a candy flower bouquet. And here is how I made it:


I bought all kinds of chocolates and candys (about 60 items, all separately wrapped and 2 of each type for the happy couple) and tied sewing thread around one end of their wrapping (about 30 cm per candy using a Cow Hitch knot).


The next step was to arrange 4-6 chocolates into a small bunch and tie them together. I used small pieces of wire which were quite easy to handle, but more thread can be used, too.


Lots of tying...

... and trying not to eat the chocolates myself ;)


Assembling all those small bunches into one large bouquet would have turned them into a big messy bulk, so I cut out a circle from cardboard (the back of a writing pad or any cardboard box that is at hand) and covered it with a green napkin (green paper works as well).


I attached all the small candy bunches to my cardboard circle, leaving a few centimeters between them so there is enough space for all the lovely candy. A large sewing needle works really well here, as one can easily poke holes into the cardboard to pull all the threads that were tied around the candy wrapping in step 1 through the cardboard. I tied several knots to each 2 strands of thread: to the opposite ones, to the neighboring ones etc, to attach the candy really well to the cardboard circle (Don't look at the small holes in the photo! Those were my first attempt to attach them one by one...).
Once all the candy is attached to the cardboard circle, we're almost done!

I used a cheap (green) plastic ice cream cup with a foot (shaped like a champagne glass, but more sturdy, of course) as my bouquet base and put a few cardboard squares on top (not too large so they are not visible).


The finishing touches are Tortenspitze to give it a Biedermeier look and a few fake ivory leaves (a bargain from the swedish furniture store that has been sitting among my diy stuff for a while).
The chocolate hearts are stuck to the bottom of candy like the green one in photo 2 using double-sided tape.
Doesn't look too bad, he?

Now that I am done writing this, I found this website with the same type of candy flower bouquets. They also look nice with one wrapping colour only.

Liked the idea? Create your own candy flower bouquet! It's easy! And maybe share a photo of it?!

444 Caches in 444 Days

Yeah, here we go!
As of today, I have been geocaching for 444 days and so far I found 444 caches! That makes it one cache per day ;)



# 500, here I come!

Artsy Weekend Project

Here's my really cool weekend project: a self-made wall tattoo.

I once found this wall tattoo saying "witch kitchen" in an online store, but never got around to buying it...

Firstly, I didn't like the bright red colour that much. Secondly, the bristles of the broom were on the wrong side for what I had in mind. Thirdly, wall tattoos don't stick too well to my woodchip walls.
That was when I decided to do it myself. And here is how I did it:

I used my favorite image processing software to put the bristles on the "right" side. No need to be super perfect as the image will only serve as a stencil. Also the resolution of the product picture was rather low, but this didn't matter much either. After printing it to the proper size (split across 3 pages), I used a pen to draw over the outline (making up for the aliasing effect of my low resolution image) before cutting out all the letters.

Since I had printed it to slightly self-adhesive paper, I could then stick my stencil right to the wall. Masking tape works quite well for this, too.
The next step was to bring the outlines of my stencil to the wall using a simple pencil. Small corrections can easily be made as the dark paint will cover them anyway.

The last step after taking off the stencil was colouring my wall tattoo with the chosen colour and fine paint brushes. This took about as long as the soccer game I listened to at the same time ;) I was shaking a bit every now and then while painting, but changing position and resting my hand to the wall (carefull with the wet paint!) helped quite a bit. Also small shaky bits didn't matter too much because of the uneven woodchip wall.


So this is what it looks like now :). Cool, he?
Actually the hardest part was not to bump my head on the overhead cupboards and to be able to reach over my counter to paint the wall. It might be a good idea to paint a wall tattoo like this one BEFORE adding the furniture :).

The best part about it though: I didn't have to spend a single cent for my cool new wall tattoo! The paint was a leftover from a friend. You need really little for an image like this.

(Almost) A cache a day

One year of geocaching!
Wow, and what a year it has been! Thanks a lot to all those cache owners whose caches I have found, thanks to all the nice people I have met (and probably wouldn't have met otherwise) and to anyone who went geocaching with me!
It's been an amazing experience so far: I have been in the outdoors more than ever before in my life (I think - always been more of a couch potatoe, I guess), I have seen places I wouldn't have seen w/out geocaching and I have shed a few pounds, hehe.

I was trying to have 365 geocaches today, making it one per day. Unfortunately we were caching basically in my homezone all weekend and most traditionals already have a big smile on my map... But 361 is not bad either and 0,9890410958904109589041095890411 is almost 1, isn't it?!

Maybe this one should be my next geocoin?


Happy caching!

Trackable Items Collection

In August 2008 I got introduced to geocaching. Now I am almost celebrating my first anniversary (Sunday!) and I still love it!
Here's a little gallery of trackable items I have sent out with different missions. I own a few more geocoins I am keeping at home and only take to events or log into special caches.



You can see how far they have traveled until now.
If you see a little box in the bottom right corner, then the item is currently located in a geocache. If there's a little smiley, then it's in the hands of another cacher, hopefully on its way to another cache. Grey icons - as opposed to green ones - mean they haven't been moved for quite some time. Get'em going, fellow cachers!

Heartbroken Songs

I figured I have songs for lost relationships. It seems they give some comfort when there's nothing else that can comfort you. I am listening to them over and over again until the pain fades.

Heartbroken Song #1: Against all odds (Phil Collins). Very melancholic.
Later, the song "Almost Lover (A Fine Frenzy)" kept reminding me of that special person...

Heartbroken Song #2: Big Girls Don't Cry (Fergie) - more defiant than sad. Gettin' up again, kickin' his ass.

Heartbroken Song #3 and a very recent split-up: Top of the World (Dixie Chicks) - The lyrics tell a different kind of (love) story, but we've been listening to this song (and similar ones) together in the car...

What are your heartbroken songs?

My new hobby: geocaching

I am totally hooked to a new hobby: geocaching. Of course, that's not exactly a new thing, but it's new to me and I love it. I wish I didn't have to sit in the office right now but could go on another hunt.
How I came to geocaching? Well, I had a friend over this weekend. We've talked about geocaching before but it wasn't until she was in my place that I thought about doing it myself. She showed me their website http://geocaching.com and got me all excited. There are soooo many caches hidden around here. I never thought Stralsund oder Ruegen would be offering stuff like that!!!
We quickly set up my PDA with the GPSTuner software (a demo version, but I think I'll actually buy this piece of software) and then picked our first geocaches for Stralsund. The very first one was an easy find for my friend who had been geocaching before. Perfect to get me even more into it. We decided to try again after dinner, but unfortunately we have already been walking around town for too long that day, so we became tired pretty quickly and didn't find any more caches. But the next day we were a lot more successful: 3 caches found on the island of Ruegen, one in Stralsund (the one we had tried the day before), another one nearly found (we didn't bring the flashlight as we didn't think we'd stay out that long) and one more that we started...
I can't wait to get off work this afternoon to retrieve that nearly-found one.

Looking forward to more geocaching now. Will try a few in New Zealand next week, where I'll be on a business trip.

Wuschel in mouse heaven

Today, my favorite mouse died.
I knew it was going to happen one day, but still I am upset.
He was such a tough little mouse having survived Rambo, who ruined his left foot, and a missing part of his tail... After being separated from Rambo he lived with Krümel (Crumby) and Flummi (Bouncy) - again with fights, then with his mouse dad again who died of age after a good half year together. In the end he got along quite well with Krümel again until this afternoon when I found him in his cage licked off by Krümel who seemed as upset as I was when I saw my little Wuschel (Wispy) dead... I suppose he got an inflammation in his foot again. It didn't look so good... Poor Wuschel. May he rest in peace in mouse heaven.

Time to say goodbye*

Saturday.
This is our last day - incredible how fast those 3 weeks have passed!

After breakfast, packing, and cleaning we drive over to Oakland to the Cruisa America office to return the motor home.
While we take a last look at our dear motor home, the lady in the office hardly casts a glance. We get reimbursed for the day we lost because of the open valve and the weak battery, leave our leftovers with a German couple who starts their 6-week-tour today, and wait for a friend to pick us up. She lives in San Francisco and we can leave our luggage in her place as there are hardly any public luggage lockers available. Since we're five people with 5+ bags, she needs to do two trips, dropping me and my brother off in Chinatown before she gets the rest of us. While waiting for them, we buy some more stamps to mail our last postcards and a state quarter collector's album for my brother.
By then we're reunited, meeting up with a friend from my year in France.

(More pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

Now my brother wants to shop at the Levis store at Union Square. He promised to bring home two pairs of jeans for a friend of his, but first he needs to figure out what the European colour codes relate to in the US - thank God there's wifi in the store's foyer. *smile*
We need a Starbucks coffee as a reward for waiting now! Sitting down at Union Square which 6 years back was only a big construction site, we munch on our sandwiches and just can't figure out what to do next. It is afternoon, we have a few hours left before we need to get to the airport.
So we're trying to find a bus to the Golden Gate Bridge. Not that easy, but we manage *smile* We need to change buses once and walk a bit inbetween, but we make it to the bridge!

(More pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

It's awefully windy out there so we only manage to stay for a couple of minutes before catching the bus back. We go to our friend's house where we left our luggage. She most generously offered to take us to the airport as did the other friend. So we load our luggage into the cars and split up. My parents and my brother are taken to the airport while me and my other brother still need to buy one or two extra bags - too much luggage to take back *g*.
Unfortunately, the nearby Walgreens doesn't have any, the little shops in Chinatown where we saw bags today, are already closed, and there's no Walmart to be seen along the freeway. Bad luck! We're forced to buy two rather expensive and small bags at the airport now, but well...

The check-in takes forever. We should have reserved our seats in advance and my brother can't just get off in Munich instead of coming to Berlin with us. Luckily, there's always an exception to the rule *smile*. Now we've got to hurry, there's hardly any time left to grab a bite to eat - our names are called for immediate boarding! See you in Germany!

* Sarah Brightman

If you're going to San Francisco*

Friday.
Our yesterday's hostess has to go to work today, but her husband takes us out for breakfast to the International House of Pancakes. This place has been on our list anyway *smile*
Whew! Sooo full already at breakfast! *g*

Let's go to San Francisco! We have chosen a campground just in the north of the city and close to public transportation as Dad does not want to drive the motor home through the city and up and down the hills. But where's the bus? Is this going to end like it did in Malibu?

No, it is not. After a good half hour, our bus arrives and unhurriedly takes us across the Golden Gate Bridge and into the city.
We're getting off at Lombard Street to take a look at the world's most crookedest street. For the way down we choose the stairs though.

(More pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

We're walking over to the wharf to look for tickets to Alcatraz. The ferry company must have changed since I have visited the island, we have to walk from pier 39 to 33, but there are already signs posted saying 'Next available tickets: Monday'. Bad luck! We didn't learn from our last effort to get Mom and Dad to see Alcatraz. We really should have booked in advance.

(More pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

But we won't be bored in this city! Back over to pier 39, doing the touristy thing: Souvenirs, clam chowder, and then a cable car ride! A must-do in this city - not sitting inside, but hanging on the side!

Down at Market Street we only manage a Starbucks coffee to warm ourselves up before taking the bus back to our campground. We need to pack our bags and tomorrow we'll say good-bye to our dear motor home...

* Scott McKenzie

We're in Sacramento, a wonderful town*

Thursday.
Waking up early, Dad wants to hit the road as soon as possible. We have quite a bit to go until Sacramento, especially since yesterday we didn't get as far as we wanted because of the fire.
So no coffee, no breakfast; bathroom and dressing on the road. We make it as far as the road barrier thinking 'Oh no, it's still not open!' I get out of the car to ask, Dad gets out a little behind me, and there's already an officer coming towards us telling us to drive the car up to the barrier, then follow the CHP car through the barrier. Neat! The California Highway Patrol leads us through the fire site!
Looks like they managed to put it out, there's only little smoke left and some firemen guarding it.
We're continuing north along Highway 1 until we finally reach Big Sur and its gas station. $4,959 per Gallon! That's the most expensive gas we have found so far! Dad doesn't want to risk anything again, so we don't just stick with the couple of Gallons needed to reach Monterrey or Santa Cruz. Deep cut into the budget. Ouch!

(more pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

Some time later we stop for more gas, breakfast, and some internet as dad needs to work a bit. Then we're back on the highway heading towards Sacramento, arriving there around a quarter past 2. Funnily familiar taking the highway into the city and somehow not familiar at all. It's been 6 years!

We find a parking spot in downtown or actually 2 *smile*, then walk over to Old Sacramento down by the river. Old Sacramento still looks like it was from the times of the wild west, all wooden houses, wooden sidewalks, and old-fashioned stores. I loved this place back then and I still love it today. Even the salt water taffy store is still there so we stock up on those tasting a few along the way through the store *smile*

(more pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

Then my brother and I head off to the nearby mall. There's not much time left before we want to head over to our friends' house, so we gotta hurry but I really want to shop at GAP where we used to shop 6 years back *smile*
And I do, buying a pair of pants and a sweater. Even my brother buys pants for himself. A Starbucks frappuchino on the way out and back to the car.

The BBQ at our friends' house is great! Soooo good seeing them again. Mom's got her admission ticket to California, her famous cherry pudding *smile*, ready and to the delight of our hosts even prepares another one live during the course of the evening. We eat and chat until late that night before we go to sleep in our home sweet motor home in front of their driveway.
This is probably the nicest evening of the whole trip!

* Middle of the Road

Miles travelled by RV: 250+
Current location: Sacramento, CA
Next stop: San Francisco, CA

Fire!

Wednesday.
Yesterday took us as far as Oceano, some 30 miles south of Morro Bay, where we enjoy our first RV park offering a heated pool and jacuzzi. Too bad they close at 10pm! We could have stayed there all night *smile*

Miles travelled by RV: 221
Current location: Oceano, CA
Next stops: Hearst Castle, Big Sur, Monterrey, and Santa Cruz, CA

Today we headed to San Simeon to visit Hearst Castle. This 'ranch' was built by William Randolph Hearst to house his art collection and to entertain his guests - pretty impressive and with awesome ocean and mountain views. We're taking a 75 minute experience tour offering a great overview of his property: 1 main house with 110 (!) rooms, 3 guest houses, and 2 pools. He also had tennis courts and his very own movie theatre! That's one fine summer cottage, he? *smile*

(more pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

Afterwards we're heading further north along scenic Highway 1 that winds along the coast. About 20 miles south of Big Sur
we're stopped by a car coming from the opposite direction, it's passengers waving at us. The road is closed ahead because of a fire and we better turn around, they say.
Hm, what do we make of this? Should we trust them? Maybe someone else will tell us the same thing? We didn't have much gas when we reached Hearst Castle, had returned to the nearest gas station, but only gotten very little gas as it seemed awefully exensive there. Turning around here because of the fire could run us out of gas now... Eventually, at some turnout along the road we see smoke, we stop and are told by some other travellers, that the road indeed is closed and will be for at least another 6 hours making it midnight until anyone might be able to pass.

(more pictures at: http://galerie.photo-fisch.de)

They advise us to just spend the night out here. Certainly, tonight no-one would fine us for overnight camping while it is usually forbidden not to stay at designated campgrounds. Well, not exactly where we wanted to spend the night (no wifi, hehe), but we wanted to boondock at least once anyway. We heat up all our left-over food for dinner, have a glass of wine, and go to bed.

Miles travelled by RV: about 117
Current location: about 15 miles south of Big Sur
Next stop: Sacramento, CA