
Our unscientific survey is that Germans vastly outnumber all other foreign nationals touring the Southwest this spring, and come close to outnumbering the Americans we've seen. The family above is but one example: we saw them at White Sands National Monument, where the older child in the red cap was throwing a temper tantrum, which his mother attempted to abort by coaxing him into doing a yoga pose with her - Virabhadrasana II, I believe. It didn't work. He was still wailing his lungs out as we drove away.
The Germans seem particularly attracted to renting Harleys and aping American cultural icons. In Needles, California there were two middle-aged guys indulging their inner Captain America (no German would ever dress up as Billy, I guess). In Death Valley there was a whole gang of them at Badwater Basin posing in their custom leather chaps and vests for a group photo around the "lowest point in North America" sign, looking very orderly and clean cut and not at all ready for walk-on parts in Sons of Anarchy.