Not the Swan Song - yet

A week or so later!

If you get the chance, Yosemite is not to be missed! The granite towers and domes, waterfalls and forests ringing and within the main valley are jaw dropping awesome. We watched a short doco on the park at the Visitor Center then decided to continue the tourist drive to the south rim to Glacier Point, which according to a park ranger, is the best lookout in the park. We thought we were slowing down by being tourists but didn’t return home until sevenish. On day two of our Yosemite visit we drove out over the north rim, up and up, past huge tracts of fire damaged land with the trees gone or just sticks left. A serious fire here really alters the landscape. It may be 100 years before pine trees grow there again as other advantageous greenery takes over. At one place we were stopped by a traffic snarl we thought was an accident. Cars apparently strewn all over the road, no way through until one or two nosed past the mangle and a camper-truck doing some heavy horn blowing on the opposite side which didn’t help. But, here were people with cameras? Finally, I spotted a bear below, some distance away in a lush meadow! Fair dinkum! People had abandoned their cars to catch a glimpse from a narrow roadside with no edges or places to park. We got through eventually and drove on and past many more alpine meadows, some with snow still clinging to their edges and along roadside ditches, up shadowed forest and of course cloaking the high peaks. We pulled over many times for special viewings, as did many other park visitors, all of us enthralled. There were many built roadside parking places for us visitors to stop and gawp where the road was wide enough.

Our target today was Mono Lake, over on the other side of the Yosemite Park Range (the Sierras) to the east via the Tioga Road. Mono Lake is an alkaline and hyper saline lake and home to unusual tufa towers (limestone), and, also home to several bird species, all of which were away for the day when we arrived. Another intriguing visual though! It was hot and windy here, we did a good walk and I took lots of photos. The nearest town is Lee Vining which is interesting, looks a bit of a cowboy town and worth more time than we had to spend here. In the afternoon we drove back over Tioga Pass (3031 metres) - an effort for our little 1.6l engined car. Every time I kicked down I could almost see the fuel gauge dropping. We’d waited with lunch to sit at one of the high meadows, of the Tuolumne Meadows group, and still spooked with bear warnings, kept a wary eye out for black fury things while enjoying the scenery with the faint sun (at this altitude) warming our backs and little fury critters scuttling about in the grasses.

The scenery looked just as magnificent on the way back as you get the different perspective driving in the opposite direction, we should have gone back into the valley for one last neck strain but we were tired again and headed home to Mariposa and our National Parks Tour was just about over. The long drive from the park gates, along the Merced River, past the rafting headquarters and snaking over bridges including the (permanent) detour bypassing a rather nasty rockslide that rubbed out the road some years ago, winding along the valley floor and then back out and up to Mariposa every bit as interesting as the Park itself.

I repacked our larger bag and found that more than we’d imagined fitted in, so Howard packed the esky and that went well too. All this to minimise the amount of rubble we needed to unpack from the car and cart up to our last hotel room in San Francisco.

Sunday morning, with mixed feelings, we packed and departed but didn’t leave town until we’d paid a visit to the State Mining and Mineral Museum to have our brains mashed by looking at rocks and precious stones. This museum has been named the best mining and mineral museum in the States. We agreed, although my eyes glaze over after the first few exhibits. Happens every time, and we do look at a lot of rock exhibits.

Anyway, the road to San Francisco, at first much like the last couple of times we drove through the orchard belt, dry looking rolling hills and then a last mountain range to cross before hitting the coastal plains. The closer we came the more lanes and the faster the traffic. Much of the highway was pretty smooth, making a nice change from the rough roads (highways). At one time we were overtaken by a big camper bus towing a trailer and we were going at 75mph! Monster trucks (utility vans) flying past us. I decided that truck drivers just didn’t like small car drivers and would overtake just for that reason and/or hang in the fast lane just so they could be out front. Passed another huge old wind farm (we knew it was old because of the towers build from steel framing), hundreds of turbines. Once over the range we were back in eucalypt country. Also back in smaller car territory.

After driving in so many countries and through/around so many cities, we voted San Francisco the city with the most acrobatic arrays of serpentine and spaghetti ramps, flyovers and whatever else these intersections and junctions are called, of the places we’ve been. They leave our little, local “Light Horse interchange” for dead. (The-Light-Horse-interchange-Eastern-Creek ¬ put that into your URL)


We planned to stop off in Oakland to say goodbye to our friends and got anxious once again trying to figure out Google instructions while trying to keep up with the traffic flow. Spotted a street name we remembered and headed that way, phew, much slower off the freeway. By sheer luck we dawdled our way to Elissa and Carl’s house, who, as luck would have it were not home, but we dropped off our trusty electric kettle and the vacuum flask plus a few other bits which would lighten our load further. The return trip to the freeway wasn’t as easy as retracing our path. I nearly produced a heart attack in Howard by backing out of the drive awkwardly and facing the wrong direction. I’d figured that being Sunday, not much traffic and four lanes, I could do a little acrobatic reversing stunt to get us back into the road and the car coming toward us slowed down and let me move over to the other side. Shenanigans didn’t end here. Once back in the area of the freeway off ramp the road did some sneaky winding, roadworks didn’t help and we got lost (why not?), ended up driving along the pretty foreshore which we didn’t know existed.

Just because we’d been to the centre of the business/government district of Oakland didn’t mean we’d scratched the surface of the city - well, we‘ve been halfway around the world and only scratched the surfaces of every city we‘ve visited. A lot of Oakland is very poor and depressed but much of it has been rebuilt or tidied up and it shows. Quite by accident, while thinking that we were doomed to drive around suburbia, I spotted a freeway entrance and it said “San Francisco”. Whoopee, we were on the speedway again heading for the Bay Bridge, two bridges, a tunnel and a toll gate in fact. The Bay Bridge is double decker, top deck entering S.F., the lower exits, 4 or five lanes each way. I didn’t realise and didn’t miss opposing traffic while deep in concentration and looking for an exit reading “Fisherman’s Wharf”. None to be seen, so I took the opposite exit that Howard suggested and we managed to crawl our way to the waterfront, joining all the cars that were parading in the Sunday afternoon sun, almost enjoying being in the tourist whirl.

We found our hotel easily enough, executed a perfect U turn and into the hotel reception driveway. Upper class now at the Best Western Tuscany, I handed the keys to the parking guy who would look after the car for five minutes and another nice man came with the hotel trolley to load us up and escort us to our room. No heavy lifting involved and for once didn’t mind paying extra for a room though this one wasn’t much more than the Mariposa hotel room. We took the car around the corner to fuel up and returned it down the block to the rental office at the Sheraton. Gone, free, no more driving, what a blessed relief. Two months in the States, one in Europe and by sheer luck I think, no accidents. We returned to our hotel and did a fine job of relaxing for a while then decided to go out and buy some breakfast fruit and book a table at the restaurant next door before returning to join in the hotel’s happy hour of sharing some Californian wines (two glasses per guest). That was really nice and we got to talking with several other guests in the lobby before going next door and enjoying an excellent dinner.

Last day

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Monday morning. Check out time midday and we took full advantage though pestered several times by hard pressed housekeepers as we’d not put out the “do not disturb” sign. Packing went well. With all the stuff we’d bought, not to mention several kilos of collected rocks, we ended up with exactly the same amount of baggage as when we first left home - just a little heavier. Put our gear into safe storage and walked along the foreshore. Monday was cool but sunny and we only had short sleeves on thinking it was going to be another warm day so brisk walking was in order. We said farewell to the seal colony on Pier 39. There were still quite a few noisy blokes playing in the water and sunbaking.

By the time we reached the Ferry Building, Howard was hungry and although he had set his tastebuds on a “Subway”, the many wonderful cooking smell coming from the building increased his urgency and he pointed me toward a trendy looking eatery. The Slanted Door (slanteddoor.com) is a restaurant that I will recommend to everyone who visits San Francisco. While one may have to wait for a table - a practice which I abhor - we only waited five minutes because I said we’d go somewhere else (didn’t know that would work) - but, the food, outstanding, challenging the excellent meals we had with HP and Maja and the two restaurants they took us to where vegetarian was no problem.

With plenty of time still on our hands we walked downtown and stopped at the Westfield Center - something that most Americans aren’t used to but we are, and this place is huge and classy, congratulations Frank Lowy for showing the US how to shop the Australian way. Did I really just praise a shopping mall (builder)? Heavens I must be out of my mind! We must have shares in the company. Did some browsing and buying at Borders (the book shop chain) and eventually decided to walk back to the hotel because missy was getting tired, cold and maybe a little grumpy by now, we chose Grant Avenue which took us through part of S.F’s., huge Chinatown. So, we’d got in a day’s exercise walk, shopping, eating and sightseeing and now we crashed happily on the hotel lobby couch where it was warm. Only yesterday I’d wondered why they had their gas/log fire going. Today I was glad of it. Also today we didn’t qualify for the free wine, no longer having a room number to offer the server. Never mind, we took it in turn to go change into warm travelling clothes, stuff today’s clothes into a pack and soon it was time to jump into the air porter shuttle bus, pay the bellman our last tip and hold on for the hair-raising trip out to the airport.

It took maybe 15 minutes to circle S.F. picking up other shuttle passengers and then race all the other traffic on the freeway - one last time - to the airport, easily check our luggage in at exactly the allowed weight (a few grams over as I recall), half strip for the security check and we were in. Now we had two hours to kill, duty free shopping for (UGH) tobacco for our dear friend Anne Wheatley (no relation) and search out a restaurant for some dinner (mainly because I insisted that at midnight, Qantas wouldn’t be feeding us dinner). Just as well that there weren’t any decent eating places here, so we shared a small pizza (once again, take away boxes, cups, cutlery etc., but this time everything, I think, was going to the recyclers), because not long after takeoff - supper was served!

How tired were we? Almost no conversation, bleary eyed and a little grumpy would be a fair description. I guided us in the wrong direction to our boarding gate, never mind, another minute gone. Our ride was a 747 - 400, and the noisiest 747 I remember ever being on. Not only that, but for a full load, only 8 toilets! We were down the back end of the plane, a two seat row with SPACE around us, it seemed to take the longest time rolling up to an acceptable runway. In fact Howard commented, that we’d passed some perfectly good looking runways on the drive around the airport. Finally up in the air, the attendants brought around flight menus no less. I hadn’t seen these on planes in many years. And, supper was dinner, with a glass of Aussie wine to help us sleep later. I’ve come to loath Qantas vegetarian food since they slashed variety and taste in an austerity drive some years ago but this time what was delivered was beaut and edible.

We tried to sleep but with little success, Howard a little better at it than I, although our reading materials got a good going over. With concentration not too good, the TV screens didn’t get that much of a workout especially with the noise interference. The hours drifted by and suddenly some lights came on and breakfast was served. To my happy surprise the veggie breakfast was pretty good too. Out in the stratosphere thin lines of orange and purple were growing and slowly changing colour and within minutes Botany Bay came into view and we were down and landed!

Thanks for reading friends. More to come in a couple of days.

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