Day 16: Thursday 16th September

Over the Golden Gate Bridge!

I was up bright and early and sat outside to savour the morning. There was an almighty noise in the trees and I was at first a little uneasy (what could it be?!), but then relaxed as I realised that it was one of those whooping squirrels (name to be looked up!). Fascinating!! On leaving Cozy Bear this morning, I discovered a whopping great mosquito bite on my leg!! I had religiously been applying DEET 50% every night of the holiday - but had forgotten it for ONE NIGHT! Well, I hope he wasn't one of those West Nile types!!

We left at about 9:30am and headed for the Valley. The same old views!! We had a new view this morning, though ... Valley View.

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We then headed off along Big Oak Flat road, with myriads of bends, trees and rocks. Very, very pretty. I love the Sierra foothills. We stopped in Mariposa briefly,

and then tried to get some mileage behind us before stopping at a McDonalds at a place called Livingstone (?). It was VERY hot!

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A little further along from there, we stopped at a town called Tracy and bought a holdall (for the bears!!) in the Target store there. It was VERY hot!

Soon, we were entering the Bay area, which was different to how I'd imagined it would be. There were orange hills with millions of windmills scattered over them!!

Through Oakland, the traffic became rather heavy, but it lessened around Berkeley, from where we crossed the San Rafael Bridge. We didn't have to pay a toll because there were 3 of us in a car - they classed that as car-sharing!! Just a short drive then, to Sausalito, where we stopped, firstly by the harbour and secondly, by the Bay with its wonderful view of the San Francisco skyline. Great houses in Sausalito!

We drove over the Golden Gate Bridge. Whoo!! Again, we didn't have to pay a toll because there were 3 of us in the car - but we would've willingly paid heaps for such an experience!

We had to drive through the outskirts of San Francisco and the traffic was at a standstill because of an accident further along the road. Our first impressions of San Francisco. Lots of hills and wooden houses!

We turned off at Pacifica - but realised we had turned off too soon, when we asked directions from a man walking his dog down by the beach, who turned out to have been from Newcastle!! Anyway, we got to our hotel, The Pacifica Beach Resort not long after. We had room 1309, as booked. There was a lovely view of the ocean from the balcony (alas no balcony furniture) and we had a ceiling like St Peter's!! It was a nice room (with jacuzzi), but somehow it was missing something. A coffee maker, for starters.

We settled in and then drove up to the shopping center, just up the road, for a bite to eat. It was COLD!!

sunset over the Pacific, from our balcony

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[ Introduction ] [ Day 1 ] [ Day 2 ] [ Day 3 ] [ Day 4 ] [ Day 5 ] [ Day 6 ] [ Day 7 ] [ Day 8 ]
[ Day 9 ] [ Day 10 ] [ Day 11 ] [ Day 12 ] [ Day 13 ] [ Day 14 ] [ Day 15 ] [ Day 17 ]
[ Days 18, 19 and 20 ]

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