Are you going, to San Francisco...??

Good evening all, from the business centre of The Pickwick Hotel in downtown San Francisco. Given that the laptop is still on the fritz, and a bunch of late-night text messages from my brother Daniel determined that the best course of action would be to leave it lying catatonic until our return to Melbourne on the weekend, I'm sitting here in the darkened business centre (until I find a light switch - ah, there it is!!) paying five bucks for twenty minutes of Internet time so I can keep you up-to-date with what's going on!!!

Going to be a relatively short blog tonight for two reasons - a). today was primarily a driving day, and b). five bucks for twenty minutes - we're in a bloomin' recession here, folks!! We left you last night in Las Vegas, moaning about the lack of go in my laptop and theorising that it could be the end of this humble little blog - which, thankfully, it isn't!! The night ended in rather tame fashion - we were going to catch up with a childhood friend of mine, Allan Barrett and his family who are also holidaying in the US right now (and happened to be in Vegas over the weekend), but Sarah came down with a bit of a tummy upset - which thankfully was cleared up by this morning, a nice long bath helped!! Thought it might have been the BLT with no T (tomato) that was devoured by the Eating Machine last night that could have been spiked, but it was bereft of mayo. butter and all things harmful. By the way - Johnny Rocket's - right up there with In-N-Out Burger as the best burger I've had in the States (and now that we are back in California, look out In-N-Out Burger!!). We also planned today's trip to San Francisco, and enquired about a couple of sightseeing adventures for tomorrow, Sarah's birthday, which we hoped to hear back on.

In inputting the destination address into Google Maps, to get a rough idea of directions and travel times, it came up with two different routes to San Francisco. The shortest was back down I-15, the same way we first came to Vegas all those many weeks ago from San Diego, over the Californian border then off I-15 at Bakersfield to transfer onto I-5, which was projected to take a touch over eight hours. The other way was through northern Nevada towards Reno, then turning off and travelling via Yosemite National Park to San Francisco, which was projected to take eleven hours. Much to my surprise, Sarah chose the longer option, wanting to see Yosemite National Park as driving scenery instead of the billboards, chain motels and fast-food restaurants that dot the usual landscape.

So we were up early this morning, checking out of the Venetian with a lot more bags than we arrived with, thanks to our expedition to the Las Vegas Premium Outlets yesterday, got the car from the valet, found out that valet parking at the Venetian was free, and we left Las Vegas, not having seen a single penny of our money leave our possession by way of gambling, which I'm pretty proud of!!

We set out for San Francisco via Yosemite, hoping that the GPS would show us the right way (I had some written directions scribbled down just in case), but when I added Yosemite as a way point, it lead us a merry dance, via the exact route set out by Google Maps last night. The drive through Nevada was pretty boring, given that we were looking at nothing but desert the entire way through, until just before a little town named Tonopah, when I saw probably the first other car on the road for about half an hour, and it had red and blue flashing lights that started once I passed it, and followed me up the road. Startled, I looked down to see my speedo reading a few miles over the posted speed limit, and thought I could be in trouble. Never fear though!! Once the officer sauntered up to my window, demanding to see my license and car registration, I unloaded with the most polite Ocker I could - and he fell for it!!! We got to talking about footy, and the differences between Australian Rules, gridiron and soccer (I was out of the car by this stage, as he wanted to see my passport in conjunction with my Victorian drivers license, and the passport was in a bag in the boot of the car). It ended with the officer apologising for being an inconvenience, wished us well for our trip, and shook my hand!!! Off scott-free!! Mind you, I did keep a close eye on my speedo from then onwards.

The trip through Nevada went without any more hassle, and we crossed into California at about midday, headed for Yosemite.

Entering Yosemite is much like entering the Grand Canyon - you have to pay a fee per car to enter the park, which in this case was $20. Yosemite, though, is more set-up for hiking and camping rather than sightseeing, although Sarah did get some pretty good photos - I didn't think I'd see snow-covered mountain peaks in a Californian summer!! Where the drive was made longer, though, was not just by the diminished speeds through the eighty-odd miles of road in Yosemite (distance-wise, the Yosemite route and the I-15/1-5 routes to San Fran were almost identical distance-wise), but by the winding hills and valleys after you get out of Yosemite's park limits, then having to deal with the RV's and caravans that are doing nil miles per hour in front of you when you get into the flats! Still, we manuevered all of them successfully, and navigated our way back onto the freeways surrounding San Francisco, then over the Bay Bridge and into the Hotel Pickwick, our home for tonight and tomorrow night!!

That pretty much sums up today - and this time I really have to duck off and get my beauty sleep, as it is a certain young lady's birthday tomorrow - she's claiming a 41-hour birthday, though, as at 7:00am here this morning, it ticked past 12:00am on Tuesday 23rd June in Australia, so it's multiple birthdays for Sarah this year. Being the dutiful boyfriend, I've allowed her control of the itinerary tomorrow (which she has been planning for a couple of weeks now) and have said I will do whatever she wants tomorrow as well. There's also the gifts, which, thanks to prudent bargain hunting, haven't left as big a hole in the pocket as they could have, but I'm hoping will still bring a smile to Sarah's face - I'll let you know tomorrow night!! Until then, though, I bid you adieu, as my five bucks has quickly turned into twelve, so I need to save some money for tomorrow night's blog. See you tomorrow night!!