After breakfast on Monday, we said good bye to Claudia and the children and hit the road for Las Vegas. We stopped in at the supermarket to buy a picnic lunch and then drove through the desert landscape with hills covered in saguaro and jumping cholla cacti. Further on we saw forests of the Joshua tree before we stopped for our lunch in a truck stop. We drove on to the Hoover Dam and had a walk across the dam wall. From there it was only an hour drive to Las Vegas, where we checked in to the tired Riviera Hotel and Casino on the strip. As we wheeled our cases past the hotel barber salon, we saw a very plastic looking tanned Elvis-lookalike barber wearing a white suit.
We had a short rest in our room and then went out for some dinner. We met a Russian, Elena Valenska at the info desk and drove to Chinatown where we ate fresh healthy Vietnamese food and checked out the enormous supermarket next door. Driving home we could appreciate that Vegas was a neon town – it looked better at night than during the day. We had an interesting chat to Elena when we got back to the Riviera, she was living in Paris but was originally from St Petersburg.
On Tuesday morning, we went to the Peppermill next door for breakfast. The interior of the restaurant was dark and cool with beautiful art deco flamingo lamp shades and booths clustered underneath large shady trees (fake). We ordered a garden omelette and a Western fruit plate. When these came out we found that the omelette (which must have contained at least 4 eggs) came with a mountain of hash browns and the enormous fruit plate came with a small loaf of banana cake! Somehow, we managed to get through most of the breakfast (we took a doggy bag of grapes for later) and staggered outside into the bright Vegas sunshine.
We didn’t get very far – only making it to the Ross clothing store next door to the restaurant. We emerged a couple of hours later with bags of discounted designer clothing. We dropped these back at the hotel and then headed down Las Vegas Boulevard (The Strip).
Our first stop was the Encore Hotel and Casino owned by Steve Wynn. It was filled with beautiful indoor flower gardens, bright red glass chandeliers and had a butterfly theme with mosaic butterflies on the walls and floors, and butterflies on the bright red carpets. We walked from Encore into its sister property Wynn Las Vegas which had a flower theme. We continued down the strip to the Venetian with its bridges, canals and gondolas, Bellagio with its musical fountain show every half hour, past Paris with Eiffel Tower, the MGM Grand with huge golden lion and crossed the road to Luxor with sphinx and pyramid. Then we walked back past the castles of Excalibur, the Statue of Liberty, Caesar’s Palace, and stopped to take in the fountain show at Bellagio by night. Our next stop was Treasure Island where we watched a pirate show and then we went back to Riviera to pick up the car. We drove back to Chinatown and had some great Sichuan Chinese food for dinner. We felt great after the meal and headed home to do diary and photos before an earlier bed.
We drove out of Vegas on Wednesday. It was very quiet as we drove out, as the strip comes alive late at night and doesn’t get going again until the next afternoon. It was a strange plastic kind of town but there was plenty to do and see with all the shows, casino entertainment, food and shopping.
We drove out on the flat hot plain and then wound over a mountain range and down into Death Valley. It took us two hours to reach the National Park Visitor Centre at Furnace Creek where we got a map, discussed possible routes to San Francisco and purchased a picnic lunch at the shop. We drove towards Badwater, at 282 feet or 86 metres below sea level, the lowest point in the USA. On the way we came across a coyote padding along parallel to the road - it looked very skinny. At Badwater, we took a couple of shots over the salt pan. It reminded us of Etosha Pan or the Salar de Uyuni except that Death Valley is surrounded by two parallel mountain ranges. Then we drove up to The Devil’s Golf Course which was a large salt pan in the middle of the valley. Unlike the other flat salt pans that we had seen, the surface was made up of lumpy salt pinnacles. Then we drove back towards Furnace Creek, taking the scenic winding road called Artists Drive. We had great views across the salt flats and of the surrounding mountainsides with green, white and pink coloured bands of rock. We went for a 2 kilometre walk at Golden Canyon, a gravel trail through a gorge cutting through gold, orange and red sandstone rocks. We had our lunch at the Red Cathedral at the end of the trail and then walked back to the car. We went past Furnace Creek and on to the Mosaic Canyon. We parked the car and walked a short way along the canyon which was lined with smooth water-polished light coloured granite and dark aggregate rock walls.
Back at the car, we decided to call it a day as we had a two hour drive to Ridgecrest, where we planned to spend the night. As we drove down to the main road we saw another coyote but this one looked magnificent in the late afternoon sun, with black, grey and red fur. We drove past a sea of sand dunes and out of the end of the valley where there was a lot more vegetation. We wound up and out of Death Valley and then down into another bowl shaped valley with sand bottom. We got some great photos in the sunset and kept driving, cutting it very fine with our petrol! We just made it to Trona to fill up. We arrived at Ridgecrest at 6.30 pm and checked into the Best Western. After we unloaded our bags, we walked to a nearby diner recommended by the receptionist. The food turned out to be very ordinary with instant mashed potato.
After breakfast on Thursday, we hit the road early. We crossed more desert plains and then massive mountain passes to get across the southern tip of the Sierra Nevada. All of a sudden it was greener with trees and rolling hills. We were driving through clouds and popping out above the cloud every now and then. We stopped for lunch opposite the San Luis Reservoir with clouds rolling up the hills from the water and blanketing us and then evaporating into blue sky. We saw citrus, fruit orchards and grape vines for miles along with nodding donkeys looming out of the mist. We passed a state prison complex at Wasco, saw a guy with “God, guts and guns made America free” on his shirt echoing the sentiment of the redneck south. There were signs on the road side at regular intervals “No to Congress created dustbowl” obviously farmers upset at restrictions to access to water. We passed the biggest stockyard we had ever seen. There were miles and miles of depressed looking cows awaiting slaughter in brown stinking mud as far as the eye could see. The stench was unbelievable and even though we were some way away on the highway it stayed with us for quite a while.
The flat straight highways make for fast travel and we arrived into the urban sprawl of San Francisco just after 3pm. We unloaded at Hotel Whitcomb in Market Street and took the exorbitant parking of $28 plus tax as there weren’t any obvious alternatives. The room was only $68 plus tax! We unpacked a bit and then headed out for a walk along Market Street and down Grant Avenue into Chinatown. As we remembered from our previous visit there were lots of colourful and dubious characters hanging around the streets. We walked around Chinatown until we got hungry and decided on House of Nanking which was recommended in the Lonely Planet, but served an overpriced Westernized bland version of Chinese. Luckily they served reasonable wine and we met a great couple, Ted and Iasmine who made it a very enjoyable evening. We walked back along Kearney Street to Market Street before saying goodbye and walking back to the hotel. It was the end of a good day and a milestone as we had made it from the East coast to the West Coast, and now there would only be short trips on the road.
On Friday, we walked across the road to Sam’s Diner where we had coffee, eggs Benedict and blueberry pancakes for breakfast. After breakfast, we walked the other way along Market Street to the Mission District. It took us quite some time to get there and along the way we passed some very dodgy characters. We passed several people who were quite openly smoking marijuana and one person smoking a crack pipe. There were several people pushing all their belongings around in shopping trolleys and other people having conversations with themselves. It seemed like there were more weird people than normal people in San Francisco! There were beautifully painted terraced houses along Guerrero Street known as Painted Lady Victorians. Some of them had fire escapes and they were painted in colours that highlighted and enhanced the fine architectural detailing on their facades.
We admired the Spanish Dolores Mission on the edge of the Mission District and then walked through the district with its striking murals, colourful shops and Latino feel. We stopped at a Chilean Bakery to try an empanada Pina - a delicious little pie stuffed with mince, onions, raisins, boiled egg and olives. It was actually more delicious than most of the empanadas that we had eaten in South America! We walked back into the centre of town where we had a quick look at Union Square and then went to the R&G Restaurant recommended by Ted and Iasmine for lunch which turned out to be cheaper and a whole lot better than the dinner last night.
After lunch we walked to the spectacular Ferry Building Market Place on the waterfront and admired all the gourmet food stalls. We continued walking along the Embarcadero to Pier 39 where we admired yellow daffodils and other flowers (how do they get them to flower in the middle of winter?) and stopped to watch the sea lions jostling for space on the pontoons. Then we walked to Ghirardelli Square where we enjoyed a fountain full of bronze turtles and frogs, had some meltingly delicious caramel chocolate squares and shared a cup of hot chocolate. The sunset over the bay and Alcatraz Island was spectacular and we also saw a few hummingbirds atop small trees getting ready to sleep.
We decided to start making our way back to the hotel and to our horror found ourselves walking up the almost vertical Russian Hill. At the top we saw cars and motorbikes negotiating the famous winding Lombard Street. We spent an hour at Union Square - Keith went DVD shopping and Suzie went clothes shopping – and then headed back to the hotel to drop off our purchases. We were pretty exhausted after our big day walking so we went back across the road to Sam’s Diner for dinner.
On Saturday, we walked down Market Street and decided to have breakfast at the slightly seedy looking L&M Diner which was run by three Chinese people. While we were eating our breakfast quite a few of San Francisco’s more eccentric residents came in. San Francisco has more crazy people on the street than we have seen anywhere in the world! The area around our hotel (Civic Centre) seemed to be a magnet for all the resident loonies and it was much worse than any other of the areas of the city. Three blocks away at Union Square, there seemed to be hardly any dodgy people. After breakfast we walked towards Union Square and did some shopping until it was time to walk to Chinatown to meet our friend Anne Shiau who we had met in the Pantanal in Brazil. For some reason, all the streets in Chinatown were really packed – maybe because it was Saturday or it could be the beginning of the Chinese New Year festivities. We met Anne at the Gold Mountain Restaurant and spent a pleasant couple of hours catching up over dim sum washed down with copious amounts of Chinese tea.
After lunch, we walked back to our hotel to collect our car to drive to Ted and Iasmine’s house (the couple that we had met on our first night in San Francisco) in the eastern suburb of Orinda. They had invited us to dinner. We drove over the Bay Bridge but as it was raining and overcast, we couldn’t really see anything. We stopped at the supermarket on the way to their house to buy wine, flowers, chocolate and dessert and then drove up into some leafy hills to their house. Ted wanted to show us the area so we went for a drive around the towns of Orinda and Lafayette and finally we drove into the Berkeley Hills along Grizzly Peak Boulevard. At the summit we were rewarded with spectacular views of the whole bay area. The fog cleared slightly so we could see the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge.
Back at Ted and Iasmine’s house, Ted grilled some steaks while Iasmine cooked asparagus and we chopped and sautéed onions and mushrooms. Dinner was really outstanding and we had a wonderful time chatting to them. It was midnight before we finally left and drove back to the hotel.
We were woken up at 6.00 am on Sunday by the shrill ring of the bedside phone. The phone stopped ringing before we could pick it up and we managed to go back to sleep. We woke up again after 8.30 am, packed up and checked out of the hotel.
Then we drove to the Sunset District to have breakfast at Art’s Cafe which Ted and Iasmine had recommended and had great reviews on the internet. The cafe was run by Korean Americans and was the size of a shoebox. There were no tables or chairs – just one long diner bar where everyone sat side by side on stools and watched their breakfast being cooked right in front of them. The menu had a strong Korean influence with tofu, Kim Chi, teriyaki beef or chicken, Korean hot bean paste and rice options. We shared the lunch special (teriyaki beef with Kim Chi and rice), a side of hash browns, French toast with whipped cream, banana and walnuts and pancakes with banana and walnuts. The food was really delicious and cheap.
After breakfast we drove to the Haight –Ashbury neighbourhood - famous for the “Summer of Love” in the mid-60s when thousands of hippies converged upon the neighbourhood. We walked along Haight Street which had a strong alternative hippie vibe with its colourful murals and psychedelic shop fronts. There were lots of restaurants and bars, vintage clothing boutiques, alternative bookstores, “head shops” (with drug paraphernalia displayed prominently in the windows) and independent record stores. When we looked down the side streets, we saw a lot of beautifully restored Painted Lady Victorians dressed in brighter colours than usual.
After we had walked up and down Haight Street, we walked into the lush green Golden Gate Park. To our surprise, there were quite a lot of trees in flower even though it was the middle of winter. We walked past the Conservatory of Flowers and past a park where a free swing dancing lesson was in progress, to the boathouse at Stow Lake. At Stow Lake we saw the usual ducks and seagulls and some striking Canadian geese.
It was after 3.00 pm by the time we got back to our car. As we drove out of San Francisco the sun came out and we had some great views over the greater Bay area. It was a short drive to the town of Napa where we managed to find a cheap room for a couple of nights at the Wine Valley Lodge.
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