JBs California Holiday
May/June 2005
Web Report and Pics
Saturday 21st May
We flew out to San Fransisco from Heathrow on Saturday lunchtime, we had taken the coach up to Heathrow the night before and stayed at a hotel by the airport to avoid a shocking early start to get to the airport for 9am checkin (11am flight!). Security at the airport is ridiculous, they have loads of different people checking different things at different times, so all you would need to do to smuggle something (ie nail clippers) onto the plane is to move them between your bags at the right points !!! Still, as long as we can only use plastic cutlery, the world is a safer place right :-) Flight was delayed by an hour exactly which seemed suss to me, but not too bad.
Flight was long, but Virgin has good entertainment, although I am sure they are shrinking the leg room (or I am growing), they had about 50 films to choose from which you can start and stop when you like, so watched Oceans 12, A life aquatic, and Spanglish, which were all OK, from what I could tell over the noise of the plane :-)
Landed about an hour late, and my friend Paul kindly picked us up from the airport which saved us having to take the bus/trains into the city, which was very nice. Paul had just bought a house with his girlfriend Christen, so it was really nice of him to make the time to pick us up which we really appreciated.
Pauls flat is superb, its massive, and is at a superb location, right on Market St which is the main drag through San Fransisco and about 1 minutes walk from the tram (F-car) stop which runs right through the city and round the waterfront to Fishermans Wharf !
We didn't know how tired we would be, but as we all felt OK, we decided to take a wander to find the biggest rubber band ball in the world, which Andrew had done some research on the roadside america website and found it was about 6 blocks from Pauls place - Paul didn't know anything about it, and was pretty sceptical we would find it, but we headed off on foot to see if we could find it! It was exactly where Andrews information said, in a shop run by the most miserable shpo keeper in San Fransisco, who was clearly sick of people coming into his shop to see the ball, so had covered it up with towels to stop people taking pictures with it, and was a grumpy old sod !! We tooks come pictures outside with the sign, and Andrew sneaked a pic through the doorway of the ball, before we legged it !!
Paul then took us back via a really nice park at Mission Delores with views of the city, so grabbed a pic with him there !
We headed back to the flat, and were knackered, so Paul popped out to the supermarket to get pizza which we ate and then collapsed into bed !
Sunday 22nd May
Paul stayed at Christen's, so we had the flat to ourselves so we had a lie in, and a lazy start as we were meeting Paul on Union St for lunch. We took a bus over to Union St and wandered round the shops, before heading down to the Marina which has great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz, so got some pics. We then wandered back up to Union St to meet Paul, who had leant us his cellphone so he could find us, and went to a nice diner on Lombard St for lunch, and then Paul took us down to a fantastic camping and sports shop called Sports Basement, as we wanted to buy some thermarest camping mattresses, and they are under half the price in the states, so we bought three of them, and a bunch of shoes, swimwear and other odds and ends !!
Pauls girlfriend Christen lives just nearby, so Paul had left his car there, so we walked back to get his car, via the park where people seem to dump pet terrapins in the pond, and they grow to be huge, and were all out sunbathing on a wall !! We got to Christen's place to pickup Pauls car, and met Christen, who was working from home so popped out to say hi, and that we would all go for a meal on Monday for my bithday !
Monday 23rd May - My birthday !
I wanted to do something special for my birthday, so had worked out a pretty fantastic day. Started off by opening a bunch of cards I had brought out with us from family and friends, so thanks to everyone who sent me a card ! Then headed out to Fishermans Wharf. Things started off well, weather was fantastic again, we caught the tram at the end of Pauls road down to Fishermans Wharf, a tram arrived almost as soon as we got there and was empty, so off to a very good start.
Unfortunately, about 2 stops into the journey the tram just stopped - it seems another tram had derailed on the line in front of us, which meant three trams were stuck behind it blocked including ours, so we got off and started walking down to get a bus/tram or whatever !
Luckily, just as we started walking, the recovery team arrived, and they used one of the stuck trams to shunt the derailed one round a corner to clear the track, so by the time we had walked 3-4 minutes to the next stop, just as I was wondering how we would possibly get to Fishermans Wharf in time, our tram rolled up again, and took us the rest of the way to Fishermans Wharf !
I had pre-booked the Alcatraz ferry, and audio tour, so we took that which was excellent, I last went to Alcatraz about ten years ago, with Paul on our first (company paid) trip to California (a 3 day trip which we managed to spend almost the entire time sightseeing on expenses), and the main block hasn't changed but the audio tour is new, and they have cleared all the rubble from the exercise yard so you can wander round it which is amazing.
Grabbed lunch at McDonalds, and then walked up to the Go-Car pickup garage just near the cable car stop, Go-Cars are crazy yellow buggies, powered by a 50cc moped engine, and have GPS satnav built in so they give you an audio tour of the city, with directions etc on where to go ! I was really looking forward to it, but felt Nicola and Andrew were terrified at the prospect, but they got on well, Andrew really enjoyed it, and I think Nicola was just relieved to get out at the end ! The engines are really gutless so on the steep hill climbs it really struggles, but this all added to the fun, and it was a hoot and we got some great views of places I had never been to, and got some good pics too !
One of the highlights was driving down russian hill in a crazy yellow buggy with shockingly bad brakes :-) Was well worth it though, and had a fantastic time !!
In the evening we went for a meal with Paul and Christen to a restuarant called 'Home' which was really nice, so it was a fantastic birthday all round !!!
Tuesday 24th May
Another fabulous sunny day, when we were on the Golden Gate Bridge on Sunday with Paul, we saw a helicopter fly under the bridge which looked amazing, I had always assumed this was illegal, and that it must be a filmcrew or something like that with special permission, Nicola had found a leaflet for San Francisco Helicopter Tours, so I phoned them up to ask if they flew under the bridge, and they said they do it every day as long as visibility was clear ! Today was perfect, so we booked to take the tour which flies from Sausalito, which meant they would send a minibus to pick us up and drive over the GG bridge both ways which sounded superb.
As the tour wasn't till lunchtime, we took the tram to Union Square for a wander around the shops, and had lunch at the subway sandwich shop, then got picked up for the helitour, and driven to a tiny landing pad on the edge of the water at Sausalito. The helicopter was a very nice long ranger with 6 seats, and only 5 passengers so we all got a window, Andrew had never been in a helicopter before so he sat in the front next to the pilot. We all wore headsets, so the pilot could talk to us, and also played various suitable music, the superman theme, followed by various other big orchestral bits, and a few San Francisco songs (left my heart in ... etc).
FLight started off with a zoom takeoff over the water, over the headlands to the fly across the front of the GG bridge, then round over fot point and coming back, when we suddenly swooped down under the bridge which was amazing, and then looped back over the top ! We then flew over Alcatraz and the city coming back round along the front of Fishermans Wharf before returning back to Sausalito, the flight was about 40 minutes in total, and was really fantastic !!
We got dropped back to Union Square by the minibus, so wandered up through china town and got the tram back. In the evening we went over to Christens place, and had take out Indian in front of the TV as Paul doesn't have cable, and loves 'the contender' which had its series finale !! We also borrowed Christens internet to check on road conditions in Yosemite , as we had hoped to drive in over the Tioga pass, but it was still snowed under due to the amount of snow they had got, so we had to sort out a plan B instead !!
Thursday 26th May
We had arranged to pickup the rental car from a new Alamo office which was 5 minutes walk from Pauls place, when we got there we found it was very new and they didn't even have a proper office yet (it was being built), but after some messing about we got our car, which was a big red SUV, and was brand new so didn't even have number plates on yet !!
I asked directions to get back to Pauls to check if we could turn left onto Market and just drive down to Pauls, and the guy said we could, only to find no left turn signs, and so we had a bit of a flap getting back to Pauls but managed in the end, loaded all our stuff into the back of the car and headed off over the bay bridge and towards Sacramento on I-80.
Didn't have to drive far, as our first checkpoint for the day was the Jelly Belly gourmet Jelly Bean factory near Fairfield, as Andrew had found from his web research that they offer a free factory tour, and had been rated very highly ! The factory tour was superb, we all had to wear silly paper hats, and got shown round on a walkway above the factory floor so we could see the various stages in making jelly beans and the other sweets they produce. At the end we got a bunch of free samples, and wandered round the factory store which sells loads of jelly bean related stuff, as well as big bags of mis-shaped jelly beans which are really cheap !
Some of the new flavours they had out were roasted Garlic (eeerhhh!) ,and Dr Pepper which is lovely, and you could try them all from a jelly bean bar !!! Andrew went a bit crazy and bought half the shop :-)
We then went to the canteen for lunch, and I had a cheeseburger in the shape of a Jelly Bean, which is a superb comedy photo oppurtunity, and was a decent burger as well !!
After lunch we got back on the road to carry on up I-80 heading towards the north of Lake Tahoe, but we needed an overnight stop in between, so Andrew had again come up trumps by finding a small town called Auburn, where a mad Dentist built a bunch of massive concrete statues back in the 1970s - mostly of nudey women !! They are not marked on the map or signposted, so we found the first one easily (right by the freeway), but had to hunt round for the others. We checked into a hotel with heated pool for a treat, and the receptionist gave us directions to the dentists office where we found three statues, they are all massive, the biggest is about 80ft high and weighs 120 Tonnes !!!!
Pictures below show how big they are compared with us !
We headed back to the hotel for a swim which was really nice, and got an early night.
Thursday 26th May
We carried on driving up towards Reno, stopping at Grass Valley which is an old gold mining town, we headed to the Empire State Mine which was one of the big Gold mines in the area, but they weren't running organised tours, and whilst there was loads of stuff there, without any kind of guide or map, it was hopeless trying to make sense of it, we had a wander round some of the mine buildings, looked down the top of the 11000ft deep mine shaft complex, and saw a big model of the mines many tunnels which looks impressive, but felt that a proper map or tour would have been much better ! We got back on the road, and decided rather than going to North Tahoe and then driving to Reno, it would be better to drive straight to Reno and stay at a Casino hotel.
I had never been to Reno, and assumed it would be like a mini Las Vegas, but its a bit of a dump! We checked into Circus Circus which had a good price on the room, and wandered round the casino floor, played some slots to win a car, and some other stuff. Also saw a couple of the big top shows, including a juggler, a dog show with performing dogs which was a bit concerning, and some asian girls spinning hoops which was entertaining !!
Me and Andrew went for a quick walk at night to get some pictures of the lights, but there were loads of dodgy people wandering around, so we were a bit relieved to get back to the hotel - certainly not as nice as Vegas, where I have never been at all worried walking around at any time of night on the strip !!
Friday 27th May
Loaded up car and headed off again, stopped for lunch in Truckee which is an olde world town, which is very characterful, had lunch in a little diner, with a model train track running round the ceiling which was very nice ! Carried on to Tahoe, and looked in at Squaw Valley which is a big sports complex which was built to host the 1960 Winter Olympics, and has been updated in the past few years ! There is a big cable car up to 8200ft 'high camp' where they were still ski-ing, but also have a swimming pool, hot tub and ice skating rink, so we planned to come back the next day to go for a swim in the snow as it seemed a bit unusual !! Drove on to Tahoe Vista, which is one of the many small towns on the lake edge which all merge into one big sprawl, and found a nice place to stay with a swimming pool and hot tub, and view of the lake, which looked amazing with snow peaked mountains all the way round ! Unloaded car, and got changed into our togs, only to discover the pool wasn't heated and was absolutely freezing ! Only Andrew was brave enough to have a swim, but we all enjoyed the hot tub (which was scalding hot !!).
For dinner we went to Jasons beachside grill, and had a nice meal sat outside right next to the lake which was very nice !
Saturday 28th May
Drove the short distance to Squaw Valley, and took the 110 person cable car up to high camp, which was packed with people with ski's and snowboards, and us holding our swimming gear and feeling a bit ridiculous ! It was very windy and pretty chilly (63degF) at the top, but we got changed anyway, and looked forwward to getting in the heated pool - sadly the pool was heated, but the cold weather was too much for the heaters to overcome, so water was pretty nippy I can tell you !! Still, it was very bizarre to be in an outdoor pool next to a snowbank, with ski-ers going over our heads on the chairlift, so worth it for an experience ! We swum for a few minutes (it was OK once you were in the water), but then got into the massive hot tub, which was a bit more civilised ! But made the freezing dash back to the changing rooms a bit chilly :-)
After our swim we got ice skates on and did a few laps of the ice rink , which is perched on the top of the mountain with open ends, so has amazing views out over the ski-runs which the pictures don't do justice too !
In the afternoon we had a game of crazy golf at a place by the lake (Magic Carpet Golf at Carnelian Bay), and evening we ordered pizza and stayed in, which was a nice idea, but the pizza was disgusting (crunchy chicken pieces which we think were mostly beak!), not quite what we hoped for !
Sunday 29th May
We packed up car and drove round the west side of Lake Tahoe which is very pretty, and stopped round emerald bay to take some pics, we then drove on to south Tahoe, and stopped at Caesors Palace Casino, where Nicola tried to win a Hummer on a fruit machine, and when that didn't work, she took us shopping instead :-)
Had lunch in a town called Angels Camp, then drove a little further and decided to stop for the night in Sonora, so checked into a hotel, and decided we would go to the movies that evening, so drove out to the cinema to check times, and it was next to a big Walmart store, so we had a bit of a shopping frenzy, and I bought lots of little bits and pieces which were loads cheaper than they are at home. We checked times and decided to see the Adam Sandler film 'The Longest Yard' a remake of an old film, so headed back to hotel for a swim - to find pool was unheated !!! Hot tub was OK though !!
Headed off to movies, cinema was really nice, big comfy seats, and fantastic sound compared with UK cinema's, film was good too, and all round a good night. Got a bit lost driving back, and ended up going via the freeway, had dinner at a deserted BurgerKing.
Monday 30th May
Drove the rest of the way to Yosemite National Park, through the Big Oak Flat entrance on highway 120 and parked in the day parking and took the shuttle bus round to explore the valley floor which is surrounded by amazing views and massive granite cliffs with lots of waterfalls, as they have had nearly double the normal snowfall, and most of the waterfalls are fed by snow melt they are magnificant.
Drove back out of the park through the Arch Rock exit on highway 140 and checked into Yosemite View Lodge which we had pre-booked as we knew accomodation round the park is difficult, room was great, and the complex had several outdoor pools and hot tubs right next to the raging merced river, so had a swim and sat in the hot tub, and for dinner we had pizza at the pizza place on the site, which was very nice, and had no beak in it whatsoever.
Tuesday 31st May
Drove back into Yosemite, and used park and ride to get to the lower yosemite falls trailhead to walk to the falls, which is about a 2 minute walk, so we went the long way round which took about 6 minutes. Last time I was at Yosemite was in late summer so the waterfalls were tiny in comparison, and we actually walked right up to the bottom of the waterfall - this time we got soaked just from crossing the bridge, and literally ran into position for the pictures before running out of the way to avoid getting soaked ! Still it was great to see the waterfalls in full flow !!
We also were lucky enough to see two brown bears, one on our first day in the park, we were driving in and saw some cars pulled over on the road, and were looking to see why and Andrew spotted a brown bear in a meadow behind some tree's, so we pulled over and watched it for a few minutes, about 200 yards away - I took a picture but it didn't come out brilliantly due to distance. Second was during the tram tour we took of the valley floor, where was saw a black bear again just in the tree's but it walked away from us almost as soon as we saw it so I didn't get a pic ! Picture of Nicola is under the flood high water mark from 97 when the valley was badly flooded, and lots of the buildings were damaged or destroyed.
We finished off the day by driving up to Glacier point , which is a climb up to about 9000ft with lots of stunning views. There was lots of snow on the drive up, I believe the road was only cleared for the weekend before, so we stopped on the way up to play about in the snow, and then carried on up to the top where the panoramic views across the valley are just amazing !
This pic is from a postcard I bought, of the most famous tunnel ("drive-through") tree in Yosemite - the Wawona Tunnel Tree in the Mariposa Grove. It fell during the heavy snow winter of 1968-69 because it was weakened by the huge hole cut in the living tree and the extensive road paving over its fragile roots. - this pic was taken in 1968 during its last year !!
Wedsday 1st June
Drove back to San Fransisco, went via a southern loop so we could stop at Gilroy which has a massive outlet shopping mall, so did some more shopping there, before driving through San Jose, stopping in Sunnyvale at my old house, which doesn't look any different (don't know why I thought it would), and stopped for the night in Redwood City, and ate at Johnny Rockets which is a fake 50s diner chain, which is good fun and food was nice, and had amazing 'malt' milkshake.
Thursday 2nd June
Drove back up towards San Francisco, another of Andrews internet finds was a PEZ museum in Burlingame, which is just south of the city. Which we had to visit. PEZ are the little flip top sweet machines we always used to buy in France on our summer holidays when we were kids, and they are great fun, the owner gave us the full tour (its a single room behind his shop), and showed us every PEZ dispenser ever made, around 600 of them, and this is the only place in the world you can see them all !!!
Gary the owner was very enthusiastic, and it was a really fun place to visit, and again I bet a lot of people who live in San Francisco don't even know its there !! Entry to the museum is $3, but we spent a lot more buying loads of PEZ machines, they are only $1.89 each and come with a few packs of sweets as well ! Picture is of front of the shop and me in front of the main cabinet with 525 different pez machines from around 1949 onwards !
We then drove into San Francisco and whilst we had the car we drove to Coit Tower and took some pictures of the view, also drove down Russian Hill and drove through the Haight/Ashbury hippy district, to see the variety of people :-) We then took the car back to Pauls place to drop off all our bags before we dropped it back to the rental office.
Friday 3rd June
Last day in San Francisco so we took the Cable car from Powell and Market to the end of the line, and walked the last few blocks to Fishermans Wharf to wander round the shops at Pier 39. Went to the rainforest cafe for lunch which was nice, and they have the most amazing fish tanks there. Afternoon we took tram back to Powell and Market, then walked about 6 blocks to the big REI camping shop as Nicola wanted to look round for Merrel shoes - they didn't have any she liked, but got some other bits and bobs.
In the evening we saw Paul and Christen, and gave them a present we got them in Yosemite to say thanks for having us, and also as an early housewarming present - they are bear character hats, which we thought were really funny, and they liked enough to pose for this picture ! We went out for a meal near Christens place, to a pasta restuarant which was really nice!
Saturday 4th June
In the morning wandered up Market st to get some stamps to post postcards, and odds and ends, then Paul gave us a lift back to the airport, where we checked in 3 hours before flight only to find flight was again delayed one hour exactly ! Security was a nightmare again, and is completely stupid, but flight wasn't too bad, watched movie Hitch with Will Smith which was good, and tried to get some sleep, also watched the US version of 'The Office' episode one which wasn't that great, but had been very Americanised, so not surprising really !
Sunday 5th June
Flight landed at 11.30am, Andrews parents had very kindly come to the airport to pick us up, so met them at arrivals, and crammed all the bags into the boot of their car which was a relief. Journey back was fine and we stopped for Burger King lunch on the way, and got home around 4pm, very tired, but having had a superb holiday !
Last picture is a map of our route, stops marked in red where I can remember them !
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