Today we drove through San Francisco and onto Sacramento. Two major stops along the way. We had a really good day.

My love of San Francisco goes back to 1967, when I first heard Scott McKenzie sing San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Love). The song had a great influence on me and to this day it rates as one of my favourite songs.  It was a great thrill to meet Scott McKenzie when he performed in Perth in 1994 and Rayls and I are now proud to call him a friend. It has been my honour to have created and maintain the Scott McKenzie web site since 1996.

Anyway, all this is mentioned because today Rayls and I drove through San Francisco as we travelled from San Jose to Sacramento. It was probably a drive of a bit over 200 K’s.

We have been to Frisco twice before and seen all we wanted to see. Today all we wanted to do was to again walk the famous Golden Gate Bridge.  We were up fairly early and on the road by a bit after 8am and in the Golden Gate car park at around 9am. There are only 81 metered bays on the San Francisco side of the bridge and I wanted one of them. No problems, the car park was just half full at that time. Maximum 2 hours on the meter so we got some quarters, got our 2 hours and headed off.

We did this walk in 2003 and I don’t remember any problems that time but I struggled with my fear of heights this time. When we made the first pier I clung to it but we eventually made it the 1.7 miles there and another 1.7 miles back. Good walk, lovely day and I was sweating by the time we got back.

The views from the bridge are awesome - such a nice location.

Glad we did it.

Getting out of the Golden Gate car park, which now had a long line of cars waiting for the bays, was easy enough. We drove over the bridge and headed north to Muir Woods National Monument.

I had the GPS coordinates loaded - got them off the National Park Service web site, can't go wrong.

Around 10 miles north of the bridge we headed towards the coast - we saw some signs saying Muir Woods so we couldn't go wrong!

We went wrong!

The GPS wanted us to go up some narrow lane just as we were about to arrive - no way did we want to go that way.

By the way, the GPS has been working fine since Phoenix.

So I continued up Highway 1, the road I deserted just after LA a few days ago. Narrow, tight bends, strange intersections, cyclists - tough going. We ended up at the top of a hill and had some magnificent views of the Pacific Ocean and back towards San Francisco. Worth a look but where was Muir Woods?

We got caught up with some sort of community event where we were able to ask for directions and back down the hill we went. So I followed the GPS directions and went back down the hill and this time I turned down that narrow lane. The lane only went a few hundred metres and the GPS then wanted me to go off road and down a cliff to death and destruction.

No Way.

Back to Highway 1 and went back to one of those weird interstions - one of the roads off it was Muir Woods Rd. Bummer, missed it on the way up. Down this road we went and found the car park full and road side parking for miles. I managed to squeeze into a bay - lucky I didn't get that upgraded car back in Phoenix!

We went for a walk along a lovely track, nice stream, the redwoods are very impressive trees and we generally had a good time for a couple of hours.

After our second walk for the day we headed for Sacramento. This time Scott had us into a Hilton for just $49. Same hotel that Scott and I stayed at last year - nice room.

We had a look around Sacramento and checked out some stores. Fry's Electrical, Old Navy and Barnes and Noble.

No quilt shops today!

A really good day. Tomorrow onto Lake Tahoe, Just a couple of hours drive. Not sure about Tuesday, maybe just hang around Lake Tahoe and then Wednesday we head for Cedar City in Utah - no Yosemite on this trip. We will take the most direct way to Cedar City, 540 miles straight across Nevada on Highway 50. This is the way Scott and I did it back in 2001 - we drove through the night on that occasion, daylight this time.