Cakifornia 2007 (10)

We left Grass Valley, 8am Wednesday and took Highway 49 south. The 49
is named after the 1849 Gold Rush and the road twisted and turned through
the Sierra Nevada foothills through the old mining towns. Well it
used to go through but now goes round some. This confused Clementine
or sat nav and she froze at one point. After this incident at Sutter
Creek we had a coffee and Castroville on the coast south of San
Francisco and went there via freeways. At one point it looked like we
were being directed back to Sacramento but immediately after
following this direction we saw Clementine was really sending us
south towards San Jose really but the instructions were confusing.
However the next day she was a star in getting us back to the Hertz
returns place at the airport.

The Sierras had been hazy but the Pacific coast was clearer. We did a
total of nearly 400 miles in the day, by far our longest drive as we
only totalled 1650 miles the whole holiday.

We lunched at Castroville which proclaims itself the artichoke
capital of America. I unusually had a veggie lunch of fried and
boiled artichokes. It was a late lunch and as we went north up the
coast we saw few motels. When we stopped for gas, the other five
people in the gas station were all speaking Spanish. We did see and
photo a grand Pacific sunset but it was after dark when we found a
quite expensive motel at El Granada, half an hour from the airport in
the morning. We got there in very good time for a five hour flight to
Washington. Next to us was a professor of environmental studies at
Stanford University. I declared my dissent from the received views of
global warming.This time we were in seats with more leg room. I was
dopey after the long drive the day before. Washington is three hours
ahead of SF so we were there about 9pm, local time and due to leave
for Heathrow at 10 pm.

I have to say in contrast with our flight out, booking in
electonically was easy. A delayed luggage container cost us an hour's
delay in leaving and on arrival at London we has to wait half and
hour for a gate at the terminal. On this flight we had the films
showing on little video screen on every sweat. I had a good laugh at
The Simpsons' movie and Evan Almighty. So we were at Perivale via
tube and a kind Debbie by 1.15 pm. We are now unpacked and await the
jet lag kicking in. it has been a gerat break. My only slight problem
is i left the mains lead for my new laptop in Grass Valley.