Horrah ...... We made it to the Pacific Coast

A picnic in Palo Duro National Park



The last post took you on our journey up to and including our visit with Rosella's sister who is a nun in Marionville Missouri. That was two weeks ago and since then we have travelled all the way to San Francisco. In this photo, we are having a picnic on a bright and sunny day in Palo Duro Canyon near Amarillo Texas. The next day, we travelled to New Mexico

Having a little snooze while Rosella goes window shopping

After visiting Albuquerque New Mexico, we arrived in Santa Fe the state Capital, a very charming city with old western charm. The next stop on our road trip was Denver where we enjoyed exploring the 16th Street mall which was full of historical buildings and interesting shops. After Denver, we spent a full day in Salt Lake city where we spent most of the time visiting Temple Square, the headquarter for the Mormons. It was a very enlightening visit!

Where are our snow tires?

We then proceeded to spend three days in Reno Nevada. We stayed at the Peppermill Resort where I had booked rooms on the Internet for this four star hotel for the price of the taxes you would pay for a four star hotel in a major city. The accommodation was excellent, I of course played a little poker while Rosella took full advantage of the resort facilities, using the pool, the exercise room and other resort amenities.

Twenty minutes outside Reno, on our way to San Francisco, it started snowing in the High Sierras and when we got to Donner's Pass a historic location famous for having taken the lives of many pioneers as a result of the snow. Well before we knew it, there were warning signs all over the highway that snow tires or chains were needed to proceed trough the pass and as we rolled along, the cars and trucks were all stopping along side of the road to install chains on their vehicles. We continued till we got to a barricade and the officials would not allow us through without the required equipment. There were guys there selling cable chains for $30 each with a $25 installation charge. As we stoped this very nice guy who had a shine on for Canadian beer came to talk to us and told us that these kind of squalls usually last for a couple of hours so he suggested we save our $100, turn back and go to Truckee and enjoy the "Old Town" atmosphere for a couple of hours and come back when the squall subsided.

Well on the way back to Truckee, we saw a sign for Lake Tahoe and the Squaw Valley Ski resort so we decided to go there if it wasn’t too far. As it turned, Squaw was only 13 miles so we proceeded and went to see the resort. We took quite a few pictures while we drove around, it was also snowing there a bit. We continued driving towards Lake Tahoe but turned around since we weren’t sure how far it would be and we didn’t want to get too far away from Interstate 80, the main road to San Francisco. We went back towards Donner’s Pass but the trucks and cars were still parked off the side of the Interstate either installing or having chains installed on their vehicles so doubled back and headed for Truckee’s Old Town.

When we got there, we found a very charming little town that was straight out of the 60's. It was very charming so we parked the car, walked around for a while doing a little window shopping, the folks in town were very nice. We then stoped off at the local "Home made" coffee shop and both had chilly.

After that, Rosella went out to investigate the local shops while I headed for the tourist information place where there was a sign announcing that they had Internet access and since I had not been on the Internet for the past few days I decided to try and catch up. While I was enquiring about the Internet I also asked if she knew if the Donner Pass was open for regular traffic, she checked and it was so I went out looking for Rosella and when I found her, we immediately took off for San Fran.

Blossoms, one hour from Donner's Pass!

Well no more than 30 minutes the other side of Donner’s Pass we started to see, green trees and fields, something we had not seen for more than a week because the terrain in recent days had been so arid and before we knew it, we were starting to see blooms in the orchard trees and the temperature went from 28 in the morning to over 65 degrees in the afternoon. It was a beautiful ride the rest of the way to San Francisco.
As usual we relied on our handy dandy GPS to direct us right to the front door of our rented condo for the next four days.

All aboard the San Francisco Cable Cars!

Today is March 1st and we have spent the last three days visiting San Francisco, We went on 3 Walking tours including the Fisherman' Warf, Chinatown and the Haight Asbury neighbourhood where all the hippie cultural revolution started in 1967. All three tours were very interesting and most informative. We also bought a Hop-on Hop-off buss tour which too us on three loops in the city including a tour of the Golden Gate Bridge, a full tour of the San Francisco downtown area and a night tour of the city. We thoroughly enjoyed all the tours. We also spent quite a bit of time at the Organic Farmers Market in the Ferries Terminal Building on Saturday and enjoyed fine Mexican food for lunch. The first two days here it was sunny and in the mid 50'sF. Today, we started the day in the rain but as the day progressed, the rain subsided and it turned out to be a pretty nice day. Tomorrow morning, we are headed for a two day ride to Los Angeles which is only 310 miles away but we are taking the scenic coastal route and plan to stop and go along the way so we will be on Route 1 for two days I will update you on that leg of the road trip.