San Fran Thank You Ma'am

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On leaving Yosemite National Park very late, we stayed the night in Madera in suburban California. All of a sudden the world was a busier place again. Before heading back into San Francisco, we stopped for a couple of nights in quaint Monterey and checked out pretty Carmel-on-Sea, where Clint Eastwood used to be mayor.

Seeing the Pacific again meant that it was almost time to go home and appropriately, the only clouds we'd seen in 4 weeks appeared on our last day in Monterey. Driving in through the greater San Francisco Bay area gave us a proper idea of just how big a city San Fran really is and it took us a long time to reach the rental depot to drop off our trusty Chevy Big Boy. Maybe we were subconsciously just driving slower, trying to eek out every second on the road...

After dropping off the van, we took at taxi to the San Francisco Hilton (a final night touch of lux with great views over the city) for our last night in America and a knock-out Chinese meal in Chinatown. I really love this city and after declaring Utah as my favourite US state, I'm marking San Francisco up as my favourite city... what a place!

What a great ending to a truely memorable 4 week road trip. Fantastic super-sized experiences of California, Oregon, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana (just a peek!), Utah, Arizona and Nevada and all-in-all, over 5,000 miles in the Chevy.

I'd do it all over again, starting tomorrow morning, if I could : )

America, I salute you!

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