Sanfrancisco our last mainland stop

---

Georgia was in her element because she saw plenty of squirrels, chipmunks and deer, we didn't see any bears which would have been nice at a distance. After two nights at Yosemite we drove to Monterey, it was beautiful next to the see, we saw sea lions on all of the rocks around the jetty and a sea otter swimming around fishermans wharf when we were waiting for dinner, we ate at Bubba Gumps ( the big dude from the Forrest Gump movie who started his own shrimping business!) and we received our first parking ticket. I will pay this after I get off from here. The next day we drove to San Francisco, wow these streets are certainly straight up and down, we returned the car to the rental people, with no dents no scratches and low on petrol because we forgot to fill it up! ( This cost us $5.63 a gallon which is less than we pay at home anyway, generally the fuel was about $3.90 as gallon) It was almost a relief to get rid of the car, especially for Steven who did all of the driving, it was a good way to travel as we got to see a lot of the country side that we would not have seen otherwise. Today we did a hop on hop off bus topur around San Francisco and tomorrow we are going to check out Alcatraz, the kids are haviong a swim at the moment and Tom is in the gym on the treadmill, the food we are eating is starting to catch up with us. Only one of the hotels we have stayed at has had a microwave, none have had kettles ( only coffee makers) and half have had tiny fridges so we are eating out all of the time. I will log off now and I will speak to you again before we fly out on Sunday morning. Bye
I have just read back through this and for some reason the first section did not save. I was talking about the 8 hour drive from Las Vegas to Yosemite through lots of hilly, windy country and how we did a bus tour through the park with 6 other people and a guide who had worked there for 43 years so he knew lots about the park. There was a bit more but that is it in a nutshell.

---