DAY 3 – San Francisco to South Lake Tahoe (188 miles driven, 3.12 miles walked)
Getting a decent cup of tea in the US is something akin to the quest for the Holy Grail, therefore it was great to start the day today as Peet’s Coffee which made a very passable cupper. The concept of tea with milk is, however, beyond the Americans and so I always have to get them to remove some of the hot water to allow me space to add the milk. First world problems I know.
The next challenge was collecting the hire car something that I have found a stressful experience in the past. Ever since an incident in 2009 I no longer allow Helen to accompany me to the counter when collecting so I had to face this stress alone. Fortunately today it was plain sailing as, I suspect, all the hard work had been done for us in advance by the company we used to booked the holiday.
The next stop on our tour is South Lake Tahoe but we were going to make a slight detour to Sacramento to visit someone that was on the same course as me in university and I hadn’t seen in 34 years. Anyway this meant that driving out of San Francisco over the Golden Gate Bridge was possible. I cannot think of a bridge that I have been more excited to traverse and it did not disappoint. Looking back across the bay and seeing Alcatraz and San Francisco was also worth the trip.
The journey to South Lake Tahoe would have been beautiful if it wasn’t for the rotten weather again today making everything look grey and miserable. There were some beautiful vistas but the low cloud made them a less exciting view.
One interesting thing we noted as we passed through areas where people were living was that the signs to the town/village etc had both the altitude and the population shown. The former was unlikely to change but the latter certainly could. One had a population shown of 111 and, presumably, was almost immediately incorrect from the moment the sign was put up. I don’t know how often the population is reassessed but there must be an exercise of updating the signs which must be costly.
Tomorrow we head on to Yosemite.