Driving through snow in Arizona in May!

This has been such a busy 3 days, I don't know if I can get it all down before I collapse in a heap!  I am still not adjusted to jet lag. But I do seem to enjoy the odd sleep patterns I develop and the lonely times in late evenings and early mornings where I have to entertain myself quietly.  Such as now.

After only sleeping in LA, we caught another plane and travelled to San Fransisco for two nights, staying at the Hilton on O'Farrell Street.  It was a beautiful hotel, dangerously close to a huge Macy's!  We bought an all loops sightseeing bus trip and did the downtown, Golden Gate Bridge/Sausolito, Nob Hill and Night tours.  Although we learned an incredible amount about this vibrant and cultured city, by the end of our two days, we could practically recite the main lines!  Even singing along every time we passed the Hotel California! 

I love coincidences and this one was amazing.  I started a book called The Sacred Bones by Michael Byrnes the day after going to Sausolito and there is a line in the introduction I would never have fully appreciated without having been on this trip.  The strange thing is this book is about antiquities in Jerusalem, similar to the Da Vinci Code.  The line was:  "he swore he could smell the perfume of its sweet eucaplytus trees".  Just after driving over the Golden Gate Bridge, we passed a grove of Eucaplytus trees and the beautiful perfume followed us for the longest time.


We caught a streetcar to get to Pier 39 for breakfast and to see the Sea Lions that have made Fishermans' Wharf their home since the 1989 earthquake!  There seem to be almost 100 of them, all shapes and sizes and completely at home with all the people looking over them.  When they first arrived, (the assumption is the earthquake scared them and they looked for refuge at the wharf), the city tried to scare them away.  But nothing worked and now they are a tourist attraction!

On our second day, we visited Alcatraz. We all had to by extra clothes because it is much colder than it should be here. I thought I was prepared and remember a saying of Mark Twain's: "the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Fransisco".

To go on a boat in this cold weather, I bought a pink hoody and a pink pashmina to wear with a cardigan, and my reversable black and green fleece. I also have no closed toed shoes and wore my wool socks with my sandals!

Alcatraz is amazing and it is difficult to put into words, but I would recommend anyone visiting the area to make this a priority. 

On Sunday, we flew back to LA to pick up our Chrysler Town &  Country and drive to Las Vegas.  This was just a one night stopover at the Golden Nugget.  Wow, what a huge hotel!  We were in the Carson Tower and went up and down to dinner and to the Fremont Experience and I still have no idea how to find our room!

The Fremont Experience is another event that is impossible to describe.  They closed off the streets between the Golden Nugget and the other iconic casinos at this intersection, built  a sort of roof/movie screen over the street and every hour they do sort of a musical laser show tribute that is breathtaking!  We saw the Queen and Kiss ones.  Anyone visiting Vegas should NOT miss this and it is free!

Now we are on today, when we checked out of this beautiful and huge hotel, got in the car and travelled ten hours! This was the most horrible day of our trip because we had to do alot of miles to get to the position to accomplish everything else we want to do this trip.  As far as I am concerned, we have already done enough for a two week vacation, and we have only been gone 5 days! 

And it is still so cold!!  It has been in the 40's most days and the layers of clothes keep getting piled on.  It does give me an excuse to buy a few heavier items, but I have never required an excuse to shop so I don't really appreciate this!

We are now staying in Moab, right in the middle of Canyonlands for two nights. It is a really cute place and we walked up the main street and looked at shops. I even bought a Christmas present today!  The lady at the shop told us it should be in the 100's just now, not in the 40's.  This cold cannot last the entire time we are over here, but then I guess I will have to complain about how hot it will be!!