The Ultimate US Adventure: The Epic Roadtrip 1

Part One: Seattle - Yosemite

Seattle
After a year and a half of planning and dreaming of this trip, it finally came upon us! I drove to the airport and picked up one of my very best friends in the world, Nanci. She had flown all the way from New Zealand to come on an epic roadtrip with me (brave soul!). I was still working for a couple of days and Nanci was an amazing help to me with the kids - it was almost like I had an au pair! She was incredible! We managed to find time to visit certain Seattle landmarks like Pike Place Market. We also did a spot of shopping and had frozen yogurt - yummy! Soon enough it was the day for us to leave! We packed everything up into the car - it felt like we were packing a battleship - we had EVERYTHING you could possibly imagine in that car!!! We left in the afternoon, we stopped in at the Subaru dealership for an oil change - the Stallion got the seal of approval and we were off!!!

Looking pretty neatly packed if I should say so myself!

California
We drove through most of the night, stopping in Eugene, Oregon at 2.30 in the morning to buy some of the world famous Voodoo donuts. We arrived in California later the next morning. It was great weather and we munched on snacks as we chatted and drove.

We drove along the Northern California coast, passing the redwood forests, Crescent City, and Eureka. We stopped only for a milkshake and drove straight through to San Francisco. We decided not to take the toll road (Golden Gate Bridge) and went the long way over the Oakland Bridge. It worked out great for us because the road took us right to a rest stop just out of San Fran. We stopped for the night, got a good rest in our Stallion wagon, then woke up the next morning and drove into town. We drove through the southern suburbs of San Francisco, ate breakfast on top of a deserted hill and went in search of showers in the suburb of Mission. Driving through Mission was one of my highlights - it had a lot of character and charm to it!

San Francisco 
Our first stop in San Francisco was the Palace of Fine Arts - a beautiful Greek and Roman inspired 'palace' surrounded by a lagoon and columns. My mum had recommended that we visit this place -and interestingly enough, it received little mention in our guidebook. It was absolutely beautiful. It was calm and peaceful and just a feast for the eyes.

The Palace of Fine Arts

We then drove around the city for a little bit, familiarising ourselves with the different areas and the main arterial roads. We found ourselves up on top of hills and down by the coast. We certainly got to know our way around!

Famous San Francisco hills!

First view of the Golden Gate Bridge

We saw lots of interesting things along the way including accidentally ended up at a huge picnic with little stalls and performers! We then took a minute to plan out a route of all the things we wanted to see and do. The first on the list was to drive down the famous Lombard St - the crookedest street in the world! To be honest, it took a while to actually find where it was, but once we found it, we drove down, it was lots of fun, although was not that exciting because we had to go at a snails pace!

Lombard St!

Our next stop was down at the waterfront at Fisherman's Wharf. We strolled along, people-watching and buying postcards. It was very touristy, which made for a lively - if not artificial - atmosphere.

We're here!

We strolled on to Pier 39 to see the sea lions, unfortunately the sea lions had heard we were coming and had all taken off, except for three! We were thankful to see three, it was enjoyable!

Pier 39 - three sea lions

Coit tower was next on the list - which was also only very briefly mentioned in our guidebook. It was one of our favourite places. We had a great view of the city from up there!

View of the city skyline

Coit tower

The journey to find the famous Painted Ladies was a little more difficult - we did not have an actual address, and we had no internet to look it up - in fact the only thing we had to go by was the name of the road which we found on the back of a postcard! We drove around and around (getting to know the city even better!) and finally found them! They were charming and beautiful! Well worth the strange mini city tour we went on in order to find them.

All that sight seeing had made us hungry! We headed for the famous Californian burger chain In'n'Out Burger. We had high hopes of the burgers, but we found them to be pretty average. Not disappointing, but certainly not life-changing.

While munching on our burgers we saw the most incredible sunset - I dashed out of the restaurant across the street to see it even more clearly. It was breathtaking.

Wow.

As the nightfall came we headed for a quick stop at Ghirardelli Square (free samples, people! free samples!). We decided to take a nighttime tram ride! There was a bit of a queue, but not as bad as in the daytime so we waited and enjoyed a great evening ride!

We hopped back into our wonderful Stallion wagon and drove to the same rest stop that night. We laid out a basic plan for the next day and went to sleep with wonderful images of San Francisco dancing in our heads. In the morning we headed to Haight - Ashbury a weird and wacky, colourful district full of vintage stores.

We then drove through Golden Gate Park. We didn't stop because we were headed for the coast! We got to the beach and got some amazing views of the Golden Gate bridge. Our guidebook had not really highlighted this at all, in fact, we found out about this beach from a beautiful postcard I had bought the day before! The beach was amazing, we were so glad that we had visited it. We were not impressed with our guidebook!!

We said goodbye to San Francisco in a glorious moment as we drove over the Golden Gate bridge!

Yosemite National Park
Yosemite National Park was our next destination. We took a brief detour to San Jose because we were desperately excited to try Chick-fil-a and San Jose was the closest location. We ordered the standard chicken sandwich/burger and it was AMAZING!!! We both really really really enjoyed it, and made a pact to try and seek out every Chick-fil-a that we would be going past!

Our goal with Yosemite was to see the sunrise at Glacier point. So we drove and drove and drove, arriving at 2am. I was driving, and Nanci prevented me from getting tired by playing an incredible playlist of cheesy 80's and 90's love songs which we sang at the top of our lungs! We were both left pretty much voice-less the next day. We arrived at Glacier point nonetheless, and we set up the car for a quick sleep. We got up early in the morning - groggy and croaky-voiced. As we headed to the lookout the sun was already peeping over the mountains. It was an amazing experience and was very beautiful, although we were a little disappointed that we had missed the very beginning of the sunrise. We resolved that in the future we would check the sunrise times!

We got back to the car to have a bit of a nap. After an hour or so, I happened to look out my window and saw a large grizzly bear standing on top of the car parked right beside us in the carpark! I woke Nanci up and we lay there watching the bear in absolute wonder. It was beautiful. Very calm. It was not threatening at all. It quietly climbed off the car and stood on the sidewalk, looking all around. We had a front row seat to see this bear. It was really an answered prayer for me because I have always wanted to see a bear close up. At one stage, it walked right up to my car door. Then it quietly retreated.

After a while, Nanci and I were wanting to leave and get some breakfast and have a shower, so I got out of the car and starting moving the luggage off the driver's seat so I could drive us away. People were yelling at me for getting out of the car while the bear was about, but I was not afraid, I knew that bear was not going to cause me any danger. I hopped into the driver's seat, said goodbye to the bear, and drove away. 

Yosemite was breathtaking. We took a walk to the Yosemite Falls, which were large and picturesque. The heat was intense, even early in the morning. We stopped a few times to take pictures, but we did not do many walks - we would have simply roasted!!

Magnificent.