Day 25

5.30am - “Matt, wake up, there’s a bear outside my window.” Matt had already been woken by the banging on the tent frame of the people next door in an attempt to scare it away. The bear had come back. Peering out the window mesh in the dark, we saw that this time it was even closer - literally right outside our window! We could actually hear its heavy breathing and sniffing as it searched for more food (it turns out, when we went to investigate in daylight, that it had been chomping on a bag of pistachio nuts that some moron had obviously left lying around. Not sure if it took the shells off first, though.) Eventually, the banging from next door (and then us) scared it off, but there was no way we were going back to sleep now!
An early start, therefore, allowed us time to go and see the giant sequoia trees in Mariposa Grove, before heading off to San Francisco. On the way, we continued with this theme (Spanish for butterfly, you know) by stopping for lunch in the cute little town of Mariposa. This was another of those fantastic unexpected finds: a quaint tea room, very English in some ways but with its own quirky style, where we had afternoon tea - the first time Lynne has done so! Ironic that her first experience of such an English thing should be in America! Gorgeous sandwiches (quartered with the crusts cut off, naturally) and scones made this a real pleasure after some of the obscene portions we’ve eaten on this trip. However, Matthew, faced with a choice of so many teas, reverted to stereotype and went for English breakfast tea, forgetting from his time in Spain that this is not always a good idea abroad, and receiving a pot of tea-coloured water to drink.
Satisfied, and having chatted for a while to the lovely people who ran the tea room, we were on our way again. After a couple of hours, we saw it - the Pacific Ocean. Finally, after 3600 miles and approximately 60-70 hours in the car, we had reached the West Coast! Excitement that our directions told us to drive over the Bay Bridge soon turned to disappointment upon realising that this was not the Golden Gate. The bay, however, is beautiful. We had read that fog is a common problem in summer, but we weren’t quite prepared, when we stepped out of the car, for how cold it was! People were wearing coats; one or two were even wearing scarves! Having checked into San Francisco’s first official green hotel, with its ‘revolutionary’ system of having to insert your key card into a slot to operate the lights (I.e the standard practice in most hotels in Europe) we went looking for food and liquid refreshment.
Now, California is famously non-smoking and had a ban in place long before most European countries. However, when a guy next to us in the first bar we entered lit up, we discovered that we had managed to accidentally stumble upon possibly the only bar in San Francisco where you can smoke (apparently because the only people who work there are the owners)! We also began to sense it was a gay bar (though perhaps just one with an unusually high proportion of men), which made Lynne’s excited English outburst of “Well in that case I’ll have a fag!” all the more embarrassing. More bars followed, ending up in Vesuvio - a favourite haunt of Jack Kerouac and the Beats - where Lynne was able to relieve her margarita withdrawal symptoms having not had one for several days. Finally it was off to bed, another day filled with memories behind us.
Photos as soon as we can, promise!