For the first time in over a week I have enough internet access to write a post! I'm writing this from a Navajo Tipi camp ground in Monument Valley, Utah, but more on that in another post.
As I mentioned in my last post I've met up with some friends who I'm now travelling with. They're all in North America for university exchanges starting in a month or so. I'll introduce them properly at some point but for now they are Hannah, Rez, Peggy, and Todd. Peggy arrived in San Francisco on Sunday the 28th of June and I met her at the airport. We were staying with Peggy and Todd's (brother and sister) Aunt who lived in Alameda which is an island a short distance away from San Francisco.
The drive to Alameda was interesting as it featured a drive over the Bay Bridge and through Oakland. Oakland has a bit of a reputation for being dangerous and our first introduction was a huge settlement of homeless people living under an overpass. Alameda is just across the water from Oakland but is completely different with nice houses and tree-lined streets.
The 28th just happened to be the day the San Francisco Pride festival was on. This year's parade was extra special as a result of the Supreme Court decision on Marriage Equality a few days earlier. We travelled into the city on the BART along with hundreds of others who were dressed up in bright colours. The festival was based around the Civic Center with a number of streets closed to traffic.
The festival was really fun and positive with music and speeches. Two prominent equal rights campaigners even got married on the stage which was cool. It was awesome to see that part of the city filled with so many people as it was in the same district I had stayed in a few weeks earlier.
After the festival we decided to have a look at the big tourist spots like Union Square and Fisherman's Wharf. We caught a ferry back to Alameda and then had an amazing dinner of Salmon stuffed with Crab cooked by Peggy's Aunt Beth.
The next day it was back to the Airport to pick up Todd. We spent the majority of the day out near the Airport shopping for camping equipment and setting up bank accounts etc. We also stopped off at Stanford and had a look at a place where Peggy and Todd's sister had lived a few years before. The final task was to buy a roofbox for the car which would hopefully help fit the camping gear needed for five people.
I should mention here that the original plan had had both Peggy and Rez arriving on the same flight on the 28th and Hannah arriving the next day a little later than Todd. However due to a hardware failure at the State Department no visas could be issued for over three weeks. Both of the girls had booked their visas and sat their interviews almost a month before their scheduled departure dates but because of this issue were not granted visas in time and had to cancel and change their flights. The State Department itself was pretty good about giving updates on the situation but the US Consulate in Auckland was extremely unhelpful and did not even allow to the girls to change their delivery method to pick up.
The visas ended up arriving some time on the 29th US time and Rez quickly booked a flight to arrive in San Francisco on the 1st of July while Hannah would be flying to Las Vegas on the 3rd. This left the 30th open for activities so we decided we'd go wine tasting in the Sonoma and Napa Valleys.
On the way we made stops at Sausalito and the Golden Gate bridge and took some nice photos with the fog rolling in the background. The air was freezing cold though which made it hard to stay for long. The drive to Sonoma was a short one but the change in temperature was drastic. It went from what felt like 10 to 15 degrees right up to over 40 in the space of an hour and 50 kms.
Peggy and Todd at Golden Gate
We had a wine tasting at a winery called Ravenswood which was great. It was good to try varieties that are not found often in New Zealand such as Zinfandel. We sat outside though and the heat was oppressive. Peggy had her first try at driving on the way to Napa and had no issues. We drove to the Napa township rather than any winery in particular and did a tasting at a bar that represented a number of wineries. The town was small and nice with a cool waterfront.
Napa Township
The next day we picked up Rez from the airport and went grocery shopping before leaving for Yosemite National Park. The traffic out of the city was extremely slow and the journey ended up taking far longer than it should have. Yosemite is extremely popular and camp sites fill up early so we decided that we would take whatever we could find. We ended up at a really nice place just outside of the park called Yosemite Lakes. Our site was nestled among pine trees beside a stream. The facilities there were amazing with really good showers (something that has become rare since then).
En route to Yosemite
This has ended up far longer than I intended and I'll probably need to cut down a bit if I hope to catch up. Hopefully internet access will improve soon and I'll be able to update more regularly.