California here we come

We had packed everything the night before so we were ready to creep out of the house at 5.00am the next morning for a 10.00 o'clock flight to San Francisco. The M25 was busy but kept moving and we got there in good time.
The last time I was at Heathrow Terminal 2 it looked like a detention centre (or how I imagine a detention centre would look like), but now it is all spruced up and gleaming, which made our wait there more enjoyable. I love airports anyway, plenty of chances to dream.




Finally on our way. It seems so odd that, after waiting interminably for an event to happen, it does and rushes past in an instant leaving just the memories and the photographs. The flight was good and the cloud cleared for views over the ice of northern Canada and the Rockies and even the Golden Gate Bridge as we were landing.







I had booked a hostel for the night in what I discovered to be a dubious part of town full of beggars, but quite close to the government district. I was to discover on our return visit to San Francisco that beggars are a common sight. If you have any sort of psychological problem you are unlikely to be able to afford any treatment and a lot of people must end up on the streets.
Getting there from the airport was pretty easy as it was close to a BART stop, the slick metro service that San Francisco offers as well as all the other trains, trams, buses and cable cars. It must be the top city for variety of public transport.





Next morning we had breakfast- pancakes, crispy bacon and maple syrup in Dottie's Diner which we had spotted the previous evening and then got a taxi to the depot to pick up our hired camping car. We bumbled around the outskirts for a while, getting used to driving on the right and looking for a supermarket to stock up. We eventually found a shopping centre, spent too much money and headed out on the freeway towards Yosemite. 5 o'clock in the afternoon saw us in Mariposa not far from the park entrance and we finally arrived around 7.00 passing an iconic view of the half dome on the way through to our campsite - Upper Pines where we quickly cooked ourselves an evening meal, made the bed up and turned in for the night, still on English time and feeling somewhat shattered.




All the pictures were taken on the Fuji XE-1 or my phone. The tripod was still packed away in my case to be retrieved the following day.






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