We had eaten briefly and quite late at one of the hotel food outlets and retired without heading for the tables or the strip so as to be at the car hire desk sharp at nine. Oh dear! Wherever we go we pick the best rate on offer on comparison sites for car rental. Sadly so does everyone else. The queue at the Dollar desk at the airport was huge and moved precious slow. Why, when it’s all pre-booked, do they have to go through the whole rigmarole of offering you upgrades, extra insurance, child seats, SatNav? Yes we booked SatNav already, thanks. So each transaction takes four or five times as long as it needs. Then unlike most places where you go to a specific car in a numbered bay, at Dollar Las Vegas you walk into a large parking garage and select your own car from Row E where all the cars in your category are parked. Yet more time wasted as we agonise over colour, number of scratches, petrol or diesel and so on. Eventually we are installed and on our way south out of Vegas. At least the SatNav worked OK.
We roll through undulating scrubby hills stopping at one out-turn to admire a finger of blue water amid the arid surroundings. Our route meant we would miss the Hoover Dam but this was part of another related irrigation project which had had a profound effect on local environment and wildlife if the helpful display panels were to be believed.
We stopped off for a coffee at Rosie’s Den Café in White Hills, Arizona – we’d crossed out of Nevada by now. It’s a great place right on Route 93 and what amazed us was the number of people buying Arizona State Lottery tickets. We couldn’t quite see the attraction what with all the gambling opportunities you could possibly want just a short drive back into Las Vegas. However we later saw that the prizes on offer were six $25 million payouts every month, one game with a jackpot of $171 million and so on. The odds are probably no worse than in Las Vegas either.
Refreshed we speed (within limits of course) on down to Kingman then across to a left turn a few miles before Flagstaff onto the 64 signposted Grand Canyon National Park. The road from here on into the south rim is remarkably flat. We’ve obviously all seen pictures of the canyon itself but I for one had not appreciated that it was carved out of a billiard table flat plateau. We arrive at half past one at the Grand Hotel at Tusayan also known as Grand Canyon Village. It had taken us, with stops, just over four hours to drive from Vegas. The Grand is a modern hotel – self-styled upscale – and was very pleasant indeed. We had booked a helicopter flight for five o’clock and needed to check in half an hour beforehand so we hung out at the hotel, had a beer or two and some fries in readiness for my selfie birthday present of the helicopter trip.
With safety briefing completed we board the helicopter and set off over the Kaibab National Forest to the south rim. As you first glimpse the canyon, your breath is literally taken away. None of photographs, travelogues, documentaries and adventure programmes have prepared you for the immensity of the cleft in the earth, the scale of the whole thing and the incredible variety of rock colours and formations.
We flew south to north, turned and returned southwards with great views of the Colorado River twisting through its grand creation. I think for once the “a” word is in order. It was truly awesome. So much so that on return to dry land the ground crew rushed to provide Dee with a box of tissues so overcome was she with the whole experience. It happens quite often they said which is why they were so well prepared. The only mild downside of the flight was that the weather was not great and we had a light spattering of rain on the windscreen as we came back over the forest.
However it seemed to be brightening up so we drove back to the south rim and walked along the edge to find a good sunset viewpoint, just in case.
We got lucky and a few rays shone through lighting the rock formations with that magic hour evening light.
We returned to the hotel had a shower and went down for dinner which was an amusing affair since our very attentive server who looked a bit like a cowboy film extra, was behaving a little nervously and confided that he was going into Las Vegas after his shift. We wondered if he had a habit but it transpired that his nerves were caused by anticipation of a different kind. He was getting married in the morning to his fiancée who was flying in from Thailand tonight. We wondered whether they had ever met before but were too polite to ask and wished them both well.
We wandered around Union Square taking in its historical significance as a place of meetings and protests, admired the Dewey Monument statue of the Goddess of Victory high above us and thought idly about taking a cable car ride – one of the musts in San Francisco which we had failed to do in our previous days here. We had seen the lengthy queues down by Pier 42 and in Market Street and thought we’d have to wait for ever.
We wandered around the huge hotel/casino me resisting the temptation to purchase some really awful Beatles dolls – well Dee is a big fan! We then ate an acceptable dinner in one of the few eateries that remained open and retired to our not-too-smoky room.
We decided not to go back into the valley next day but to drive the Tioga Pass eastwards through the sierra. It is an amazing road but not for the fainthearted. It is very mountainous with twisting roads, vertical drops of 2000 feet with no Armco or stone barriers – just my kind of drive except for two twenty minute hold ups for road works which made the already narrow road single track and short bursts of alternate flow didn’t seem to be on the agenda. I think the 4×4 just in front of us were contemplating getting out their portable BBQ at one point!
We exited the road at Lee Vining on the shores of the weird Mono Lake which appears to have a significant number of clones of Lot’s Wife. It is a saline lake and the accumulation of salt rises up in tall pillars a bit like outdoor stalagmites. We had a lunch stop at the gas station and rest stop which was fine and took the decision to turn left and go north on the interstate 395 and then head west and back to San Francisco on the 108 through the northern sierra as an alternative to retracing our steps via Merced.
The next stretch on Route 5 must be a contender for dullest road in California enlivened by a row of mailboxes for which their were no houses to be seen. Eventually when we turned off onto the 140 at Merced the scenery did improve with a few golden coloured rolling slopes and a generally rural and agricultural feel. As we neared Mariposa the terrain became much hillier with big pines and occasional sightings of big birds which might have been kestrels, hawks and turkey vultures but were usually too high to identify.
We’d booked the Cedar Lodge at El Portal which proved to be a strung out motel with a shop and a restaurant. We were too early to check in, of course, so went for a beer and a light snack until the room was ready. The room was a little old fashioned but did have our towels folded as swans across the end of the bed – often seen in the movies but never before in real life. We dumped our luggage and headed off to the park.
We did find a waterfall with a bit of a trickle, sauntered across the surprising flat meadows that suddenly open up and found the whole place completely enchanting. We also had a glimpse of a brown bear which signs at regular intervals told us not to feed or approach. It was a great afternoon and we made our way back to El Portal for a beer on the porch of our room before dinner.
Fortunately the office was right by the Buena Vista Café which proved an ideal place for lunch. We shared a table with a family from Hawaii and shared their experiences of San Francisco, Las Vegas and LA but didn’t join them in the house 
It was well worth persevering and a reminder of the Japanese gardens in Kanazawa and Okayama we had visited last year, albeit on a much more compact scale. Pagoda, lakes and fountains, lanterns, buddhas and bridges gave it an authentic feel. It’s very popular for photo shoots as we saw both Indian and oriental themed models with their attendant crews. We concluded our visit with a cup of tea – well it is the Japanese Tea Garden – and some excellent mochi cakes. This was another delicacy that we had barely tasted in Japan neither of us being great cake or pudding people.
We decided to dine close to the hotel in a highly web-recommended Thai restaurant called Jitlada. It lived up to its reputation, was small but pleasant, service was friendly and efficient and the food was of such taste and quality that I’m prepared to believe one poster’s claim that it’s ‘the best Thai food in the city’. And that’s what you have to call it The City.
was Getty Day the first of two visits to see how oligarchs with money no object chose to spend it. Interestingly in their later years both Getty and William Randolph Hearst whose castle we planned to visit next day, started talking of their projects in terms of museums rather than just personal indulgences which is how they began. Now they buy baseball and football clubs which don’t leave the same permanent physical identity on the earth’s surface. We went first to the Getty Villa a fanciful reconstruction of a villa from Herculaneum. Its grounds are superb with gardens and courtyards of different kinds surrounding the central palatial building. The centrepiece was a little underwhelming because the ornamental ponds were empty and while blue tiles give some impression of water they don’t reflect like the real thing.
Our first morning in San Francisco was spent in part discovering for ourselves its very hilly topography. We went in quest of three day travel passes to get us around on public transport from Sutter Fine Foods which ‘internet told us retailed them. We foolishly thought it couldn’t be far as our hotel was in Sutter Street too. Striding up one ridge, down the next, passing through some rather seedy areas on the way soon corrected that impression. It doesn’t matter in which direction you head in the city, you will soon be climbing a hill – and many of them are really steep too. We should have watched Bullitt again before visiting as a reminder. We then discovered that given the oldies only pay 75 cents per ride and younger companions only two bucks we probably needn’t have bothered. Particularly as our first proper outing was on the hop-on-hop-off tour bus to get a feel for the city.
Lots of walking about meant we were ready for a beer and we found the excellent Royal Exchange Bar and Grill. I got to musing about how good brewing has become in the States. There was a time when Budweiser, Coors and Miller were all you could ever find – none of which I would willingly ever drink. Nowadays craft beers are everywhere and of very high standards and a great variety of tastes and styles.
yesterday we stopped off for a quickie at the Highway 1 Brewing Company a typical modern day microbrewery with a pilsner, a pale ale, a summer ale, a porter and this week’s special wheat beer on offer. The beer was excellent but even better was the brewery’s slogan – “turning water into something drinkable”. Awesome!
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