Wednesday, May 27th

Kelly

Second to last day on the road, and most of it spent in California. We started by going on a loop along the western shore of Lake Tahoe, which was absolutely beautiful. Sunny, warm, and not yet the high season of summer. The car made it through its last mountain passes well.

From there it was into California proper, meaning 4-lane highways and traffic. Both Mom and I had to remember that it was not ok to go 80 mph in this state, as they have a fairly active highway patrol. We were stuck in traffic going towards the Oakland Bay Bridge and into San Francisco (I know, traffic in SF, shocking).

Mom did a very good job of navigating the tiny city streets, although we've discovered her memory of San Francisco geography has mostly left her over the past 30 years. We went on an odyssey to find the old home on Melrose Ave, and saw most of south San Francisco in the process, including a large number of steep winding roads that barely fit one car, but were still two-lane. My tire was making some odd noises for awhile, and I couldn't stop thinking how odd for it to make it through the Rockies and the desert, only to be bestest by a hill in San Francisco. Luckily the noise stopped, so she seems to have pulled through for now. We had dinner in the Filmore District with my old roommate Adina and then made our way back to the hotel, both of us a little more familiar with the street arrangement now.

Faye
Turns out you shouldn’t go home again, or at least I shouldn’t. Joe and I lived in San Francisco over 30 years ago (for 3 years) and my memory of how to get around is even more non-existent than I thought it would be. All of the SF maps we have are made for tourists and only cover the northern part of SF, not the more residential southern part. I got (not very good) directions from our hotel clerk on how to get to Monterey Ave, the closest big street to where we used to live and figured I’d remember the way from there. I didn’t! There are way too many small, winding, steep, interconnected streets. Luckily Kelly had her trusty Blackberry so she could look up directions, but we still had a hard time finding our old house. Kelly's the one who did a great job driving. I felt really bad that I couldn’t remember anything, then felt even worse when we finally found the house. Both the house and the neighborhood looked both different and worse than I remembered! Joe – I took pictures, so we can commiserate when I get home. As Kelly said, the day did start out well with a drive around Lake Tahoe and a very good lunch at a lakeside restaurant. Tahoe definitely lived up to my memory! Onward to southern CA.