We arrived in San Francisco after our drive up Highway 1 and after a circuitous drive around the city, over 3 bridges, mostly in seafog, out to the airport we managed to leave our hire car and catch the BART into the centre of town. Our hotel was on the edge of an area called Tenderloin which is a pretty down market part of town, many rough types buying beer by the single bottle in 7/11 stores. There were security guards on the theatre doors during the day!! We w...

We set off for the big drive up the historical road, Highway 1 which follows the coast up the whole length of the western seaboard. We were going as far as San Francisco. Our Pontiac had lots of features we were not aware of and no manual so for the first day we had difficulties ie how to get out of the doors, how to start it, turning lights and radio off etc.We only discovered the very useful direction indicator on our last few days, it stopped us going the wron...

We picked up our car from the airport at Las Vegas (a midsize Pontiac which was good) and drove across the desert - 110⁰F although we were comfortable in our air-conditioning! We found Ken & Karen's house in San Clemente although we had taken the long way to get there which was on the Ortega Highway, over a very twisty road over the mountains - very scenic but an hour's extra journey! Ken & Karen have a very nice house in a large estate which is very n...