Danville

After not visiting the town i grew up in since i moved away aged 6 i was pretty excited to be heading back and seeing it all. I had a few vague memories, mainly of the road going up to our old house and the pool where i learnt to swim. We arrived planning to camp in Mount Diablo State Park, where i used to camp a lot as a child. However we swiftly changed our minds when we saw a sign saying entry to the park was $10 and camping was a further $30!! Considering we were paying $14, at the very most, in the national parks we thought that was ridiculous and instead headed to a trusty Walmart and slept in their car park, Walmart have been a lifesaver during this trip!!

The next morning we woke up melting as it was 38 degrees celsius outside! We first headed back to Mount Diablo State Park again and drove to the top, these roads were even more windy than Yosemite, which is really saying something! The views were awesome though, you could see for miles in every direction and see the distant skyline of Oakland, near San Fran. It was a little too misty to see the golden gate bridge but was impressive none the less. We went for a short hike around the sumit and took in the views then we headed towards my old house!

I didn't recognise anything until we pulled up to Sycamore Hill Court and then i was amazed at how much i recognised it! It felt really weird seeing it as it was the same but also different to how i remember it, i remember it being very steep but it is infant just a slight slope! I guess my tiny infant legs found it a lot more of a struggle than i do now. We stopped outside my old house and took a few pictures without looking too stalkery. We walked around the neighbourhood a bit and i could remember snippets of the area and the paths. Then i phoned my Mom and got directions to the pool where i learnt to swim, i didn't want to take too many photos as i didn't want to look like a peadophile (!!!) but it was really cool to see. Lastly we went to see my old school, we passed a different school and Izzy asked if that was it but i knew it had a bigger area for parking in front and my memory was right again as when we found the right one it was just as i had said!

It was really good to go to Danville on my trip and i'm really glad i did it. Having had a look around Danville and realising there wasn't much to see in such a small suburb we headed across to San Francisco for our final stop! For our last meal we went to a tiny Mexican restaurant which sold AMAZING burrittos. Having not eaten much for the whole trip we both went into minor food comas after and had to have abit of a rest to digest!

We slept in a Safeway carpark and packed all our stuff up which took hours after it being spread around the van over a month! The next morning we got ready to head off and i realised i couldn't find one of my Tom shoes, we knew the van was cleared so it couldn't be in there and we double checked everywhere. I was gutted as they are my favourite shoes and i wear them everyday. We realised they must have fallen out whilst i was jumping in and out of the van looking at parking metre costs in the city. Izzy suggested we drive back over the area we went to and have a look for it. I wasn't hopeful but we had some time to spare so we had a go. After about 5 minutes driving, sure enough there was my left Tom shoe in the middle of a 4 lane San Fran street being run over and over by cars! We pulled over and i had to dodge traffic but i got it! My right and left Tom shoes were reunited, the left a bit dirtier than before but still intact. I was over the moon and now can never get rid of them as they have such a good story behind them!

After that small detour we went and dropped Suzanne the van off with heavy hearts, we are going to miss her!! Amazingly they didn't even care about the dent, we had expected we'd be asked to pay an excess on the insurance but we didn't have to pay a penny so we were very happy about that. We reluctantly left Suzanne with her rightful owners and then went our seperate ways as Izzy was staying with friends in Oakland and i was off to a hostel. It's going to be weird not being with Izzy every day but we've had the best time on our road trip and i'm going to look back at all the crazy memories so fondly :)