Well, this is tape  three, started some days later.
Where was I up to?
That's right, we just left School Valley.
See.
Drive down from.
School Valley.
U oh, that's right.
To South Lake Tahoe, where there's more.
Casinos, etc.
We went into Herod's.
H is their casino.
Spent the most of the afternoon on the beach.
Soaf Tahoe.
We sit off that evening quite late and drove through to a place called Bodi it's a national monument now it's a old gold miningning town, a ghost town, most interesting one, very authentic buildings.
as they were, although a good deal of them have gone because like other Western town, they had many fires.
So only about 10% of the original city are still there.
But it was very interesting.
To see they still had carriages and slaves and things that they used. Brodie was a very cold.
Place in the winter, the snow was very deep.
And it's only Thursday, the 20th of July on the morning we woke up and there was actually ice on the ground, which was a bit of a shock, it was the first time we've had any really cold weather we went aroundbodi in the morning.
10,000 people had lived here at one time and once again Mark Twain had been in the area also.
We spent most of the morning there. and then we moved on down through to Yosemite. We actually stopped just before we got to Yosemite. there was snow and the children playing the snow for.
Quite a long time sliding down the snow on a plastic tableclo.
In the afternoon we drove through Yosemite, which is.
Very, very large park.
Many waterfalls. and we arrived. It's got a very large.
Area and village.
And we camped at a place called Curry Village, which is just one of the small villages.
In the central of the park.
We went to the visitor centre and took the orientation session all the visitor centres are very well organised the ranges are there and they tell you what you can do in the area it's best to go to the orientation sessions because there's such a lot of things to do that it's better to be organised and notice where you're going then we took a.
A rangeangr gave a talk about.
Preservation and parks, etc, which was quite interesting we had to know that evening and just had a fairly early night.
On Friday,21 of July, we looked around Yosemite. This is.
Another fairly big national park, so they have shuttle bus services and theatre services, actually there were three or four different routes and Yosemite that you could take.
We.
Did some shopping and generally looked around, and then we took him.
And then we took a shuttle bus up to the.
Owani a hotel, which is the very largest of the hotels in this particular park.
There was a large swimming pool there too also, so the children went swimming quite a lot that day.
And the weather here is very pleasant.
80 degrees, 70 to  75 to 80 degrees so it's quite comfortable and pleasant because we're up in the mountains again,6000 feet.
And.
There was big.
American.
Campa next to us that evening and the children played with some other children and had a really good time.
And.
There's a lot of private enterprise, in particular.
Park, so you aren't supposed to camp in.
Cemp parking areas where you're not supposed to be anywhere. but some of the places are listed.
Fssy about this sort of thing and that particular night the Rangr came around and gave us a ticket for $15 because when he shouted through the window we didn't answer him the middle of the night.
So I all forget about that, not to worry about tickets.
On Saturday the 22nd.
We took some more shuttle bus went round the.
Village and went up to Yosemite Falls and the afternoon John took a walk up to the.
Vernal and Nevada Falls, which is the three and a half mile one way, very beautiful falls and you get very wet also because you walk up right beside the falls.
That night we had a group of young people from Santa Cruz next to us, so we spent the evening chatting and talking with them and barbecued and so on.
On Sunday the 23rd we sit off in the morning.
Or.
It left Curry Vill and went up to Gciier point.
which is quite a lot of Mars from the village itself and it's right up on top of a very high high point and you can look down over the village from the top you can hardly tell that there's a camping area down below because of all the trees and all the tents are just amongst them.
But was a very beautiful view from out there.
We left the drove through the rest of Yosemite and then out onto the freeway again and down to a city called Fresno where the temperature was 106 degrees it was unbelievable and it's such a shock when you've been up on the mountains to come down to this terrific heat again, so we were just exhausted from that.
We went Fresno which is an enormous city I had never heard of it in my life before but it's 200,000 people living there and of course it's really a very large city there it's a very wealthy agricultural city and it were so hot so we decided we'd just find a park and flake out for a while in the middle of this park was a place called storyorylander children's fairy tale land so the children went through that and they moved on for a couple of hours thoroughly enjoyed it I think they had of something like a magic key that she put into a lock and told them fairy stories.
It was quite funny because that afternoon there was all sorts of people in the park and there was a fun area there were also on little paddle boats and so on Ferous wheels and goodness knows well and lots of trees and gardens and we had dinner there and just about six o'clock in the evening everyone sort of went home from the afternoon that have been in the park and all of the sudden cars started pouring in John said I think there must be been in a black area because all these cars had black people in them and then by another time another hour had passed they were just nose to tail driving round and round and round and circles through this park and the whole thing just filled up with all these.
Blacks, and they have their stereos going madly in their cars. They play cards and throw for hisb.
and dance and sing and whatever they like just in the park I spoke to a girl I thought there must be a concert or something on there with so many of them there and she said, Oh no, Saturday night was halfway like this but Sunday night was the night out and they all come into the park on a Sunday night we were the only white people there there wasn't one other white face.
Except for the odd under marriage, which isn't terribly common.
We left Fresno when it was cooler in the evening although it didn't get a lot cooler, about nine o'clock and went up and spent the night at Grant Grove in King's Canyon.
So Monday 24th of July.
We went and saw the general ground very large the Koia trees grow on this.
This pack.
And then we drove on to Cedar Grove which is at the end of King's Canyon it's about 30 miles and very high mountainness area and Canyons we had lunch down there by the river the river once once again freezing cold you couldn't swim and it was far too cold and the rapids along this river where theyre incredible you couldn't have taken a raftdown and they went for two or three miles of very very fast rapids we found some fabulous Blackberry so John and Rachel collected a whole pile of Blackberries and met her.
ho were camping up there.
And was chatting to them in the afternoon they owned the Suzuki agency not far from Fresno so we chatted about motorbikes and things and a ranger came up to me and said that he had been to New Zealand and had actually lived in Kaorri with what he called as New Zealand family and he thought New Zealand was marvelous and if he ever had to give up his country it would be for New Zealand he just loved the place.
We chatted to him for quite a while he also saw when he saw Rachel and John of the Blackberries, hoped they hadn't seen any rattlenakes, apparently they messes of rattlesnakes up there but they hadn't seen any.
We went drove from there on down to.
Through the rest of.
Kings Canyon and you go out of one national park and straight into another one, which is the Sequoia National Forest Park where the Sequoia trees are naturally enormous and many of them.
And I think we probably came down the steepest hill that we have come down from that particular area that we dropped almost 12,000 feet completely from top to bottom where normally you only come down to about 6000 and go up again, I've been having some trouble with my ears and throat and stuff and with all this dropping and altitude and things they were pretty sore.
We stopped at a place called of course, it got hot again Once we got down. we stopped at a place called Fcilia and and had dinner.
And.
Bough some fruit it was nice to be back in California and have lovely fresh fruit in our interest in.
The.
Nreens, my favourites food are just beautiful here.
We went through to Bakersfield on the way heading for Los Angeles and spent the night, it was just it was 98 degrees all night it was just so hot and we were camp we parked just on a street by I think.
Commercial traveller club or something other. and we had the car locked up of course we don't usually leave the doors open, but it was just so hot on the night that in the end John just slipped up and.
Throughhrow open all the doors in the windows, we just could hardly breathe, then it expired.
The next morning,25th, we.
Looked around Bakersfield, extremely hot again.
And.
Then went down.
interstate five through to Los Angeles as you leave Bakerfield you to B hill and you get to the top of the hill and you can see Los Angeles ahead of you and the smog was just so thick we hadn't seen it for a while and to see all that smog you can barely see the city, they say you know, it'd be nice if you could just see Los Angeles you really it's hard to believe.
How like thatm goes.
We arrived in Los Angeles, we went to the American Express Company and spent a couple of hours at the Broadway Plaza where we bought tickets to go and see the Hearrst Catle on our way north again, we called Renie Reath who we had met when we weret down last time to see if she'd heard anything of John's watch but she hadn't so I chatted to her for a while and we decided we'd go out to the airport and try and chase this whole thing up, we went out doesn't get terribly every far but there a guy there assured us he'll make an appropriate investigations but of course he wants to.
But for the computer because he claims it'll have a number by now, but of course we don't have any idea what that number will be as we never ever receive the watch anyway.
We decided that we'd spend the night in Los Angeles so we drove down to Torrentance, which was where we had.
Originally had the first accident in zone and spent some time John had seen a motorbike dealer down there on the previous occasion so he went back to arrange to buy a BMW motorbike, don't know whether he were yet, but he looked onto to it anyway and then we drove down to Redondo Beach which was where we had spent officeest weekend at the beach when we were just after we'd had the accident.
So that night we went back to Eltorio, the fisherman's war type pier there and had a look around, it always quite exciting on these piers the shops were always open and there's lots of fish for sale and restaurants and always something happening was quite funny to be back after three and a half months and it was just as cool as when we'd left three and a half months ago which seemed quite strange but you found that on the coast it really is quite cool.
On Wednesday 26th we were just having breakfast on the beach and a lady came along and started talking to me her name was Esther Weer and it turned out that her husband was a tennis coach and she was a teacher also and she chatantted away to us for quite a while and finally said would we come back and have a cup of coffee with her.
We ended up spending the whole day with her because we got there in the morning and she said all that you know that we should have a shower and wash hair and do our washing and dry clothes, etc cetera so of course that took a while so in the meantime John mod her launched and fixed up her fence she was absolutely delighted and so she decided she would have to make a meal so of course it was about2 o'clock before we'd had lunch and she gave the children masses of books and Maland and soft toys, Maland got a great big jaws the shark and Rachel got a dinosaurus.
Enormous things not.
Practical on a camper, but she told them that she didn't have room in a house God knows what she thought we were going to do with someone on a camper.
We had lunch with her and so on, and I was feeling really terrible whether I'd hit this.
Tro and G's thing for about a week, so she decided that I'd better get to see a doctor so she arranged that I go to this clinic.
In the afternoon so I went down and had the quickest briefest visit I've ever had to a doctor which cost me $20 and $8 for the prescription however I apparently had an upper respiratory infection which would undoubtedly lay me terribly life it wasn't fixed up so assured me and threw some drugs at me.
 said see you later.
Westher had a friend who was is going down to New Zealand in February next year whom we've given both John's parents and my parents addresses to, they're both quite some lady they' made keen tennis players so they should get on panel indeed quite well.
And theyre also teachers. I thought dad might be able to help them out with.
Anything they may want to know about education and so on.
Their names were Colonel Jean and Yvonne Gopert from California.
They were friends of investors knew they're made on sailing as well, they're going to do a bit of sailing while they're in New Zealand.
Well Easterther was just marvelous to us, she was a very sweet lady, gave us all kinds of put and pieces and sent us off with cookies and goodness knows what.
That we would have liked to have stayed on, but I't know time seems to be getting away with us. Its just incredible that we should have been travelling for four months and.
The days just go so quickly.
So we lived their place at about six in the evening and we decided to drive through to Venura well actually a place south of Venura called Oxnard.
Where we had some people to call on that we had met in.
The Junction.
Stephen Jean Stols who he works Steve works for youth for Christ Jean's a teacher and we admit them you know the few weeks beforehand so we arrived there that night.
And they had actually just had a dinner party so they were Jean had gone to bed so that suit me fine because I wasn't feeling so good so we slept the night and the next morning we all got up to chat and Jean was done first on vacation of course so.
C is the most beautiful breakfast of fresh fruit and.
All kinds of things. the Americans have quite different food from us. and we had scrambled eggs with zucchini and goodness nice water. and we eat all the fruit with the meal and we had fruit juice and muffins. and it's really, very nice. So we had a very long breakfast. They had a beautiful house.
At Oxnard, not a massive house, but the Americans have a way of decorating them there's so much available to buy in the country that everybody's houses so original, beautiful furniture, they had a few very nice things that they'd brought back from Europe with them.
And we had a generally good time there, the children enjoyed it because Jean had lots of things for children to play with when they mate when complained that they were mostly legal girls things.
Anyway, we lived therere about 1130 and top 101 up the coast to Santa Barbara, which is a beautiful city, a lovely city, had a look around there for a while and then went on up the coast through San Louis Obsow to San Sion.
which is the port where the Hust family used to live, well there's nothing between St Louis and further on past and Samme and really this land was all owned by the Hursst, so Sansme itself was just a tiny little village with a port.
We weren't book to go to the firstcast the following day, so we spent the afternoon by a river which led into the to the sea there. it was.
Quite cool and overcast as I say on the coast has been quite cool.
Being back near the sea we thought would be lovely but it really was there quite a lot cooler after the heat of the deserts anyway we spent the afternoon by the beach and had dinner there and just stayed overnight illegally parked by the side of the beach.
We got up in early in the morning because our tickets that we've booked.
 down in trouble with booking ahead you never really know what day they're going to be anywhere and we' booked the afternoon in case were late in getting there but we decided to change the tickets and we went to early in the morning at 20 to 10 we took you have to be.
Ht hearrst Castle itself has been given over to to the government and is now a reserve but the land is still owned by the Hurst family it's just the actual house itself and a few acres or so that have been given to the government So you have to take a bus from the bottom of the hill right up to the castle Well boy was he wealthy It's a strange house I was then impressed by it it is chocolate block without probably is one of the biggest art collections in the world and I guess.
The in itself is pretty extraordinary, but.
The interesting things are sort of things that he has there this three swimming pools and the whole place ones a Roman swimming pool that has gold leaf little drawings on the bottom in tiles but there's actually gold in them the the extravagance was incredible but the house inside there's lots of apartments or little villas for his friends to stay in which are very beautiful but they're all very heavy Spanish he was bit of the ceiling nutanny collected all these Spanish ceilings which he's had put into the houses.
And they're very heavy and dark and the Spanish architecture is not something that I really go for, but anyway Id much prefer the softer and more ornate and beautiful French period stuff which he had a little of but mostly it's Spanish house itself is incredible and the fact that he didn't start it till was 56 another thing because it's just gigantic it just goes forever there three tour you can obviously only take one at a time and they sort of five bucks a tour so there was people on our tour that had been on the other two to see the whole house but it to take a couple of days to do that and seeing.
One to sort of covers gives you a general idea of what it's like.
So that was an interesting experience from there.
We left it was after lunch by the time we'd finished at in Simeon so we drove on to Big Sur very pretty area and along the coast is very much like home, the sea and the sort of rugged coastlines and beaches and things that very much like New Zealand through to carmel which is a magnificent tourist resort really fantastic, very beautiful and very heavily populated.
Further on up the coastline.
V.
We actually stopped in Caramel for a while, bought some goodies at a bakery and.
And had a look around the weather is very much like Wellington again here very much cooler we went on to Monterey.
All the way on understate one.
For Monterey, we went up.
We moved inland, but ontoto the.
US 101.
Freeway to Palo Alto where Alex Alex Youngs sister Elizabeth lives.
We found her house and she was actually going out in about an hour and a half so we had about an hour talking to her and she got all excited and hasn't seen herex for 20 years we felt really almost guilty at sort of seeing her ourselves when he hadn't and she was going out she was quite upset that she was and we not to worry because we could come back and so we went out and around the town had a look around Palo Alto and came back that evening and spent the night in her driveway so that we could see her next morning.
So the next morning we.
Had breakfast with her and we made a tape to Alex what she'll get eventually so that he could hear what she sounds like and so on and chatted about what she'd been up to over the years.
When she took us around to meet her elest son, she has four children, three boys and a daughter and the daughter to me was a very light Lindsay Alexa's daughter, there's a definite family likeness there.
We'd called.
Some friends of Karen Panads whom Cheryl Tras had actually stayed with when she called through 80 months ago and we around the world and they have a couple of icesp parlos here in San Francisco and then had invited us around for dinner on the Saturday night so that afternoon we headed into half Moon Bay where they live which is a fair distance out of town and had a lovely evening with them really enjoyed it.
And we after, well late that night, of course, we went back to Palo Alto to Alex sister Elizabeth.
who was still waiting for her daughter, who was in Elizabeth Fallso to come home, so we spent till about 2 AM talking to her on the Sunday.
We just had a quiet morning and then Elizabeth took us around Palo Alto, which is a pretty big city in its own right and of course houses Stanford University and the Stanford Hospital which of course is so famous so she took us through all that area and went to a very unique park which is in Palo Alto which only is for the sole use of Palo Alto rise you actually have to show you driver's license to get into this park it's apparently quite a controversial one because other areas think they should be able to use it but the taxpayers pay for it in that area or the rate.
So they feel like they should keep it for themselves, we went home and had barbecued dinner and just a reasonably early night it was on Sunday 30th of July.
On the 31st, we packed up and did our washing and so on and set off into San Francisco.
I suppose it was about three in the afternoon by the time we finally got in there, we called the American Express Company to pick up our may arm so on and quite by coincidence we just was really very coincidental, the couple that we had met in Mas, Pete and Di, Pete was from Christchot and I was from Melbourne whom we'd.
Meeting May Verde and had discussed meeting up with again and in.
Those days it's fog bound and you feel very much at home here because the weather's so damn cold their summers are really just like Wellington they're not summers at all but their winters are just the same so their temperatures hardly change really it's always around about 50s.
60s San Francisco is beautiful, it's mountainous and the cable cars very beautiful tearing around the streets that made me sad that we had ever got rid of the trams of Wellington because they're really quite a tourist attraction no San Francisco would use one I'm sure there's always queue my along to get on them and hang on the side for grim death they go around corners and if you went ho on real tight you could easily fall off them.
U.
After we left quite Lookout, we looked around down a bit further and then we headed for the Golden Gate Park, which is a fabulous park, completely manmade, an enormous area of the city, which is where everybody was camped out after the 1906 earthquake, which of course was followed by an enormous fire, which got wiped out the city After that, they converted it on.
Completely man made this beautiful park. It was just sand dunes before that, and we met Pete and Di and had dinner there.
With them and the whole evening after we left them, we went up to Shiley and Douglas.
 we'd had dinner was on the Saturday and night I had told us they both used to work up to the veteran hospital one but that was a great place to park so we went out there and.
Paed up there for the night.
On the Tuesday.
August already,1t of August we.
Gosh, side too of the third tape. I'm going through these tapes like nobody's business. Well, it's the  first of August.
I went downtown in the morning and wandered around Union Square.
I've got a parking ticket there, $20 one, quite expensive these parking tickets, anyway, we're not worrying about them.
We looked into getting some money sent over and.
And.
Had a look around the general downtown area.
The.
At 11 o'clock when you met Shirley Gaton at one of their ice cream parurs they have two in San Francisco and they now make their own ice cream the biggest ice cream company in this country or for public sale of ice cream cones is called Baskin and roin's 31 flavors but they're very mean with your ice cream you're the cheapest ice cream you can buy about 50 cents they're vary quite a lot but that's one small scoop and that's pretty small we have seen them up to 68 cents and some of the commercial ski is and results and things they get up to 68 cents for one the scoop.
She's a hell of a lot deer than New Zealand from what I can remember, so we got to Shirley's ice cream powderur, she was waiting for us.
She arrived and we looked at all the.
The plant where they produce the ice cream and all the freezers and so on and chatted about the flavors and things they have all kinds of flavors also we all had enormous ice cream and I tried they have pies, ice cream pies when I tried was called mud pie which is coffee flavor very nice indeed mate them date most of it I discovered I didn't make children with like coffee flavored ice cream but they do.
Sley has a little six month old baby.
who was with us and also liked ice cream so we surely took us over to the Golden Gate Park again, which is where all the museums and art galleries and things are.
We went into an art gallery there and saw two Rembrandt paintings.
Which was like.
Really quite exciting and then we saw an exhibition of bridal gowns from the past hundred years which was quite fun they were mostly the gowns of wealthy San Francisco families and they had sort of one for each run about each.
20 years, you know, through the times, which was very nice.
Right up to modern day ones, which I wouldn't say look all that good compared with the others.
Anyway, we went through the art gallery, they had a fantastic exhibition of Chinese out there with most magnificent teapots that were just centuries old, really was a very beautiful exhibition, they had all kinds of things from Ling vs and went through and teapots little pottery fruits and all kinds of things and it went from.
AD 800 AD right through to sort of more recent times that was most interesting and that the present they're renovating the museum preparing for the Tuton Carmen exhibition on which they're got here next year.
We went through also the aquarium, they have a fabulous aquarium they're very large with many, many varieties of fish mo throughout the world.
Took some time.
And.
After all Shiley lived with Rachel and they went home to prepare the dinner.
And John and Maitland and I decided to have a further look around and.
Then go on out after them. but we decided we I.
About 80 months ago in Wellington, we had met a girl. I had taken a lady out for lunch, who was.
A friend of As on in New York and when the Royal Viing star was in Wellington I had taken this lady out and so on and we'd gone back on board the ship that night and she hadn't introduced us to the girl Elaine who was the musical director she came from San Francisco and we changed address never imagining that we'd ever see one another again but I had her address and so we decided to call her well the numbers were the same so we went past the almost past the street where she had lived so we called in and an old neighbor was able to give us her new phone number so we called her she lived up.
City which is about 15 minutes out of San Francisco.
We called her in Manhattan that the callbox that we were ringing from was the very streets she lived in. so we popped down to see her for about an hour. It was quite an exciting reunion.
And made arrangements to see one another again. And then we headed off and went out to Shirley and Douglass at halflf Moon Bay for dinner, that night.
We spent the night there, and.
Sley actually rang Karen Benda because she hi this stter saying that Karen was arriving in San Francisco in the next couple of weeks.
So we all spoke to Karen on the telephone, turns out she's arriving on the 10th whether we can wait that long as doubtful because we've really got time is running out really fast so we have to get on to Canada and make arrangements for whatever we're going to do.
We spent the night with them and we had the morning again next morning with Shirley.
We set off after lunch and went into town to Fisherman's Wharf which is a fabulous area, very French area, I spent the afternoon there wandering around they've got a very large mall type area which is called the cannery which was one of the largest canneries in the world it's nowing been built into a shopping centre, it looks very, very old from the outside but in fact all that's left of the original is the exterior walls.
And there's all kinds of people on the streets singing, doing just about anything and selling handmade jewelry and anything from jewelry to.
Thriumps and fish and good knows what you can buy and this place everything's sort of sold on the street and it's a real high of activity absolutely full of tourists, no San Francisco person apparently goes there during the three months of their vacation here.
 very busy, busy place with musicians and jugglers and goodness as well.
You can stand watching people for hours, there was a clown there who made balloons into mini mouses and wicky mouses.
 littlettle poodle dogs and goodness knows what he made the children a snoopy each.
Out of balloons, we then took the exciting cable car ride from Ferman's Wharf to downtown where the Bart station was, that's the underground railway they call Bart.
Which is right over the hills and round all the corners and downtown it's quite a th on the cable car. It was utterlyly cold and Rachel insisted on standing on the runner board on the outside, so hanging on Gr De we.
Tre over thehu as you come to the top of the hill and knock down, you just.
I had to believe the cable cars are going to stay on the cable.
So Steve.
We then took the cable car back up town but went to Chinatown we had a Chinese meal downtown the food is pretty cheap and very authentic Chinese food, this is apparently the largest Chinese population in the world outside China, its a very large Oriental population both Chinese and Japanese.
We then took the cable car back to Ferman's Warf and just browsed around lookinging and watching people, there's so much going on down there these things run half the night.
We spent that night just down on Ferman's wharf. We just found a little spot towards the end of the wharf where we camp for the night.
On our Thursday, 3rd of August, we John went down priorly to the ticket office for the.
Bat tickets to go over to Alcatraz they don't book ahead of time so you have to be there very early those queues miles long but we didn't have a clue what the time was we don't look at the time we wouldn't hardly know what day it was let alone the time but he got up and went down but he must have been very very early because he waited about an hour before the place even opened something like quarter to waited open.
Anyway, we got tickets for quarter to10 and we went out on the boat across the harbour, which is really rather nice to see the bridge and.
Golden Gate Bridge and things.
And went out onto Elcatraz Island and took the tour it's about an hour and a half they take you through all the buildings, a lot of it has deteriorated and it's just rubble now because the government actually gave the island up and the Indians lived there for a while, they claimed it and they were kicked off again and it became a national park at the National Reserve and has tour is going through and you see the room that the birdman of Elcatraz spent five years in solitary confinement and and then also the room he spent the last 11 years and before he left there and was sent to another prison.
.
TheGstly place I should imagine to have been it was almost impossible for people to escape the 36 people escaped of which all were recaptured except for three who or five that drowned but they only ever found two bodies so they're not really too sure about the other three but it looks pretty impossible to swimwarm across the currents are very bad and the water is terribly cold plus the fact that you had great amount of difficulty getting out of the place in the first place.
Yeah, we quite enjoyed that trip And we got back sometimes sort of after lunch.
Actually, I missed something that we did the day before on the  second of August after we left Chile in the morning we actually went out over the Golden Gate Bridge, we've been hoping to get a clear day but it's almost impossible to get a clear day in San Francisco it's not until you actually get to San Francisco that you see photos of the bay and the bridges and so on with fog around them a lot of the paintings here have the fog but I had never seen one before and you don't really appreciate just how much fog they get it there's rolls and rolls out.
And you can hardly ever see the bridge clearly, so we decided to go across anyway.
To Socelio, which is just on the other side of the bridge.
A very nice sort of commercial touristy town.
where there is a lot of boat houses which is quite a fascinating area, boat houses, some of them are really scruffy others are quite flash as many of them it was quite interesting to drive around have a look at those, we wandered around the little village of So Salledo.
That afternoon.
Before we went back down to Ferman's wh so that's.
What was the crossing of the bridge?
.
So then we got back from Alcarez on on the Thursday and.
I spent a couple of hours just in Fisherman's whharf area.
Just watching people there's all kinds of juggless clowns and things to see constantly and.
There's plenty to do down there.
And.
And.
Then.
Oh, we went back into the American Express Company to see if anything had been heard of from.
From New Zealand.
And then we went up to gueststons one of the icesp powers on.
It's one of them on the corner of Sacramento and Presidio not far out of town.
Out of the main downtown area and nice cream and.
Then, we.
Left the city and went out to Da City to Elaine's place where we had dinner with them and the kids were enjoying it Elaine has three children, a son and a third twin daughters. So Rachel.
Been having a lot of fun with them dressing up and making up and goodness knows what.
And Elaine's son at the moment has a broken to so he's put out of order but anyway we had dinner and Elaine is now working in downtown San Francisco.
The music of.
Piano bar.
And so she has to start work at nine o'clock, so she gets a babysitter in anyway, so we got the babysitter and all went downtown.
We dropped Elaine off at work and John and I walked all over downtown San Francisco, went up to Chinatown.
I a look around, we went to until a few piano bars and.
Bookshops and so on and we went to the Saint Francis Hotel, which is an enormous hotel these hotels have so many restaurants and.
Shar and things in them, they just sort of little.
Towns and themselves, the people that stay in and they're very expensive, the people that stay in and them don't need to leave the hotel, there's so many things within the hotel to do.
And after we'd looked around town for hours, feet were worn out we just we went up in the St Francis Hotel they have lofts on the outside of the building you can go up to the 3 secondnd floor where they have a penthouse.
And.
Either cocktail bar or restaurant, it was, we went right up to the top and had a look around over the city. F view of the city in a here raising trip up and down on the outside of this building.
But very beautiful to to see from there all the lights and things We also while we were in Chinatown, we went to a restaurant that has won an award for about the last eight years for being the best restaurant in the country or something and there was photos of all the film stars and famous people that have eaten there including including President Carter.
It was quite interesting we went right up to the restaurant and we had a look around and looked very nice all Chinese, of course.
Then we went back downtown to the the gold dust where Elaine works.
A very nice bar, most elaborate bar and she plays sort of singlelo music and all the people there mostly tourists she gets very few Americans she finds they're mostly people from other countries being it's in a very good spot in town right next to Union Square and right next to this hotel called the St Francis so people just bowl out there and straightened to her music bar she plays took 2 am so we stayed there till2 o'clock.
And when she'd finished work, we drove up to the Fremont Hotel, which is a very beautiful hotel.
Half of it is old and half of it is new, half was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake and fire and half still remains, which has got very large pillars and then very enormous hotel, hundreds of restaurants and.
I again.
U.
There's all kinds of photos there of the earthquake and it's quite an interesting little museum gallery down one of the halls, and we could hear there was still a show on it was running terribly late apparently it should have finished it was supposed to start at midnight they had two shows a night and be finished by2 o'clock or something but it was running about an hour late, It was the first opening night of a new show called Four Girls4 which I've forgotten one of the people on it, but was Rosemary Colonney and Margaret Whiting.
And Rose Marie, the girl from the Van Dyck W Dick Van Dyck's office on whatever them the television programme is called and making a comeback, I don't know how successful a comeback will be but they had a lot of people watching them they were performing in a.
Her room called the Venetian room where it would probably cost $100 a person a night to eat and see the show, very elaborate dining room.
And we could hear the end of the show and so we went down the hall to see if we could see anything and we saw them all as they opened the doors and everyone was leaving, we saw them all leaving.
Anyway we decided to Elaine has quite an appetite in the middle of the night when she's been playing all night and so decided that we almost must go out for breakfast so we went to this very nice 24 hour restaurant within the.
Fremont Hotel.
And we'd no sooner sat down on a couple of friends of Elaine's entertainers that she's known for years turned up so they decided to join us for breakfast at three o'clock in the morning and the next thing Rosemary Clney and all the women in the show and their boyfriends or husbands or whatever they were all arrived to and the couple that we were with friends of Elaines knew them all and had been to parties prior to the show with them all.
It was quite interesting to see them face to face.
And.
We had an elaborate breakfast and masses of coffee and I guess we lived there at about half past five in the morning, we got home about six and all went to bed with the s.
And.
I couldn't believe it because when we got up, it was 315 on.
 afternoonI couldn't believe that I I didn't think I've ever slept or 315 in the afternoon.
So we fed the children head tea quite early and all went into town to the Hyatt Hotel which is just a beautiful hotel it's just it's book kind of like a pyramid and it looks like a pyramid inside and that it's.
Holow in the centre with one tremendously enormous foyer all with fountains and this big bird cages with beautiful lovebi in them and flowers everywhere and bars and all the floor is done out and sort of marble tiles and on every Friday night from five to late they have very large jazzs band there and have dancing which is free and except that they're making a fortune because everybody's drinking and they have all the Glenen Miller.
And.
Tommy Dorsey and mostly songs of the 40s and the.
There's a wide age group of people, quite young people and right through all doing all kinds of jitterbugging and cha cha chowing and dancing and all really thoroughly enjoying themselves it's a fantastic atmosphere in a really beautiful place I at first thought that they must have built this hotel with the floor moving to accommodate dancing that there wasn't the original intention at all but at this hotel is apparently absolute earthquake proof and when the people are dancing the floor moves quite a lot when you're standing on it you're really moving quite a bit.
Whether or not it is earthquake proof remains to be seen, but it would seem that this building looks more likely than some of the others.
So we stayed and watched that for a while and.
Head look within the foer inside of the hotel there are also elevators that go up outside they're all lit up and you can go up to 20 floors or something up to a restaurant called the equiquinox which is on top of the building and it's a revolving restaurant so you see all over San Francisco really beautiful inside it's all mirrored red leathery velvety stuff and all mirrors on the roof and walls you feel quite strange when you first get in there it's like going into a mirror maze.
And the whole building revolves.
So we came down from there and Elaine had to go to work so we.
We're about to leave the Hyatt Hotel and we'd lost Maitland, we spent ages looking from John.
Was hunting and hunting, and he finally found them with a security guard and a big chocolate milksh.
He was pretty happy he had been saying he was thirsty and the security guard had ordered him this scrap big chocolate milkshake.
So we left there and we went downtown and through the Strrupes area of town, which is a very neon sign area.
And with lots of girls outside enticing the men to come in and so on very busy busy area at that time of night, we all the kids with us so we went and had did a little bit of shopping and then we,
Came home and that's where we are at prison just making this tape. I actually had to buy these tapes. I'd run out of tapes.
So that's the news.
To the 4th of August.
Now, some of the news from New Zealand dad should be out of hospital alone though now.
I hope that you know you're feeling fine.
And but your foot's a lot better, hopefully.
It'll be better than it has been obviously it's been damn so. it looked terrible when we lived, so I hope that they've been a.
Put you out and your misery of it.
What else had happened?
Yeah, then were saying in her letter that the Emont was being given to the Maori so that's quite interesting and as you say I do hope they' give it back again.
And.
This couple pe and Di that we.
Meet and ran into again in San Francisco the other day, of course, had been to Vancouver now and yes, his brother does know cousin Tony so it's quite interesting apparentlypparently all the New just gathered together quite a bit up there.
Actually, we called Tony the other week from Montrose because I had letters from mum saying that.
They may be coming back to New Zealand since lowest had.
Had died And so I just thought that they may be sort of packing up and going instantly, So we thought we'd better give them a call, but Tony assures me that they won't be going home until next year they've got to sell a house and goodness knows what. So there was no immediate rush and so they're expecting us looking forward to seeing as we're supposed to have been there nearly a month ago.
So they're not worried about it.
.
Both the children are very well and they really seem to be enjoying meeting new people all the time they make friends with people just instantly now how they realize that to have children to play with they've got to be friendly very quickly because theyre moving on and they really make friends with children very, very quickly, they rush up to people and ask if they want to play and so on.
And they just love Miitlam, I say to Miitlam, do you like travelling around the world and he says, yes, he says it's good because every day we do something exciting.
So they've really settled down. It took quite a while to settle down living in a camp is not easy, It's very grant and getting used to a different country and travelling a lot of miles sometimes in days and the heat, the extremes of heat that we've had and changes of climate and altitude and things all take their toll you you can feel pretty tired sometimes.
But the children are coping with it pretty well, I think they're probably ready for school and that they're sick of the side of one another at times, but we do that them pretty close quarters at the moment it the camp and they could probably do with getting back to school we may send them to school in Canada for a while but school doesn't go back here until September so we got to look into that.
And.
The.
The people here are very, very generous, very kind you find.
Very quickly.
You make friends of people, especially when you're travelling quite often from there on holiday and people have been pretty kind we've got a crisis just all over the country to go and visit people as we go through we hear very little news about New Zealand but just never features of course in the newspaper actually most newspapers here don't have much but American news or even local state news really the only English news we've heard I think was that the.
House of Commons, I think it was a gone dessert and they've been throwing manure all over the place one on the other day when we were down in Redondo, we read that finally.
Finally, Sir Robert Henry had got the.
The message that was quite interesting. and obviously that made quite big news here. It was quite a big headline. It was on the front page. so I gather it was took up television and radio and newspaper time the other days, I would imagine.
If it actually reached here.
But other than that, we've heard absolutely nothing about New Zealand.
And.
I imagine that you're all getting geared up for the elections I'd be interested if someone write to me and tell me what's going on as far as the elections are concerned.
And, and the.
The abortion issue as well, something I haven't heard much since Cherry Raymond and the girls all left.
Be quite interested to know what's happening there, especially with the election arriving. They're having a lot of trouble in this country with abortion.
Issues.
They also are having a lot of trouble in this state with the thing.
Think called Proposition 13, which.
Everybody's enough arms about paying too much tax. They have to pay this terrific property tax here every year, really astronomical amounts. it's unbelievable. You know, just an average house confessant like $1500 a year in property tax, which is an incredible amount of money every year It discourages people from owning their own homes. So they've all.
And jumping up and down. And so now they've.
The.
They've reduced the taxes, but all just overnight, they've also cut back on just about everything, they've cut back on education, there's a whole lot of people being put out of work in government departments and so on all state departments.
Teachers having risks.
As it happened in New Zealand where they've cut back on remedial reading and all the necessary things that's happening here overnight and it's going right down the line or some big side effects from that.
Jimmy Carter, I gather as a most unpopular person nobody seems to have a good word to say about her.
But.
Generally, the United States has.
Really, a fantastic place.
And we're thoroughly enjoying that. we're managing to live fairly cheaply.
We've become very American orientated very very quickly. We're now living on hamburgers and hot dogs. same as the rest of vendor. It's just incredible. The number of hot dogs and hamburgers they eat. It really is the stable art most days. And you find that you soon fall into that, too, because it's the easiest way to go if you can't beat them join.
We really are enjoying it, but you learn very quickly as you go along now we've been on the road for four months a we.
We have all sorts of ways of.
Living more cheaply this here is fairly cheap it ranges from we've headed as cheap as 52 cents a gallon which is slightly smaller a gallon than in New Zealand but it goes up to us I think80s about the highest we've paid for it.
Well once again, I run out of tape. This is three hours of taping I've done.
It doesn't seem to take too every long to fill up a tape this is the first time I couple of times I take the other night and again tonight and I've been able to plug in in anybody's house so otherwise it's not really very easy to write letters doesn't tape so I do a to not writing.
To to everybody. But it's almost.
Imposible as much as I do enjoy writing.
So as I hear, these tapes seem to get around. So hopefully everybody will hear the news And there's nothing worse than writing letters. the same thing over and over again. So it's really good that you pass these tapes around. It save a lot of wood.