Our first road trip, San Francisco-Las Vegas and further

[Jantomo]

Having had so much help from this site I wanted to post a report of our trip and encourage others that with some planning you can have the trip of a lifetime.

Our trip took us from San Francisco to Las Vegas via Yosemite, the Tioga Road,Bishop and Death Valley.Then on to Zion, Bryce, Lake Powell, Grand Canyon, Route 66, Hoover Dam and back to Las Vegas and was over 3 weeks in September 2009.

In order to make sure everything was OK I started planning in Dec 2008 (probably as we are both over 65, retired , I had the time, and wasnt really convinced it would work out)I booked certain hotels in February and was glad I did as some were fully booked for our dates by May.

How do I describe this trip? Words really fail me - brilliant, fantastic, breathtaking,awesome all spring to mind - but seeing is believing and the memories we brought back will last a lifetime.

We left Gatwick UK on 8th September and after a 3 hour transfer in Atlanta, arrived in San Francisco 6pm that evening. Having read several threads on the site we decided to stay for 3 nights near the airport and found the Howard Johnson operated a free shuttle system to the airport, BART train and Dollar car hire desk, so stayed there. The hotel was alright for room but really noisy due to busy roads running both sides . A breakfast was included but was in the hotel lobby where there were only 2 chairs. Luckily we timed it right each morning !!
We spent the next 2 days in San Francisco, taking the BART train from the airport to Powell St ( buying the tickets was a challenge, with deducting dollars and adding on cents at the machine, but we managed in the end)
At Powell Street turnaround we got a cable car to Fishermans Wharf as we had decided to have a 2 day pass on a double decker open top bus which was great- took all the hassle out of getting lost!



Over the 2 days we used the hop on/off stops to explore the city , plus quite a bit of walking and when our feet ached we would just hop on the bus again and do another circuit while resting.We also did this in the hope that we would see the Golden Gate bridge,but although we tried it 3 times with blue sky everywhere, when we arrived at the bridge it was in fog and we froze while driving across to get off the bus,on the other side, in the heat - quite amazing. We found the bus was an ideal way of getting near the start of walks we made, such as walking up the back of Lombard Street to then walk down the crooked bit,for Chinatown and round the Fishermans Wharf and Union Square areas. The sealions at Pier 39 were an attraction, but not the smell !!