We took the Highway 1 from Half Moon Bay down to Cambria which was only a couple of hundred km’s but when you add in a lot more traffic and plenty to see along the way it takes about 5 hours to travel.

The scenery is spectacular with steep cliffs and ravines, mountains, beaches as well as the Redwood forest at Big Sur.

We made a few stops along the way having lunch at a little diner at Davenport.

The cliffs and mountains eventually gave way to rolling hills and beaches and the going was a little faster.

Geocaches for the day:

• GCVOHZ – Benchmark Z
• GCPAYB – Greyhound Rock
• GC1GXNX – Help Help
• GC1K63E – Stranded on a foriegn country

Another perfect day in Benicia but we were bidding farewell to our stay in Northern California and to Joanna and Jiana.

After some breakfast and packing the car, we were on our way towards the Coast and through Santa Cruz and Monterey to Atascadero.

No problems with crazy driving on the Freeways this morning but we did make a wrong exit turn and ended up doing a quick tour of downtown Oakland.

As we left San Francisco and headed to the Coast the weather started to get a little overcast.

Geocaches for the morning:

• GC94A4 – Drunken Sailor
• GCWB9C – Benicia Fire Museum

Well our day was complete at 7:30 pm and we started to head through town. onto the Bay Bridge and back to Benicia. Traffic wasnt too bad and we were travelling at 65 mph with most of the traffic about the same. Even though the Car Pool times were over, we sat in there most of the time.

We were heading East on the I-80 and I spotted a car coming up fast about 600 metres back so I pulled over right into the next lane.

It must have been about a minute later when we were heading around a bend at Tara Hills that I heard the screech of tires and sounds of car impacting concrete. Next minute out of my window I am looking at a car mounting the concrete barrier on the left then coming off of it then aiming straight into the side of us. I can only guess that he has come into the bend with too much speed, ran wide into all the gravel and other stuff on the edge and lost it.

A quick look to the right and check to see if that lane is clear and most of the cars there had slowed off when they saw what was going on.

It was a matter then of either slowing down or speeding up to try and miss this car which was out of control and heading back and forward between the two lanes and playing pinball with the concrete barrier.

I eventually picked a gap and floored it getting out of the way and continuing. This was all in the space of about 20 seconds.

About a 1km up the freeway was a cop at another incident and the car behind me stopped to let him know what had happened.

Bradley was watching all of this out of his window and the other two were looking back and forward to see where this car was going to end up. Everyone had heartbeats you could hear but we were all OK.

Had to grab a few caches in Benicia to calm the nerves. They were:

• GC1D6YP – Stubby View
• GC98C2 – Working Capitol
• GCYZWT – Capitol Cache

Tommorrow we leave San Francisco behind and head down the coast towards Los Angeles.

No visit to San Francisco is not complete without a visit to Guiradelli’s to load up on all those carbs and sugars. We headed there after the Cable Car ride to have a large fudge each – some with choclate, caramel and peanut butter. Yummmmm.

After managing to force the fudges down it was Coit Tower to get a view of the city. We got there and could see Coit Tower OK but the trees have grown and it is hard to see the city. Oh well – did manage to grab a cache GC136C – WPArt: Lillies Cache.

Next on the to do list was a ride on a cable car. We were fairly lucky as we approached someone gave us their tickets as they were sick of waiting to get on – there was at least an hour wait. We grabbed the tickets and walked up the hill to the next stop so that we could jump on as they went through.

We missed the first one but were surprised as we tried to get on as we were greeted by “What are you doing here” – it was Mike Sard and Family from Eden Hills. Only had 10 seconds to chat then the Car moved off.

We grabbed the next one OK and took it to downtown. Our tickets were never checked so they were good for the return journey. Before heading back we grabbed some pizza from Blondies Pizza and made the return journey but had grabbed the wrong one as we ended up at Fishermens Wharf instead of Hyde Street. Oh well some more walking.

After getting back from Alcatraz Island it was amazing to see how big the crowds had increased as there had been virtually no-one around in the morning.

We then headed to Musée Mécanique to see the world’s largest (over 200) privately owned collection of coin-operated mechanical musical instruments and antique arcade machines in their original working condition. (You can play them!).

Last time we saw these they were at the Cliff House which was a bit out of town. Spoke with the owner and he moved it into town after his father died and he inherited it. It now actually makes money.

The kids had a ball squashing pennies and they now have quite a collection of squashed pennies at 51c each.

Once again, grabbed a couple of caches GTJT6J – Piering Around and GCBD0A – Laughing Sal

11:30 am was our allotted time for the Alcatraz Cruise and visit. Lucky we booked before leaving Australia as the next available tour was Wednesday. It was a little rough and windy heading over but at least it was a sunny day.

We had a great time touring all over the island and going through the cell block. Even the kids had to admit it wasn’t a boring jailhouse tour. The Audio tour makes all the difference. In all, we spent 2 and a half hours on the island and we managed to escape without the security detector going off.

After breakfast we headed down to Pier 39 and checked out some of the shops and the sea lions as well. Rachael had a chance to have a fresh nectarine which she has been hanging out for since our summer.

It was a little quiet with the sea lions as not all the residents were in but of course managed to grab a geocache there – GCMKWT At the Pier.

Monday was our day in San Francisco. Left relatively early for us around 8:30 am expecting some heavy traffic but we made the 60 km journey in 40 minutes to Pier 39 which was good.

The plan for the morning was to meet up with Paul Sequeira ( a friend of Joanna’s we met on 4th July) for Clam Chowder at his cousins restaurant called Guardino’s at Fishermans Wharf for breakfast. Paul’s cousin Mike set us up with some chowder, crabs, beer, soda and prawns and we headed around the corner to a private dock for our morning feast. Awesome.

Also managed to grab a cache while here. It was Panning for Gold – GCF6BB

17 years ago, Jenny and I spent a weekend with a family of a Benicia Firefighter. He had only met us a couple of days earlier and invited us to stay with them at Yosemite on the upcoming Memorial Day weekend. We didn’t know you had to book or anything. That weekend was a highlight of our ’92 trip so we needed to catch up with Dave and Lynn Botz.

In 17 years, their kids Cara and Chris have grown up and moved to Washington State and Dave (although still working as a Benicia Firefighter) have moved to Foresthill about 170 km away.

It was an uneventful drive until we got to the Auburn Ravine Bridge. The bridge was closed and there were cop cruisers all over it. A phone call to Dave and he said that the bridge was a popular bridge for jumpers – both BASE and others. As were we on the phone, the jumper was in cuffs and we were on our way.

The weather was certainly warmer than Benicia. Their house was great and we had a good afternoon catching up with the kids throwing some horseshoes as well. We lost track of the time and soon it was 8:00 pm and we had at least a 2 hour trip home in the holiday traffic.

On the way home, we took the old Auburn-Foresthill Road to look at the Ravine Bridge from the river base. Grabbed a geocache as well (GC19J44 – Species: Heteromeles arbutifolia). When we got there, once again there we lights of police cruisers on it as well as a helicoptor idling at the bottom waiting and quite a crowd as well.