Monday, June 6: Left North Bend after a refreshing night’s sleep and continued along the 101 to San Francisco, about five hundred and thirty miles south. It rained all day again and while the drive was long and tiring, it was an incredible feeling to drive through the giant redwoods of northern California. The mist and gloom among the huge tree trunks lent a strange cathedral-like air to the forest which was heightened by Pachelbel’s soulful Canon in D that, by some divine coincidence, was playing on the car stereo as I passed through.
Nearly eight hours later I found myself stuck in rush hour traffic in Santa Rosa about fifty miles north of San Francisco and in the heart of California’s Sonoma wine country. The remaining sixty-odd miles proceeded to take me well over two hours and I arrived at my friend’s house in Santa Clara around 6.30 pm, a full ten hours after I had left that morning. Needless to say, I was quite tired and went to bed early.
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Here ended the more adventurous part of my road trip west. After returning my rental car the next day (I was really sad to see it go because it had served me so well for the past two weeks) and catching up on backlogged to-do items, I spent the next six days lazing around, stepping out only to meet various friends (CT, SC, EG, HR - it was good to see you guys again) in the Bay area, eat at several excellent restaurants or watch the occasional movie, including a front-and-centre theatre experience of Mr. And Mrs. Smith that would have been supremely boring from any other seat that didn't afford the "view" that the front row provided.
The highlights of the week were a visit to a winery close to nearby Saratoga on Saturday and a tour of the infamous Alcatraz on Sunday, the latter enjoyable not just for its historical significance but also for the hundreds of nesting seabirds that now populate the island.
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