Un. of San Francisco

Wandering the World–Recent Road Trip

/ Juliana Lightle / Leave a comment

My family and I took a quick road trip to California and back over the Thanksgiving break. Why now in the time of Covid? Grandson is applying to colleges in CA and needed to see what he could. We did stay in hotels, picked them carefully, did not use any services–most are currently not available anyway. You put used towels, etc. in the hall, go to the main desk to pick up more yourself, etc. It was fine. For meals we did takeout and ate at the hotel. Twice we did eat at a restaurant outside where there was no one near. It was possible because it was not cold. I took a few photos which follow.

On a side street in a little town next to Pasadena.
Camp Pendleton Marine Base near San Diego.

Near the UPS store in San Luis Obispo.

At the University of San Francisco, one of the few places where we were able to get out of the car and walk around.

Crossing the Gold Gate Bridge on Thanksgiving Day on the way to Muir Woods.

This and the following several photos were taken among the redwoods at Muir Woods. This is how we spent Thanksgiving Day.

If you stay on the main, paved paths, it is rather noisy. Even when there are signs for people to be quiet, they talk.
Off the paved path all we could hear was one very annoyed crow.
On our way back we crossed the Golden Gate again. In the following photo, Alcatraz is off in the distance.
On the way to Flagstaff, where we stayed the first night, we had wanted to stop by Petrified Forest National Park but arrived about five minutes too late. Therefore, we made a point to drive all the way through on the way home.
Rather difficult to believe that a lot of this was once a swamp with dinosaurs and huge trees.

On the way out or in, depending on which way you go, you can see the Painted Desert. Guess I caught my own shadow in this one.