DRIVE ON 101

We are now within 10 miles of San Francisco Airport and we hand the car back tomorrow.  It's been a big 3 weeks since we picked up the car in Salt Lake City.  We have driven about five and a half thousand kilometers and had the opportunity to see just so much at our own pace. 
We've laughed at many of the names as we have travelled around:  Two Guns, Twin Arrows and Apache County to name a couple.  The street names have little imagination, first, second, third etc.  Roads, 17 1/2, 15 1/4, and so on.  We have passed many signs stating the scales are ahead, only to drive past and discover that the weigh bridge is closed.  Over all the miles we have travelled we have seen one opened.  There is a lack of advertising signs along the way which is nice but the directional signs are great and plenty of warning when to take an exit, handy when you need to move across a few lanes. 
We have travelled up many mountains over 10,000 feet and back down to 2,000 over the same mountain and back up again.  We've been 85.5 metres below sea level.  The temperatures have ranged from well below zero to about 38C. 
We discovered Motel 6 franchise early in our travels.  These are basic but clean and reasonable.  Each night we feel we have arrived home to the same bed cover.  One of the challenges though has been working out how the taps work.  Sometimes its pull up, other times it's push down.  Various times it has taken us both to work out how to work the shower.  This has all been a lot of fun and a laugh at the end of the day.
One thing we have discovered is that everything is big in America, big people, big trucks, big pick-ups, big RVs and most of all big meals.  We soon learnt to order from the seniors menu and even those are too much for us. 
No photos today.  We had a 3 hour trip from Merced to Redwood and the only stop was a quick pull over when Ian saw a big bush with interesting flowers that needed watering.  The scenery was very different to anything we had travelled through.  At first it was the agricultural flats, loads of fruit trees, grapes and cotton, then we came into low hills with sheep, cattle and horses.