Just Blogging!: Day 3: Winnemucca, NV to San Francisco, CA

Isnin, 29 Disember 2008
390 miles (624km)

Hari ketiga di jalanan. Bekalan makanan masih ada lagi. Semalam makan nasi goreng. Ada lagi 3 bekas nasi goreng, 2 bekas mee, sambal ikan bilis, telur pindang yang tak berapa jadi tu dan sardin goreng. Ada roti, maggie, nuggets dan lebihan lasagna itu hari yang telah dibekukan. Kami juga ada bawak rice cooker just in case kalau motel tu takde microwave. So far memang kami cari motel yang ada microwave. Semalam di Winnemucca, motel yang kami tido tu dipunyai oleh sepasang suami isteri dari India. Baik betul tu auntie dan uncle tu. Motel tu nama dia Scottish Inn, bila masuk ofis dia nak check in ada bau kari, so instantly I knew that it must be owned by an Indian. Banyak motel yang kami checked in dipunyai oleh orang India. Cuti Thanksgiving lepas, 2 motel di Santa Fe dipunyai oleh orang India, cuma di Canon City tuan punya motel tu Polish. I like the Indian better because they were so very nice and friendly. Kali ini, waktu di Salt Lake City, I'm not sure who's the owner but I was checked in by an Iranian man. That guy was saying the room he was about to give me is a nice one, but turned out it was crap. Well, we don't have any choice then. Actually, we do but I just don't want to pay $100 a night for a sleep in.

Scottish Inn, Winnemucca, Nevada

Kami bertolak dari Winnemucca lebih kurang dalam pukul 9:30 pagi. Dari situ ke San Francisco cuma tinggal lagi lebih kurang 6 jam perjalanan. Simply set the GPS to SF and we were all set to go. Saya lebih relaks pada perjalanan kali ini kerana tidak perlu lagi membaca map dan merancang laluan. Sebelum ini masa Summer Trip ke Las Vegas, sampai di bandar Las Vegas saya agak kalut sebab kena refer map dan juga jalan bandar yang sesak. Tambahan, everybody were driving real fast so we cannot slow down. Memang ada niat untuk membeli GPS untuk next city trip cuma masih dalam pertimbangan. Nasib baik kenalan di sini, Rozana menasihatkan untuk dapatkan satu GPS untuk trip ini. Bila saya rujuk kepada google maps untuk jalan-jalan di SF, saya memang terus grab satu. Kebetulan, 2 days before Christmas, TomTom ONE 125 GPS ada sale so saya beli di BestBuy dengan harga lebih kurang $100. It saved us a lot of time and stress free sebab tak sesat kan. My GPS is the very basic one so just enough for our need. No fancy stuff in it though, takde MP3, tak de memory card, simply basic direction. I think its competitor, Garmin would give you a better GPS device but I chose the cheapest so I bought TomTom instead. Of course you can always pay $50 extra or more than that for a fancy interface and whatnot to please you eyes or your ears.

Dalam pukul 12:30 tgh, kami sampai di sempadan Nevada-California dan perlu membuat agricultural inspection. It caught me by surprise because I never thought there's gonna be such inspection when you're travelling in the States. I quickly running through my mind what are the "agricultural" produce with us and suddenly I remember our Cutie mandarins and some apples I bought at King Soopers but never ate them. The lady officer when spotted our Colorado license plate politely instructed my husband to step out and open up the back of the vehicle so she could check our stuff. Good for me that I brought the mandarins in its original packet with the labels and the unopened packets of the apples. When she noticed the mandarins was from California she credited me for the original package. Then, she spotted the apples, she politely said something about the organic apples is not in her list and need to check it. She brought those apples to her small cubicle, I think about four of them, and checked something in her computer. It turned out that my apples was not in the approved list and so she told my husband that she have to take those. We were given a slip as a prove that an inspection has been carried out and then, we were allowed to go. Before us, there were another vehicle which has lost some of their fruits and vege supplies too. So funny, I think they just wanted us to buy a California produce only. So folks, if you're driving to California, make sure you bring only agricultural produce that was made in California, OK?

Agricultural Inspection Station

Selepas itu, kami melalui jalan menuruni bukit yang berbiku dengan salji tebal di tepi bahu jalan. Dari gambar yang diambil, saya rasa dalam salji lebih kurang 3-4ft. Tapi mungkin juga sebab semua salji diatas jalan ditolak ke tepi, jadi salji yang terkumpul agak tinggi. Dari situ ke Lake Tahoe sudah dekat tetapi memandangkan keadaan sekeliling yang penuh bersalji, saya rasa Lake Tahoe pada waktu itu mesti membeku sama seperti Great Salt Lake. Lagipun, saya ingin sampai cepat di SF. Anak-anak pada ketika itu sedang nyenyak tidur. Cuaca mulai terasa panas seperti summer. Kami berhenti sekejap di Dixon, CA untuk gas dan rest rooms. Kami tiba di San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge dalam pukul 3:20 petang Central Time, kiranya dalam pukul 2:20 waktu Pacific. We were so excited to see stretches of beaches and sun! On the way down to SF, all the trees and grass were so green it's felt like summer already. By the way, mind me for the not so good Bay Bridge image because our van was as dirty as hell.

San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge

Sick and tired of the traffic jam that we had to get through, I just could not wait to find a nice decent motel to check in. We drove straight to Fisherman's Wharf and check in at The Wharfs Inn. It cost me a lot of money but well it's so close to everything we can put our good van to rest for a couple days. By the way, you're not gonna like driving around in SF, it's hilly, most of the streets is like one way, no turn here or there and it's congested. Well, you hates driving in KL, right?

The Wharf Inn @ Fisherman's Wharf

We did some exploration at night, just walked along the Jefferson St and took a glance of the night life. I bought a camera here. Yeah, I knew it cost me a bit more with the accessories but I couldn't care less. I was hunting for a camera so long that I just grab it. I'm glad I did. I did placed an order via Amazon for a Panasonic Lumix bridge camera but ended up buying an Olympus instead. The reason I need to buy a new one simply because night shots were always disappointing. I knew DSLR would do a better job but heck it's so complicated, I think we're both not ready for it yet. We were still not used to our new gadget that night but it gets better. We just need to practice! I'll put up some more pictures later. For now, I need to go to sleep.