Day 19 Summer Vacation 2009

We left Sacramento California this morning heading for Galt California on the Lincoln Highway. In Galt there is a monument in Smud Park that has an original piece of concrete from the road, embedded into the Monument. The shadows made it a bit difficult to shoot.

You know your in California when you start seeing grape vineyards.

Near Altmont California as we were driving along the Lincoln Highway we came into an area that contained the most wind turbines we have ever seen. These are short stubby ones, and some are even on steel grid towers. I can only presume that these are early prototypes of the wind turbine, and as the technology was perfected, they developed into the typical tall streamlined turbines that you will see in a modern wind farm. These ones were interesting to watch as there were so many of them.

West of Altmont CA we found the Summit Garage. When I stepped out of the car to take the photos I noticed that the temperature was a lot cooler than we had been experiencing, only 24 C outside.

Then we were on the Interstate to take us the rest of the way to the Western Terminus Marker in San Francisco. I did not have the courage or the desire to tackle the city streets and try to hunt and peck our way along the remaining miles of The Lincoln Highway. On the original Lincoln you would have taken a ferry across the bay to arrive at the Western Terminus, I don’t think that is an option today, so the Bay Bridge took us across to the terminus.
So we made it, from our start in Joliet Illinois to the end here in San Francisco California, it has been a wonderful 19 days and we really enjoyed our drive across the United States, staying off the Interstates as much as was humanly possible and to see and experience a little bit of what the earliest travellers across the country must have seen and experienced.

Do you notice that we are wearing jackets and long pants… it is chilly here in San Fran, only 14 C, compared to the almost 40 C temperatures we have been experiencing since leaving Ontario. It is foggy and chilly. Foggy is typical for San Fran. Here are a couple more photos of the Lincoln Highway Western Terminus Concrete Marker.

We met up with our friend Patty who lives in San Francisco, and she took us on an introductory tour of downtown San Fran, first stop was to see the Golden Gate Bridge. I am glad that we had the opportunity to get these foggy photos of the bridge and I hope in the days to come while we spend some time here, that we have some bright sunny days so that we can come back to these lookout spots and take more photos.


From here we could also see Alcatraz Island. In the days to come, we will take a boat tour out to Alcatraz for a look at the old prison.

We will be staying here for a week and will be doing day trips from our hotel base.
To see all of our photos from today, you can click on the link to my FLICKR site.