| Early Saturday morning my brother left for Los Angeles and we
left a little later. We went straight into San Francisco but this time we
headed east for Oakland. The blue sign is another advert for Apple iPods. |  |
 | We left San Francisco
via the Oakland Bridge. Westbound comes in on the top deck and eastbound
goes underneath. This is quite a long bridge (about six miles) going right
across the Bay. |
| We had joined Interstate 80 in San Francisco, a road we could
have followed almost all the way to Buffalo. This was the view from a bridge
just to the north of Oakland as we headed towards Sacramento. |  |
 | The Americans build
some fairly impressive bridges. This one had a separate span for each
direction plus a spare built to carry excess volumes of traffic. |
| We like to try to get a shot of the skyline of each major city.
This is Sacramento where we left the US80 and started on US50 which has the
name "The Loneliest Road" and in the coming days we would get to understand
what that meant. |  |
 | North eastern
California is fairly boring but you eventually move out of the almost desert
conditions through a series of waterways as you climb up from the plain
towards the first of the many mountain ranges that are encountered as you
head east. This does give occasional shots of the rivers as they tumble down
the valleys. |
| Eventually we came to South Lake Tahoe and the casino there. This
is the southern end of the lake we had visited earlier. It is a very
touristy place and there are lots of campsites. But on a holiday Saturday
night most were full. So we carried on to the next valley and Carson City
where we camped overnight. This was where crossed our route from about six
weeks ago. |  |
 | Carson City is over
6000ft above sea level and we were heading even higher as we climbed up the
eastern side of the valley towards Virginia City. This offered some
spectacular views. |
| There are some pretty amazing houses on the road up but nowhere
to stop. This is the view from the top looking out towards Reno some 40
miles away. |  |
 | Virginia city is an old
mining town from the boom years of the 1870s. To us it was more like a small
version of Matlock Bath on a holiday weekend. Mind you, you wouldn't find
the horse there. |
| And so we started across Nevada. This was pretty much the view
for the next three days as we headed towards Utah and Salt Lake City.. |  |
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