San Francisco

Shani and I got up early and packed up our stuff. We were ready to leave on schedule, said goodbye to Fred and headed into town. We checked into our hostel and set off to go to the Farmer's Market at the Ferry building. The market was great, it was all organic produce with lots of samples. We bought some Indian stuffed bread to go with our leftover chicken from the night before. I got to see a Labradoodle, I've never seen one before. It was such a gorgeous dog. When we finished with the market we headed across town to Van Ness St. and a sandwich store recommended to Shani. We had had to have the crab sandwich and it was well worth the walk. We caught the bus to Golden gate park, it was my first visit here. It's a huge park with three museums, among other things. We went to the Natural history museum. I was very disappointed with the climate change exhibit inside, it could have been put together by a middle school student. The aquarium was much more impressive, the range of fish was very cool. They even have a tidal pool where you can touch starfish and sea urchins. Unfortunately I was disappointed here too, they had information on some fish, but didn't have all the different types of fish listed. Some information that I think should have been available beside the tanks we got from one of the workers there. And it closed at 5pm, which I thought was early for a summer weekend. The building itself is interesting as it has a green roof and has a device for collection rainwater and using that for irrigation.Cool.
Shani had been told that there were buffalo in the park but hadn't been able to find them, I checked my map and saw the problem was. The buffalo park was marked on the park map but was marked as a bison enclosure. As everyone knows, there are no buffalo in America, only bison. Buffalo are native only to Africa.So off we went to see the bison. There are only five in the park, but there are pretty impressive and cool to have in the middle of a major city. On the way out we got to listen to the Black Eyed Peas. There was an open air concert going on and we listened from outside the fence.Since we had achieved most of what Shani had wanted to do for the day we headed back to the town centre and to the Apple store to use the computers there. I didn't know this but you can access the internet on the Apple display models in the store. Which is what I did.Afterwards we had ice cream. I had to taste a few before I decided on what flavour I wanted. I was disappointed, some of the flavours I tasted I really didn't like. There is something wrong when ice cream doesn't taste good. And back to hostel for my last night in SF.
Sunday August 30th and it was time to leave SF. I wasn't sad to be leaving, I had done a lot in SF and could have seen more. I think it's a good thing to leave a few things undone, you then have an excuse to come back. However I was sad that I would miss Michael by only a few days.I spent the early part of the morning on the hostel computer uploading my photos and Facebook. It was nice to be able to use a computer where I could upload stuff and at a decent speed. I really needed to purchase my own computer. I haven't spoken to my parents since I arrived in America and I am sure that my mother wouldn't be too happy about that. Also I hadn't really been able to have a conversation with Darren. Most of the time I would be able to hear him but he couldn't hear me, so I would have to type.It was a pain in the arse. At the very least it would be a good idea for me to have my own headset then I could make full use of Skype.
I left the hostel, with my ruck sack on my back and headed to the bus station. The bus station is not in a bad area of town, but in the business area and so it is deserted on the weekend. I walked into the station, the ground floor was deserted, up to the next floor, it wasn't so deserted but no sign of the Greyhound office. There were a few homeless people around.I had no idea where to go and was starting to stress, I generally leave myself plenty of time when I am travelling but always stress if I can't do things in the time or manner I have mapped out for myself. It makes me inflexible and is something that I need to temper. Anyway I went back down to the ground floor to the security office, they pointed me in the right direction to the second floor. I joined the ticket queue, me and one other person, I had an hour before my bus, so I figured that getting a ticket wouldn't take me that long. I was wrong. Everyone in front of me seemed to have a major problem, then one of the Greyhound staff went off to lunch, leaving just one other person working behind the counter. Then some people went in front of me as they needed to check in for their bus and obviously, hadn't left as much time as me to get to the station and do this stuff. All these things and more frustrate me! I need to relax more!!
Finally got my ticket and checked in my bag, which although was a bit of a surprise to me, is something I appreciate as I don"t want to have my bag stolen. They weigh your bag, check it in and put a baggage tag on it, so when you get off the bus and reclaim your bag from underneath you have to match your claim tag with the tag on the bag. To get into the waiting room you have to past a security guard and then there you are. The bus was on time and so started my first Greyhound ride. The bus wasn't full and it was a short hop to Sacramento. I had a four hour layover there, which I had requested, but it wouldn't have made a difference anyway. The next bus north wasn't for another few hours. I went and explored old Sacramento. A lot of the old town has been left as it was when California was settled and the Pony Express started. Despite all of this history the city strikes me as a sleepy kind of place where not a lot happens. It is a much smaller city then either SF or Los Angeles and yet it is the state capital, although the signs all say capitol with the "o".
The bus from Sacramento was busy but I got lucky and had two seats to myself. I wasn't able to sleep a lot but at least I wasn't having to share a small space with a complete stranger overnight. I got to Corvallis at 8am in the morning, I was in Oregon.My Californian adventure was over.