Episode 20 - SVW Tapes - 1st August, 1978

Well, this is tape three, started some days later. Where was I up to? That's right, we just left Squaw Valley. See... drive down from Squaw Valley... Uh oh, that's right, to South Lake Tahoe, where there's more casinos, etc. We went into Harrah's... Harrah's is their casino. Spent most of the afternoon on the beach at South Lake Tahoe. We set off that evening quite late and drove through to a place called Bodie. It's a national monument now. It's an old gold mining town, a ghost town, most interesting one, very authentic buildings, as they were, although a good deal of them have gone because, like other Western towns, they had many fires. So only about 10% of the original city are still there. But it was very interesting to see. They still had carriages and sleighs and things that they used. Bodie was a very cold place in the winter; the snow was very deep. And it's only Thursday, the 20th of July... on the morning we woke up, and there was actually ice on the ground, which was a bit of a shock. It was the first time we've had any really cold weather. We went around Bodie in the morning. 10,000 people had lived here at one time, and once again, Mark Twain had been in the area also. We spent most of the morning there, and then we moved on down through to Yosemite. We actually stopped just before we got to Yosemite; there was snow, and the children played in the snow for quite a long time, sliding down the snow on a plastic tablecloth.

In the afternoon, we drove through Yosemite, which is a very, very large park. Many waterfalls, and we arrived... It's got a very large area and village. And we camped at a place called Curry Village, which is just one of the small villages in the center of the park. We went to the visitor centre and took the orientation session. All the visitor centres are very well organised. The rangers are there, and they tell you what you can do in the area. It's best to go to the orientation sessions because there's such a lot of things to do that it's better to be organised and notice where you're going. Then we took a... a ranger gave a talk about preservation and parks, etc, which was quite interesting. We had dinner that evening and just had a fairly early night.

On Friday, 21st of July, we looked around Yosemite. This is another fairly big national park, so they have shuttle bus services and theatre services. Actually, there were three or four different routes in Yosemite that you could take. We did some shopping and generally looked around, and then we took... and then we took a shuttle bus up to the Ahwahnee Hotel, which is the very largest of the hotels in this particular park. There was a large swimming pool there too, also, so the children went swimming quite a lot that day. And the weather here is very pleasant. 80 degrees, 70 to 75 to 80 degrees, so it's quite comfortable and pleasant because we're up in the mountains again, 6,000 feet. And... there was a big American camper next to us that evening, and the children played with some other children and had a really good time. And... there's a lot of private enterprise in this particular park, so you aren't supposed to camp in camp parking areas where you're not supposed to be anywhere. But some of the places are less fussy about this sort of thing, and that particular night, the ranger came around and gave us a ticket for $15 because when he shouted through the window, we didn't answer him in the middle of the night. So I all forget about that, not to worry about tickets.

On Saturday the 22nd, we took some more shuttle buses, went round the village, and went up to Yosemite Falls. In the afternoon, John took a walk up to the Vernal and Nevada Falls, which is three and a half miles one way, very beautiful falls, and you get very wet also because you walk up right beside the falls. That night, we had a group of young people from Santa Cruz next to us, so we spent the evening chatting and talking with them and barbecued and so on.

On Sunday the 23rd, we set off in the morning. Or... It left Curry Village and went up to Glacier Point, which is quite a lot of miles from the village itself, and it's right up on top of a very high, high point. And you can look down over the village from the top. You can hardly tell that there's a camping area down below because of all the trees, and all the tents are just amongst them. But it was a very beautiful view from up there. We left... drove through the rest of Yosemite and then out onto the freeway again and down to a city called Fresno, where the temperature was 106 degrees! It was unbelievable, and it's such a shock when you've been up in the mountains to come down to this terrific heat again, so we were just exhausted from that. We went... Fresno, which is an enormous city, I had never heard of it in my life before, but 200,000 people living there, and of course, it's really a very large city there. It's a very wealthy agricultural city, and it was so hot, so we decided we'd just find a park and flake out for a while. In the middle of this park was a place called Storyland, children's fairy tale land. So the children went through that and amused themselves for a couple of hours, thoroughly enjoyed it. I think they had something like a magic key that you put into a lock and it told them fairy stories. It was quite funny because that afternoon, there were all sorts of people in the park, and there was a fun area there were also... on little paddle boats and so on, Ferris wheels and goodness knows what, and lots of trees and gardens. And we had dinner there, and just about six o'clock in the evening, everyone sort of went home from the afternoon that had been in the park. And all of a sudden, cars started pouring in. John said, "I think there must be... we're in a black area," because all these cars had black people in them. And then by another time... another hour had passed, they were just nose to tail driving round and round and round in circles through this park, and the whole thing just filled up with all these blacks. And they have their stereos going madly in their cars. They play cards and throw frisbees and dance and sing and whatever they like, just in the park. I spoke to a girl; I thought there must be a concert or something on there with so many of them there. And she said, "Oh no, Saturday night was halfway like this, but Sunday night was the night out," and they all come into the park on a Sunday night. We were the only white people there; there wasn't one other white face, except for the odd intermarriage, which isn't terribly common.

We left Fresno when it was cooler in the evening, although it didn't get a lot cooler, about nine o'clock, and went up and spent the night at Grant Grove in King's Canyon. So Monday 24th of July, we went and saw the General Grant, very large. The Sequoia trees grow in this... this park. And then we drove on to Cedar Grove, which is at the end of King's Canyon. It's about 30 miles and very high mountainous area and canyons. We had lunch down there by the river. The river was once again freezing cold, you couldn't swim in it, it was far too cold. And the rapids along this river were incredible; you couldn't have taken a raft down them. They went for two or three miles of very, very fast rapids. We found some fabulous blackberries, so John and Rachel collected a whole pile of blackberries, and met... who were camping up there and were chatting to them in the afternoon. They owned the Suzuki agency not far from Fresno, so we chatted about motorbikes and things. And a ranger came up to me and said that he had been to New Zealand and had actually lived in Karori with what he called his New Zealand family. And he thought New Zealand was marvelous, and if he ever had to give up his country, it would be for New Zealand. He just loved the place. We chatted to him for quite a while. He also saw when he saw Rachel and John off the blackberries, hoped they hadn't seen any rattlesnakes. Apparently, there are masses of rattlesnakes up there, but they hadn't seen any. We went... drove from there on down to... through the rest of Kings Canyon, and you go out of one national park and straight into another one, which is the Sequoia National Forest Park, where the Sequoia trees are naturally enormous and many of them. And I think we probably came down the steepest hill that we have come down from that particular area. We dropped almost 12,000 feet completely from top to bottom, where normally you only come down to about 6,000 and go up again. I've been having some trouble with my ears and throat and stuff, and with all this dropping in altitude and things, they were pretty sore. We stopped at a place called... of course, it got hot again once we got down. We stopped at a place called Visalia and had dinner. And bought some fruit. It was nice to be back in California and have lovely fresh fruit, in our interest in the nectarines, my favourite. Fruit is just beautiful here. We went through to Bakersfield on the way, heading for Los Angeles, and spent the night. It was just... it was 98 degrees all night! It was just so hot, and we were camped... we parked just on a street by, I think, a commercial traveler club or something or other. And we had the car locked up. Of course, we don't usually leave the doors open, but it was just so hot in the night that in the end, John just slipped up and threw open all the doors and the windows. We just could hardly breathe, then expired.

The next morning, 25th, we looked around Bakersfield, extremely hot again. And then went down Interstate 5 through to Los Angeles. As you leave Bakersfield, you go up a big hill, and you get to the top of the hill, and you can see Los Angeles ahead of you. And the smog was just so thick! We hadn't seen it for a while, and to see all that smog, you can barely see the city. They say, you know, "It'd be nice if you could just see Los Angeles." You really... it's hard to believe how bad that smog is.

We arrived in Los Angeles. We went to the American Express Company and spent a couple of hours at the Broadway Plaza, where we bought tickets to go and see the Hearst Castle on our way north again. We called Renie Reath, who we had met when we were down last time, to see if she'd heard anything of John's watch, but she hadn't. So I chatted to her for a while, and we decided we'd go out to the airport and try and chase this whole thing up. We went out, doesn't get terribly... very far, but there's a guy there assured us he'll make appropriate investigations, but of course, he wants to put it through the computer because he claims it'll have a number by now. But of course, we don't have any idea what that number will be, as we never ever received the watch anyway.

We decided that we'd spend the night in Los Angeles, so we drove down to Torrance, which was where we had originally had the first accident, and spent some time. John had seen a motorbike dealer down there on the previous occasion, so he went back to arrange to buy a BMW motorbike. Don't know whether he will yet, but he looked into it anyway. And then we drove down to Redondo Beach, which was where we had spent our first weekend at the beach when we were just after we'd had the accident. So that night, we went back to El Torito, the fisherman's wharf type pier there, and had a look around. It's always quite exciting on these piers. The shops are always open, and there's lots of fish for sale and restaurants, and always something happening. It was quite funny to be back after three and a half months, and it was just as cool as when we'd left three and a half months ago, which seemed quite strange. But you find that on the coast, it really is quite cool.

On Wednesday 26th, we were just having breakfast on the beach, and a lady came along and started talking to me. Her name was Esther Wyer, and it turned out that her husband was a tennis coach, and she was a teacher also. And she chatted away to us for quite a while and finally said would we come back and have a cup of coffee with her. We ended up spending the whole day with her because we got there in the morning, and she said, "Oh, that, you know, that we should have a shower and wash hair and do our washing and dry clothes, etc., etc." So of course, that took a while. So in the meantime, John mowed her lawns and fixed up her fence. She was absolutely delighted. And so she decided she would have to make us a meal. So, of course, it was about 2 o'clock before we'd had lunch. And she gave the children masses of books and Maitland and soft toys. Maitland got a great big Jaws the shark, and Rachel got a dinosaurus, enormous things. Not practical on a camper, but she told them that she didn't have room in her house. God knows what she thought we were going to do with someone on a camper. We had lunch with her and so on, and I was feeling really terrible where I'd hit this... throat and glands thing for about a week. So she decided that I'd better get to see a doctor. So she arranged that I go to this clinic in the afternoon. So I went down and had the quickest, briefest visit I've ever had to a doctor, which cost me $20 and $8 for the prescription. However, I apparently had an upper respiratory infection which would undoubtedly lay me terribly low if it wasn't fixed up, so assured me, and threw some drugs at me, said, "See you later."

Esther had a friend who is going down to New Zealand in February next year, whom we've given both John's parents' and my parents' addresses to. They're both quite some ladies; they're mad keen tennis players, so they should get on famously indeed, quite well. And they're also teachers. I thought Dad might be able to help them out with anything they may want to know about education and so on. Their names were Colonel...? Jean? And Yvonne Gobert from California. They were friends of Esther's. They're mad on sailing as well; they're going to do a bit of sailing while they're in New Zealand. Well, Esther was just marvelous to us. She was a very sweet lady, gave us all kinds of bits and pieces, and sent us off with cookies and goodness knows what. That we would have liked to have stayed on, but I don't know, time seems to be getting away with us. It's just incredible that we should have been travelling for four months, and the days just go so quickly. So we left their place at about six in the evening, and we decided to drive through to Ventura, well actually a place south of Ventura called Oxnard, where we had some people to call on that we had met in Grand Junction, Stephen and Jean Stills. He works... Steve works for Youth for Christ, Jean's a teacher, and we had met them, you know, a few weeks beforehand. So we arrived there that night, and they had actually just had a dinner party, so Jean had gone to bed. So that suited me fine because I wasn't feeling so good. So we slept the night, and the next morning we all got up to chat, and Jean was on her first day on vacation, of course. So she made us the most beautiful breakfast of fresh fruit and all kinds of things. The Americans have quite different food from us, and we had scrambled eggs with zucchini and goodness knows what, and we eat all the fruit with the meal, and we had fruit juice and muffins, and it's really very nice. So we had a very long breakfast. They had a beautiful house at Oxnard, not a massive house, but the Americans have a way of decorating them. There's so much available to buy in the country that everybody's house is so original, beautiful furniture. They had a few very nice things that they'd brought back from Europe with them. And we had a generally good time there. The children enjoyed it because Jean had lots of things for children to play with, although Maitland complained that they were mostly little girls' things.

Anyway, we left there about 11:30 and took 101 up the coast to Santa Barbara, which is a beautiful city, a lovely city. Had a look around there for a while and then went on up the coast through San Luis Obispo to San Simeon, which is the port where the Hearst family used to live. Well, there's nothing between San Luis and further on past San Simeon. Really, this land was all owned by the Hearsts. So San Simeon itself was just a tiny little village with a port. We weren't booked to go to the Hearst Castle the following day, so we spent the afternoon by a river which led into the... to the sea there. It was quite cool and overcast. As I say, on the coast has been quite cool. Being back near the sea, we thought, would be lovely, but it really was quite a lot cooler after the heat of the deserts. Anyway, we spent the afternoon by the beach and had dinner there and just stayed overnight, illegally parked by the side of the beach.

We got up early in the morning because our tickets that we've booked... the trouble with booking ahead, you never really know what day you're going to be anywhere. And we'd booked the afternoon in case we were late in getting there, but we decided to change the tickets, and we went early in the morning at 20 to 10. We took... you have to be... Hearst Castle itself has been given over to the government and is now a reserve, but the land is still owned by the Hearst family. It's just the actual house itself and a few acres or so that have been given to the government. So you have to take a bus from the bottom of the hill right up to the castle. Well, boy, was he wealthy! It's a strange house. I wasn't impressed by it. It is chock-a-block with what probably is one of the biggest art collections in the world, and I guess the art in itself is pretty extraordinary, but the interesting things are sort of things that he has there. There are three swimming pools in the whole place. One's a Roman swimming pool that has gold leaf little drawings on the bottom in tiles, but there's actually gold in them. The extravagance was incredible. But the house inside, there's lots of apartments or little villas for his friends to stay in, which are very beautiful, but they're all very heavy Spanish. He was a bit of a ceiling nut, anyway, and collected all these Spanish ceilings, which he's had put into the houses. And they're very heavy and dark, and the Spanish architecture is not something that I really go for. But anyway... I'd much prefer the softer and more ornate and beautiful French period stuff, which he had a little of, but mostly it's Spanish. The house itself is incredible, and the fact that he didn't start it till he was 56, another thing, because it's just gigantic. It just goes forever. There are three tours; you can obviously only take one at a time, and they're sort of five bucks a tour. So there were people on our tour that had been on the other two to see the whole house. But it'd take a couple of days to do that, and seeing one tour sort of covers... gives you a general idea of what it's like. So that was an interesting experience.

From there, we left... it was after lunch by the time we'd finished at San Simeon, so we drove on to Big Sur, very pretty area. And along the coast is very much like home, the sea and the sort of rugged coastlines and beaches and things, very much like New Zealand. Through to Carmel, which is a magnificent tourist resort, really fantastic, very beautiful and very heavily populated. Further on up the coastline... We actually stopped in Carmel for a while, bought some goodies at a bakery and had a look around. The weather is very much like Wellington again here, very much cooler. We went on to Monterey. All the way on Interstate 1. From Monterey, we went up... we moved inland but onto the US 101 freeway to Palo Alto, where Alex... Alex Young's sister Elizabeth lives. We found her house, and she was actually going out in about an hour and a half, so we had about an hour talking to her. And she got all excited and hasn't seen Alex for 20 years. We felt really almost guilty at sort of seeing her ourselves when he hadn't. And she was going out; she was quite upset that she was, and... "Not to worry," because we could come back. And so we went out and around the town, had a look around Palo Alto, and came back that evening and spent the night in her driveway so that we could see her next morning. So the next morning, we had breakfast with her, and we made a tape to Alex, which she'll get eventually so that he could hear what she sounds like and so on, and chatted about what she'd been up to over the years. Then she took us around to meet her eldest son. She has four children, three boys and a daughter. And the daughter, to me, was very like Lindsay, Alexa's daughter. There's a definite family likeness there.

We'd called some friends of Karen Penada's whom Cheryl Tress had actually stayed with when she called through 18 months ago and went around the world. And they have a couple of ice cream parlours here in San Francisco, and they had invited us around for dinner on the Saturday night. So that afternoon, we headed into Half Moon Bay, where they live, which is a fair distance out of town, and had a lovely evening with them, really enjoyed it. And after... well, late that night, of course, we went back to Palo Alto to Alex's sister Elizabeth, who was still waiting for her daughter, who was in Elizabeth Falls, to come home. So we spent till about 2 AM talking to her. On the Sunday, we just had a quiet morning, and then Elizabeth took us around Palo Alto, which is a pretty big city in its own right, and of course houses Stanford University and the Stanford Hospital, which, of course, is so famous. So she took us through all that area and went to a very unique park, which is in Palo Alto, which only is for the sole use of Palo Alto residents. You actually have to show your driver's license to get into this park. It's apparently quite a controversial one because other areas think they should be able to use it, but the taxpayers pay for it in that area, or the ratepayers, so they feel like they should keep it for themselves. We went home and had barbecued dinner and just a reasonably early night it was on Sunday 30th of July.

On the 31st, we packed up and did our washing and so on and set off into San Francisco. I suppose it was about three in the afternoon by the time we finally got in there. We called the American Express Company to pick up our mail and so on. And quite by coincidence, we just... was really very coincidental, the couple that we had met in Cortez, Pete and Di, Pete was from Christchurch, and Di was from Melbourne, whom we'd met in Mesa Verde and had discussed meeting up with again. In those days, it's fog-bound, and you feel very much at home here because the weather's so damn cold. Their summers are really just like Wellington; they're not summers at all. But their winters are just the same, so their temperatures hardly change really. It's always around about 50s, 60s. San Francisco is beautiful. It's mountainous, and the cable cars, very beautiful, tearing around the streets. That made me sad that we had ever got rid of the trams of Wellington because they're really quite a tourist attraction. No San Francisco person would use one, I'm sure. There's always queues a mile long to get on them and hang on the side for grim death. They go around corners, and if you weren't holding on real tight, you could easily fall off them. Uh... after we left Coit Lookout, we looked around down a bit further and then we headed for the Golden Gate Park, which is a fabulous park, completely man-made. An enormous area of the city, which is where everybody was camped out after the 1906 earthquake, which, of course, was followed by an enormous fire, which wiped out the city. After that, they converted it... completely man-made this beautiful park. It was just sand dunes before that. And we met Pete and Di and had dinner there with them and the whole evening. After we left them, we went up to Shirley and Douglas. We'd had dinner, it was on the Saturday, and Di had told us they both used to work up at the veteran hospital once, but that was a great place to park. So we went up there and parked up there for the night.

On the Tuesday, August already, 1st of August, we... Gosh, side two of the third tape. I'm going through these tapes like nobody's business. Well, it's the 1st of August. I went downtown in the morning and wandered around Union Square. Got a parking ticket there, $20 one, quite expensive these parking tickets. Anyway, we're not worrying about them. We looked into getting some money sent over and... and had a look around the general downtown area. The... at 11 o'clock when we met Shirley Gaston at one of their ice cream parlours. They have two in San Francisco, and they now make their own ice cream. The biggest ice cream company in this country, or for public sale of ice cream cones, is called Baskin & Robbins' 31 flavors. But they're very mean with your ice cream. You know, the cheapest ice cream you can buy is about 50 cents. They vary quite a lot, but that's one small scoop, and that's pretty small. We have seen them up to 68 cents in some of the commercial ski areas and resorts and things. They get up to 68 cents for one scoop. Which is a hell of a lot dearer than New Zealand from what I can remember. So we got to Shirley's ice cream parlour. She was waiting for us. She arrived, and we looked at all the... the plant where they produce the ice cream and all the freezers and so on and chatted about the flavors and things they have all kinds of flavors also. We all had enormous ice cream, and I tried... they have pies, ice cream pies. When I tried was called mud pie, which is coffee flavor, very nice indeed. Maitland ate most of it; I discovered... I didn't make children would like coffee-flavored ice cream, but they do. Shirley has a little six-month-old baby who was with us and also liked ice cream. So Shirley took us over to the Golden Gate Park again, which is where all the museums and art galleries and things are. We went into an art gallery there and saw two Rembrandt paintings, which was like really quite exciting. And then we saw an exhibition of bridal gowns from the past hundred years, which was quite fun. They were mostly the gowns of wealthy San Francisco families, and they had sort of one for each, run about each 20 years, you know, through the times, which was very nice. Right up to modern day ones, which I wouldn't say look all that good compared with the others. Anyway, we went through the art gallery. They had a fantastic exhibition of Chinese art there with most magnificent teapots that were just centuries old. Really was a very beautiful exhibition. They had all kinds of things from Ming vases and went through... and teapots, little pottery fruits, and all kinds of things. And it went from AD 800 AD right through to sort of more recent times. That was most interesting. And that... the present... they're renovating the museum preparing for the Tutankhamun exhibition, which they've got here next year. We went through also the aquarium. They have a fabulous aquarium there, very large, with many, many varieties of fish from throughout the world. Took some time. And... after all... Shirley lived with Rachel, and they went home to prepare the dinner. And John and Maitland and I decided to have a further look around and then go on out after them. But we decided we... I... about 18 months ago in Wellington, we had met a girl. I had taken a lady out for lunch who was a friend of Esther's in New York. And when the Royal Viking Star was in Wellington, I had taken this lady out and so on, and we'd gone back on board the ship that night, and she had introduced us to the girl Elaine, who was the musical director. She came from San Francisco, and we exchanged addresses, never imagining that we'd ever see one another again. But I had her address, and so we decided to call her. Well, the numbers were the same, so we went past the... almost past the street where she had lived. So we called in, and an old neighbor was able to give us her new phone number. So we called her. She lived up... Daly City, which is about 15 minutes out of San Francisco. We called her in Manhattan that the call box that we were ringing from was the very street she lived in, so we popped down to see her for about an hour. It was quite an exciting reunion, and made arrangements to see one another again. And then we headed off and went out to Shirley and Douglas's at Half Moon Bay for dinner that night. We spent the night there, and Shirley actually rang Karen Penada because she had this letter saying that Karen was arriving in San Francisco in the next couple of weeks. So we all spoke to Karen on the telephone. Turns out she's arriving on the 10th. Whether we can wait that long is doubtful because we've really got... time is running out really fast, so we have to get on to Canada and make arrangements for whatever we're going to do.

We spent the night with them, and we had the morning again next morning with Shirley. We set off after lunch and went into town to Fisherman's Wharf, which is a fabulous area, very French area. I spent the afternoon there wandering around. They've got a very large mall-type area which is called The Cannery, which was one of the largest canneries in the world. It's now been built into a shopping centre. It looks very, very old from the outside, but in fact, all that's left of the original is the exterior walls. And there's all kinds of people on the streets singing, doing just about anything, and selling handmade jewelry and anything from jewelry to thimbles and fish and God knows what. You can buy in this place... everything's sort of sold on the street, and it's a real hive of activity, absolutely full of tourists. No San Francisco person apparently goes there during the three months of their vacation here. Very busy, busy place with musicians and jugglers and goodness knows what. You can stand watching people for hours. There was a clown there who made balloons into Minnie Mouses and Mickey Mouses, little poodle dogs and goodness knows what. He made the children a Snoopy each out of balloons. We then took the exciting cable car ride from Fisherman's Wharf to downtown where the BART station was. That's the underground railway they call BART. Which is right over the hills and round all the corners and downtown. It's quite a thrill on the cable car. It was utterly cold, and Rachel insisted on standing on the runner board on the outside, so hanging on Grim Death, we tore over the hills. As you come to the top of the hill and look down, you just had to believe the cable cars are going to stay on the cable. So, Steve... we then took the cable car back up town but went to Chinatown. We had a Chinese meal downtown. The food is pretty cheap and very authentic Chinese food. This is apparently the largest Chinese population in the world outside China. It's a very large Oriental population, both Chinese and Japanese. We then took the cable car back to Fisherman's Wharf and just browsed around looking and watching people. There's so much going on down there. These things run half the night. We spent that night just down on Fisherman's Wharf. We just found a little spot towards the end of the wharf where we camped for the night.

On our Thursday, 3rd of August, John went down prior to the ticket office for the boat tickets to go over to Alcatraz. They don't book ahead of time, so you have to be there very early. Those queues are miles long, but we didn't have a clue what the time was. We don't look at the time; we wouldn't hardly know what day it was, let alone the time. But he got up and went down, but he must have been very, very early because he waited about an hour before the place even opened, something like quarter to eight it opened. Anyway, we got tickets for quarter to 10, and we went out on the boat across the harbour, which is really rather nice to see the bridge and Golden Gate Bridge and things. And went out onto Alcatraz Island and took the tour. It's about an hour and a half. They take you through all the buildings. A lot of it has deteriorated and it's just rubble now because the government actually gave the island up, and the Indians lived there for a while. They claimed it, and they were kicked off again. And it became a national park or National Reserve and has tours going through. And you see the room that the Birdman of Alcatraz spent five years in solitary confinement and then also the room he spent the last 11 years in before he left there and was sent to another prison. Ghastly place, I should imagine, to have been. It was almost impossible for people to escape. 36 people escaped, of which all were recaptured except for three who, or five that drowned, but they only ever found two bodies. So they're not really too sure about the other three. But it looks pretty impossible to swim across. The currents are very bad, and the water is terribly cold. Plus the fact that you had a great amount of difficulty getting out of the place in the first place. Yeah, we quite enjoyed that trip, and we got back sometime sort of after lunch.

Actually, I missed something that we did the day before. On the 2nd of August, after we left Shirley in the morning, we actually went out over the Golden Gate Bridge. We've been hoping to get a clear day, but it's almost impossible to get a clear day in San Francisco. It's not until you actually get to San Francisco that you see photos of the bay and the bridges and so on with fog around them. A lot of the paintings here have the fog, but I had never seen one before, and you don't really appreciate just how much fog they get. It rolls and rolls out. And you can hardly ever see the bridge clearly, so we decided to go across anyway to Sausalito, which is just on the other side of the bridge. A very nice sort of commercial touristy town. Where there are a lot of boat houses, which is quite a fascinating area. Boat houses, some of them are really scruffy; others are quite flash. There's many of them; it was quite interesting to drive around and have a look at those. We wandered around the little village of Sausalito that afternoon before we went back down to Fisherman's Wharf. So that's... what was the crossing of the bridge? So then we got back from Alcatraz on the Thursday and spent a couple of hours just in the Fisherman's Wharf area, just watching people. There's all kinds of jugglers, clowns, and things to see constantly, and there's plenty to do down there. And... and then... oh, we went back into the American Express Company to see if anything had been heard of from New Zealand. And then we went up to Gaston's, one of the ice cream parlours on... it's one of them on the corner of Sacramento and Presidio, not far out of town. Out of the main downtown area, and nice cream. And then, we left the city and went out to Daly City to Elaine's place, where we had dinner with them. And the kids were enjoying it. Elaine has three children, a son and twin daughters. So Rachel had been having a lot of fun with them, dressing up and making up and goodness knows what. And Elaine's son at the moment has a broken toe, so he's put out of order. But anyway, we had dinner, and Elaine is now working in downtown San Francisco, the music of a piano bar. And so she has to start work at nine o'clock, so she gets a babysitter in anyway. So we got the babysitter and all went downtown. We dropped Elaine off at work, and John and I walked all over downtown San Francisco, went up to Chinatown, had a look around, we went into a few piano bars and bookshops and so on. And we went to the St. Francis Hotel, which is an enormous hotel. These hotels have so many restaurants and shops and things in them; they're just sort of little towns in themselves. The people that stay in... and they're very expensive... the people that stay in them don't need to leave the hotel; there's so many things within the hotel to do. And after we'd looked around town for hours, feet were worn out. We just... we went up in the St. Francis Hotel. They have lifts on the outside of the building. You can go up to the 32nd floor where they have a penthouse and either cocktail bar or restaurant. It was... we went right up to the top and had a look around over the city. Fantastic view of the city and a hair-raising trip up and down on the outside of this building. But very beautiful to see from there all the lights and things.

We also, while we were in Chinatown, we went to a restaurant that has won an award for about the last eight years for being the best restaurant in the country or something. And there were photos of all the film stars and famous people that have eaten there, including President Carter. It was quite interesting. We went right up to the restaurant, and we had a look around, and looked very nice, all Chinese, of course. Then we went back downtown to the Gold Dust where Elaine works. A very nice bar, most elaborate bar. And she plays sort of sing-along music, and all the people there are mostly tourists. She gets very few Americans. She finds they're mostly people from other countries, being it's in a very good spot in town, right next to Union Square and right next to this hotel called the St. Francis. So people just bowl out there and straight into her music bar. She plays till 2 am, so we stayed there till 2 o'clock. And when she'd finished work, we drove up to the Fairmont Hotel, which is a very beautiful hotel. Half of it is old, and half of it is new. Half was destroyed during the 1906 earthquake and fire, and half still remains, which has got very large pillars and then very enormous hotel, hundreds of restaurants and shops again. Uh... there's all kinds of photos there of the earthquake, and it's quite an interesting little museum gallery down one of the halls. And we could hear there was still a show on. It was running terribly late. Apparently, it should have finished... it was supposed to start at midnight. They had two shows a night and be finished by 2 o'clock or something, but it was running about an hour late. It was the first opening night of a new show called 'Four Girls 4', which I've forgotten one of the people on it, but was Rosemary Clooney and Margaret Whiting and Rose Marie, the girl from the Van Dyke... Dick Van Dyke's office on whatever the television programme is called. And making a comeback. I don't know how successful a comeback will be, but they had a lot of people watching them. They were performing in a room called the Venetian Room, where it would probably cost $100 a person a night to eat and see the show, very elaborate dining room. And we could hear the end of the show, and so we went down the hall to see if we could see anything, and we saw them all as they opened the doors and everyone was leaving, we saw them all leaving. Anyway, we decided... Elaine has quite an appetite in the middle of the night when she's been playing all night, and so decided that we almost must go out for breakfast. So we went to this very nice 24-hour restaurant within the Fairmont Hotel. And we'd no sooner sat down when a couple of friends of Elaine's, entertainers that she's known for years, turned up. So they decided to join us for breakfast at three o'clock in the morning. And the next thing Rosemary Clooney and all the women in the show and their boyfriends or husbands or whatever they were all arrived too. And the couple that we were with, friends of Elaine's, knew them all and had been to parties prior to the show with them all. It was quite interesting to see them face to face. And... we had an elaborate breakfast and masses of coffee, and I guess we left there at about half past five in the morning. We got home about six and all went to bed with the sun. And I couldn't believe it because when we got up, it was 3:15 in the afternoon. I couldn't believe that I... I didn't think I've ever slept till 3:15 in the afternoon. So we fed the children, had tea quite early, and all went into town to the Hyatt Hotel, which is just a beautiful hotel. It's just... it's built kind of like a pyramid, and it looks like a pyramid inside in that it's hollow in the centre with one tremendously enormous foyer, all with fountains and these big bird cages with beautiful lovebirds in them and flowers everywhere and bars. And all the floor is done out in sort of marble tiles. And on every Friday night from five till late, they have a very large jazz band there and have dancing, which is free, and except that they're making a fortune because everybody's drinking. And they have all the Glenn Miller and Tommy Dorsey and mostly songs of the 40s. And the... there's a wide age group of people, quite young people and right through, all doing all kinds of jitterbugging and cha-cha-cha-ing and dancing and all really thoroughly enjoying themselves. It's a fantastic atmosphere in a really beautiful place. I at first thought that they must have built this hotel with the floor moving to accommodate dancing, but that wasn't the original intention at all. But this hotel is apparently absolute earthquake-proof, and when the people are dancing, the floor moves quite a lot. When you're standing on it, you're really moving quite a bit. Whether or not it is earthquake-proof remains to be seen, but it would seem that this building looks more likely than some of the others. So we stayed and watched that for a while, and... had a look within the foyer. Inside of the hotel, there are also elevators that go up outside. They're all lit up, and you can go up 20 floors or something up to a restaurant called The Equinox, which is on top of the building, and it's a revolving restaurant so you see all over San Francisco. Really beautiful inside. It's all mirrored, red leathery, velvety stuff, and all mirrors on the roof and walls. You feel quite strange when you first get in there; it's like going into a mirror maze. And the whole building revolves. So we came down from there, and Elaine had to go to work. So we were about to leave the Hyatt Hotel, and we'd lost Maitland. We spent ages looking for him. John was hunting and hunting, and he finally found him with a security guard and a big chocolate milkshake. He was pretty happy. He had been saying he was thirsty, and the security guard had ordered him this great big chocolate milkshake. So we left there, and we went downtown and through the strip area of town, which is a very neon sign area and with lots of girls outside enticing the men to come in and so on. Very busy, busy area at that time of night. We had all the kids with us, so we went and had... did a little bit of shopping, and then we came home. And that's where we are at present, just making this tape. I actually had to buy these tapes; I'd run out of tapes. So that's the news to the 4th of August.

Now, some of the news from New Zealand. Dad should be out of hospital, although not now. I hope that, you know, you're feeling fine and that your foot's a lot better, hopefully. It'll be better than it has been. Obviously, it's been damn sore. It looked terrible when we left, so I hope that they've been able to put you out of your misery of it.

What else had happened? Yeah, then we're saying in her letter that the...? Emolument? Was being given to the Maori. So that's quite interesting. And as you say, I do hope they give it back again. And... this couple Pete and Di that we met and ran into again in San Francisco the other day, of course, had been to Vancouver now, and yes, his brother does know cousin Tony. So it's quite interesting. Apparently, all the New Zealanders gathered together quite a bit up there. Actually, we called Tony the other week from Montrose because I had letters from Mum saying that they may be coming back to New Zealand since Lois had had died. And so I just thought that they may be sort of packing up and going instantly. So we thought we'd better give them a call. But Tony assures me that they won't be going home until next year. They've got to sell the house and goodness knows what. So there was no immediate rush, and so they're expecting us, looking forward to seeing us. We're supposed to have been there nearly a month ago, so they're not worried about it.

Both the children are very well, and they really seem to be enjoying meeting new people all the time. They make friends with people just instantly now. They realize that to have children to play with, they've got to be friendly very quickly because they're moving on. And they really make friends with children very, very quickly. They rush up to people and ask if they want to play and so on. And they just love Maitland. I say to Maitland, "Do you like travelling around the world?" And he says yes. He says, "It's good because every day we do something exciting." So they've really settled down. It took quite a while to settle down. Living in a camper is not easy. It's very cramped. And getting used to a different country and travelling a lot of miles sometimes in days, and the heat, the extremes of heat that we've had, and changes of climate and altitude and things all take their toll. You can feel pretty tired sometimes. But the children are coping with it pretty well. I think they're probably ready for school and that they're sick of the sight of one another at times. But we do live in pretty close quarters at the moment in the camper. And they could probably do with getting back to school. We may send them to school in Canada for a while, but school doesn't go back here until September, so we got to look into that. And... the... the people here are very, very generous, very kind. You find very quickly you make friends of people, especially when you're travelling, quite often from their holiday. And people have been pretty kind. We've got addresses just all over the country to go and visit people as we go through.

We hear very little news about New Zealand, but just... never features, of course, in the newspaper. Actually, most newspapers here don't have much but American news, or even local state news really. The only English news we've heard, I think, was that the House of Commons, I think it was, had gone berserk, and they'd been throwing manure all over the place. One on the other day when we were down in Redondo, we read that finally... finally Sir Robert Henry had got the message. That was quite interesting. And obviously, that made quite big news here. It was quite a big headline; it was on the front page. So I gather it took up television and radio and newspaper time the other days, I would imagine, if it actually reached here. But other than that, we've heard absolutely nothing about New Zealand. And... I imagine that you're all getting geared up for the elections. I'd be interested if someone wrote to me and tell me what's going on as far as the elections are concerned. And, and the abortion issue as well. Something I haven't heard much since Cherry Raymond and the girls all left. Be quite interested to know what's happening there, especially with the election arriving. They're having a lot of trouble in this country with abortion issues. They also are having a lot of trouble in this state with the thing... thing called Proposition 13, which... everybody's up in arms about paying too much tax. They have to pay this terrific property tax here every year, really astronomical amounts. It's unbelievable. You know, just an average house pays something like $1,500 a year in property tax, which is an incredible amount of money every year. It discourages people from owning their own homes. So they've all been jumping up and down. And so now they've... the... they've reduced the taxes, but all just overnight, they've also cut back on just about everything. They've cut back on education. There's a whole lot of people being put out of work in government departments and so on, all state departments. Teachers having risks... As it happened in New Zealand where they've cut back on remedial reading and all the necessary things. That's happening here overnight, and it's going right down the line, all... some big side effects from that.

Jimmy Carter, I gather, is a most unpopular person. Nobody seems to have a good word to say about him. But generally, the United States has... really, a fantastic place, and we're thoroughly enjoying it. We're managing to live fairly cheaply. We've become very American orientated very, very quickly. We're now living on hamburgers and hot dogs, same as the rest of them do. It's just incredible the number of hot dogs and hamburgers they eat. It really is the staple diet most days. And you find that you soon fall into that too because it's the easiest way to go. If you can't beat them, join them. We really are enjoying it, but you learn very quickly as you go along. Now we've been on the road for four months, and we have all sorts of ways of living more cheaply. Gas here is fairly cheap. It ranges from... we've had it as cheap as 52 cents a gallon, which is slightly smaller a gallon than in New Zealand, but it goes up to, I think, 80 cents is about the highest we've paid for it.

Well, once again, I've run out of tape. This is three hours of taping I've done. It doesn't seem to take too long to fill up a tape. This is the first time... a couple of times, the other night and again tonight, and I've been able to plug in at anybody's house. So otherwise, it's not really very easy to write letters on this tape, so I do tend not writing to everybody. But it's almost impossible, as much as I do enjoy writing. So as I hear, these tapes seem to get around, so hopefully everybody will hear the news. And there's nothing worse than writing letters with the same thing over and over again. So it's really good that you pass these tapes around; it saves a lot of work.