Arrived in San Francisco safely.  Met my dad and my cousin Tom and his wife Pam and headed downtown to Pier 39 for lunch.  Had Clam chowder in a bowl made from a big sourdough bread roll for lunch.  To be honest, I think I could make better chowder at home, and the bread was not super fresh.  It was nice to see Tom and Pam again.

If possible, Tom is a more obssesive Geocacher than I am.  After lunch we wandered down the waterfront to find a cache there.  Tom eventually located it, because he was just a little more tenacious at sticking his head into shrubbery in front of hundreds of people walking around than I was, but I did log my first find in the USA.

Then we said our goodbyes and headed back to the motel in South San Francisco.  There it was on the side of the freeway.  Missed the exit.  Drove to the next exit, circulated through the airport again, back on US 101 north, missed the exit again.  Took San Bruno exit. Headed west towards somewhere on I-380, took El Camino Real, turned the wrong way.  Went around the block, back onto 101, and...................nearly missed the exit because even with his indicator on no one seemed to want to let my dad in.  But we made it and checked in.

The flight from Dubai.  We took off from this massive mecca of human indulgence and flew straight north.  After crossing the Persian Gulf we made landfall at Bandar Abbass and flew straight North over Iran, Turkmenistan, the Aral Sea, Uzbekhistan, Kazakhstan and Russia.  I fell asleep just about the time we hit the Aral Sea. 

Iran.  I wonder if there is a correlation between the physical geography of this place and the hearts of the people that live there?  I honestly don't think I have seen a less inviting terrain anywhere - even the red centre of Australia has colour.  Iran is just brown.  I didn't see a single patch of green.  Not one.  I know desolation has beauty in its own right, but this was...well take a look at the photo above.

When I woke again it was dark as we were well into the Arctic circle.  In my previous post I mentioned daylight all the way, well I forgot about the permanent night over the north pole during winter.  By the time it got light again, we were well into Canada, and there was snow.

In fact the snow was unbroken until well into California.  I saw the San Andreas fault, which is quite obvious from the air. And then like magic, the terrain was green again. 

This is me on final approach to San Francisco.  I thought this was a pretty cool photo.

God Bless,

Jonathan