Shelley Munro Blog

San Francisco would have to be one of my favorite cities to visit. I’m running a bit short of time today so I thought I’d post a few photos from our recent trip. I think I like San Francisco so much because of its situation on the sea. The hills are killers to walk up and down. Believe me, I know because Mr. Munro made me walk up and down several!

The Golden Gate Bridge is an icon and known worldwide. During the summer months it’s also often shrouded in fog.

Pier 39 is a fun place to wander. Lots of great ways to empty the wallet here! This is a shot of the merry-go-round. A shot of the resident sealions follows. You can smell them before you see them.

Coit Tower is another icon. It’s fun to climb to the top and see the views of the city.

This is a shot of Lombard Street. This end of Lombard Street is known as the crookedest street. It’s also very steep. There are traffic jams here as tourists queue to drive down the crooked street and grab a photo or two.

Alcatraz Island is known worldwide. A trip out to the island jail is fascinating, although you need to book well ahead. This is a very popular trip.

Cops on the beat.

Here’s a statue of The Thinker. It’s at the Legion of Honor, a fine-art museum.

Have you visited San Francisco? If so, what’s your favorite place to visit in the city? If not, which place or thing in the city would you most like to see in person?

1. Yosemite, California - just beautiful. I’d visited before but it was much quieter this time due to both the petrol prices and a recent fire that had scared visitors away. We had a perfect day with excellent visibility.

2. Grand Canyon, Arizona. This canyon is awe-inspiring.

3. Petrified Forest, Arizona. My husband and I both enjoyed our first visit to this park. The petrified forests were fascinating.

4. Mesa Verde, Colorado. Hot and dry. Busy but well worth a visit for the peek into the cliff dwellings of the Puebloans.

5. Black Canyon of the Gunnison, Colorado. I didn’t know anything about this park until I visited but I loved the black rock and the deep canyons. It was stark and beautiful.

6. Rocky Mountains, Colorado. We didn’t have the best weather here. At the top of the pass it was freezing and sleeting. Ranger Michelle answered some of my many questions while I was here and we saw lots of animals at the lower levels before it started raining. A lot of trees are dying here after being attacked by the pine beetle.

7. Devil’s Tower, Wyoming. We walked around the base and saw our first snake here.

8. Little Bighorn Battlefield, Montana. An interesting place to visit although, man was it hot on the day we visited!

9. Yellowstone, Wyoming. This is a huge park and you need to spend a few days to explore it fully.

10. Olympic, Washington. This park covers both forest, lakes and mountains as well as part of the coast. Crescent Lake was gorgeous and we also enjoyed exploring the coast.

11. Mt. Rainier, Washington. I loved my visit here. The spring flowers were in full bloom and it was really pretty.

12. Lewis & Clark, Oregon. We didn’t know much about Lewis and Clark and after visiting Fort Clatsop we came away much wiser. This pair of explorers had great people skills and seemed well liked by everyone.

13. Crater Lake, Oregon. One of my favorites. It’s so pretty here. I could look at the lake for hours.

During the last few days we seem to have hit upon themes in Washington. Our first theme was a Bavarian one. Leavenworth is not far from Seattle (a few hours) and is a ski resort during the winter. It’s a very touristy place but still a lot of fun. All the buildings are painted with murals and we drank German-type beer while eating pretzels and bratwurst sausages. Yum! Here’s a photo of me standing at the bar.

And a photo of some of the murals and buildings. Even McDonald’s was in theme.

The next day it was a Western theme when we stayed at Winthrop. The town has wooden boardwalks and cowboy and western-type murals. This was also a fun place to stay.
Here’s a shot of the town.

The following day we drove through the Northern part of the Cascades and we had a tree theme going on. The scenery was really pretty and I kept thinking of Lauren Dane’s werewolves running around. They’re probably not situated in that part of the Cascades, but I imagined them peeking at me as I drove past. Here’s a scenery shot to finish my post.

I’ll be back tomorrow to tell you about our trip down the river/salmon and also our bear watching trip. I’m really looking forward to this trip, and luckily the weather is improving.

Happy Labor weekend to everyone in the US.

In the last couple of days we’ve visited several National Parks. Grand Canyon is amazing and photos simply don’t do it justice. I made some other tourists laugh when I shrieked at Mr. Munro because he went too close to the edge. Cripes. I would have been a mess if I’d had kids as well. One husband was bad enough.

We stopped at a Meteor Crater. It’s big enough to fit twenty football fields inside and the astronaunts do some of their training here. While we were there another of the afternoon storms came, complete with lightning. They cancelled their afternoon tour because there were so many lightning strikes.

We also visited Petrified Forest National Park. I really enjoyed this park since it was so different. There are entire forests that have been petrified and the interior of the logs is a beautiful rich red color. They say that they lose 12 tonnes of petrified wood each year because of stealing and enforce a stern policy of no theft.

Mr. Munro and I have discovered a strange thing. We’ve obviously been married for too long because we’ve started dressing alike. I know! Scary, right? We can dress in different rooms and end up dressing in the same colored shirts and shorts. A server at Starbucks commented on it, asking if we’d done it on purpose. We’ve started consulting as to what we’re wearing now before we leave our room.

Someone stole one of my magnet signs. It’s good that they thought it was attractive enough to steal, but annoying too! I’m going to have to order more because I think they’ll look very cool on my little car at home. Just as well I took a photo on the first day.

We went to the top of the Eiffel Tower at the Paris Hotel. The view was incredible and all the vehicles looked like kids’ toys. I waited for a hand to appear but it didn’t happen. Vegas is SO noisy and full on. I’m not a big gambler - neither is hubby - but we did put a little in the slots and ended up ahead. Probably more fluke than good management!

My accent confused a lady this morning. I spoke to her twice and shouted the third time. After that I gave up. She got all huffy and said it was my weird Scottish accent. Hello??? I didn’t even try to explain since she wouldn’t have understood me.

This is me at the top of the tower.

This is a photo of the Venetian Hotel and one of the gondolas.

Whoa, talk about heat today. We skirted Death Valley and the temps rose as high as 100 F, which is very hot for this Kiwi kid. We drove to a ghost town called Rhyolite. It used to be a mining town. The above photo is one of the old banks. We explored here and had a quick lunch before driving to Las Vegas. There was an afternoon storm with heaps of lightning bolts, and we heard later that there had been flash floods in some areas. The temperature dropped immediately to around 64.

Hubby and I had a noisy celebration when we managed to navigate our way to the hotel without any unscheduled sightseeing.

After leaving San Francisco, we headed to Yosemite National Park. We’ve visited before, but it’s so pretty we decided to go again. We’d heard about the fires they’d had and were concerned about visibility. We passed loads of fire engines and a huge camp where hundreds of firemen were camped, but they were all returning home and visibility was excellent at the park. We saw some sort of deer and some tiny chipmunks. No bears today, although we had wasps when we tried to have a picnic lunch. We have a Mazda rental car and it’s a little feisty. The petrol flap wouldn’t open until Mr. Munro used some Kiwi ingenuity and then when we stopped to get out of the car inside the park, the alarm went off. Loudly. Insistently. That’s why we didn’t see any bears. They heard us coming!! After much cursing and swearing on Mr. Munro’s part, we finally managed to get the car alarm to stop shrieking. I think we have it sussed now, although only time will tell.

Here’s a photo of El Capitan. The huge mountain dominates the skyline. Isn’t it pretty?

A few months ago I purchased magnetic signs from VistaPrint for my car. They feature Midnight Treat and were so pretty when they arrived my husband suggested I take them on holiday. We’ve slapped them on the rental car. Here’s a photo of shelleymunro.com on tour.

Bumpy – that just about sums up the entire plane trip from Auckland to San Francisco. We flew through quite a bit of the storm front bearing down on New Zealand. That teaches us for smugly saying we’d miss the incoming weather front. Oh, and long. Thirteen hours on a bumpy plane is a long time.

We finally managed to catch up with Amanda Ashby and Sara Hantz, along with Ellie Huse and Vanessa from Australia. I also ran into Nalini Singh at both the airport and the hotel. I think I’ve seen more Kiwi writers in the last day than I’ve seen for months. I really need to get to some of the chapter meetings at home. Mr. Munro arranged for a limo from the airport. Here’s the photo of us all waiting to pile inside.

From left to right: Me, Sara Hantz, Amanda Ashby, Ellie Huse and Vanessa.

Each time I visit America my first visit to the restroom is always traumatic. Toilets flush differently over here and when all that water gushes into the bowl I worry it mightn’t stop. Ours don’t do that in New Zealand.

Another difference is the dairy creamer. We don’t have this horrid white powder in New Zealand. We have these tiny milk pottles or the hotel/motel usually provide real milk. Ugh, I’d forgotten about creamer and the fact I’d have to use it for the next six weeks.

I attended the Kiss of Death AGM and had the pleasure of listening to guest speaker, Allison Brennan. She gave every attendee two of her recent releases. I enjoy Allison’s books and loved her inspirational talk on writing.

Well, that’s me for tonight. I’ll try to post this tomorrow, but meantime my eyes are really tired. I’m going to catch some sleep.

With my trip coming up soon, packing is looming…

1. Make a list a few weeks beforehand of the things you think you’ll need to take with you.

2. Lay out the clothes you think you want to take, along with toiletries, shoes etc.
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