Tuesday 16 July
After a buffet breakfast in the hotel restaurant this morning, we packed our bags while Ross and Tim went and picked up our hire car. Hertz was on the corner diagonally opposite our hotel so we thought they wouldn’t be long, but just like at Dallas the queue was about ten people deep because only one customer service rep was working. The process took about an hour!!
Once in the car our first stop was Lombard Street. The older three kids walked to the top from the bottom, where we picked them up and drove down the street. The kids thought that was great! The Bay Bridge then took us out of the city on our way to Yosemite National Park.
Our only stop on the way there was a Walmart along the way. As we were all still full from breakfast, I picked up my favourite Walmart product for lunch – a little plastic container of compartments full of celery, carrots, snow peas, and broccoli surrounding a little pot of ranch dressing. And that was lunch in the car on the way.
As we approached, we stopped at a Yosemite sign for a photo. Sam told us there he wasn’t feeling well, so we figured the stop in the fresh air was good after the windy roads that had taken us in there. Ummm, no…a few minutes down the road, Sam needed to vomit. Luckily I had a Walmart bag close by!! Needless to say, it is now littering a roadside in Yosemite…
We parked in the main car park and caught a shuttle bus over to the visitors centre, holding our breath the whole way because we had boarded in a hurry and not thought to bring other sick bags (Sam had vomited twice more already). By this time it was 5.20pm and the last shuttle bus back to the parking ran at 6pm, so we didn’t have long to explore the exhibits there. Ross had really good memories of our last visit there, and I had only ever been there in winter, so we were keen to see it in summer. We wouldn’t have included it on the itinerary if we had known what was going to happen though!
It was a three and a half hour trip from San Francisco, which we didn’t leave until midday. Next time we will have to be more serious about the day trip and leave earlier in the morning. Mind you, I wasn’t keen to spend a lot of time there because there is some contagious virus in the park area carried by rodents, which made news in Australia before we left. 35 percent of people in California who have had this virus have died. So this helicopter parent figures if I hadn’t been so focused on Sam being sick, I probably would have been rushing everyone through the park visit anyway to avoid rodents! We did see the waterfall and chapel we remembered, but to be honest they were both more magical in a winter setting. The scenery was still beautiful.
By this time Sam had been sick on six different occasions, so as we left Yosemite we decided to stop at a pharmacy wherever we could find one and fill the prescription for anti-nausea medication the doctor in Dallas gave us for Belle. I felt so sorry for ALL the kids – as poor Sam dry-retched, five other children would block their ears trying to block out his panicky cries. It was the first time I missed the RV where we would have had more space to deal with this rather than a car filled to the brim with people and luggage!
We found a Rite-Aid pharmacy but were told because we were not on file there and had no insurance card, we would have to fill out forms and wait half an hour for the medication. So we waited, and Sam threw up in their garden. The tablets, 10 in a pack, are a wonder drug. I have had them with kidney stone trouble before. They melt on your tongue and instantly stop the desire to vomit. We were kicking ourselves for not filling the prescription in Dallas even though Belle no longer needed it by the time it was given…until we saw the price. The 10 little tablets cost $105! And to add insult to injury, Ross gave one to Sam just as he went to be sick for the eighth time, sending $10.50 down the drain! The second tablet worked immediately though, and Sam was happy to sit quietly in the car after that.
Being 7.30pm by then, we thought it time to find accommodation and dinner. We had planned to head back out to the coast to Carmel-by-the-sea and Monterey as our travel agent had recommended this scenic route back to LA. We decided just to head south from Yosemite to LA, so picked Fresno to stop at as it was only 94 miles away and a larger town.
Well bigger isn’t always better! We exited at the convention centre area, thinking that would have some accommodation choices. There was only a Radisson hotel and a few homeless people on street corners, so we went into downtown Fresno to the Holiday Inn. The city didn’t look enticing based on the people around the streets, and when we arrived at the Holiday Inn we found it was next door to a casino. So despite it being 8.30pm, we decided to keep going. The next highway exit led us to a Best Western hotel in the town of Selma. Ross negotiated two rooms down from $97 to $75, and we went in search of dinner. A Chinese fast food restaurant called Panda Express next door closed as we arrived because it was 9.30pm by then, so we picked up two pizzas at Pizza Hut and returned to our room. Sam decided he had the “vomiting record” with eight times, and I realised we had a new dinner time record as the kids ate pizza at 10.40pm!!
Sam helped himself to two pieces before we realised it, so is feeling much better. Ross is refusing to stay on crutches so is limping around, but doing better. Belle still has worrying high temps – we have now been medicating her for six days constantly, alternating the Panadol and Nurofen. The Dallas doctor said that was the right thing to do, but I am concerned at how long this is going on without any sign of improvement, and am keen to get back home to our GP. (Hear that? I am finally ready and accepting of the fact it is time to go home!!) Saying that, when the meds are due, she is irritable (“everyone just needs to stop talking!”) and sad, but in between she is fine, happy, sleeps a bit but has a good appetite. Tim looked green tonight though and went to bed without dinner. The poor boy tried not to let on how he was feeling because he felt his parents had had enough to deal with today, but I could tell by looking at him. I will see how he is when we wakes, but if he needs to be sick, that is ok – I have a $10.50 wonder pill ready for him!! 😉