Return to San Francisco 15/9

I must have been in a very vague space yesterday because I wrote that we were in Cleaverville when it was actually Cloverdale. Cleaverville rings bells from somewhere in our history and I usually write early in the morning while I am waiting for Bob to wake up so I obviously wasn't quite awake myself.
As we drove down the 101 yesterday morning Bob commented on the speed of the traffic. The speed limit was 55 mph, we were doing 65mph and most of the vehicles were streaming past us. Clearly the speed limit was viewed as only advisory. We did notice that conformity increased as we came closer to larger cities enroute.
The early part of our drive was through the valley around Santa Rosa and my comments from the previous days boutique wineries did not hold up here. The valley floor and surrounding hills were covered in vines. It made a beautiful picture with the bright green neat plantings edged by the yellowed grass of autumn.
We stopped off at a Walmart to do some final bargain hunting. Bob found a pair of light weight Wrangler jeans that he had been hunting for at their usual $20 price. Winter stock is taking over here so he was pleased to find this summer weight pair at our last check.
We didn't have a long drive today and had worked out how to pay the toll for the Golden Gate Bridge if the GPS took us into San Francisco on that route. However it soon became apparent that "she"was taking us around through The outer suburbs towards the other bridges. We then became stuck in a very congested section of Hway with wall to wall trucks and inched along for 20 minutes before clearing a port area where the trucks left us. By now I had pulled the map out to see where we were heading  and realised that the GPS was taking us a long way south towards San Jose. The mental tumblers began to rattle and we realised that "she" was still programmed to avoid toll roads. Fortunately there was a bridge exit coming up which we managed to take and we happily paid the $5 toll saving ourselves an extra 30 miles around the end of the bay. There wasn't a major worry time wise as we were too early to check into our hotel. It was just the pressure of dealing with the city traffic. We found a car wash close to the hotel and sat in comfort while we drove through the automatic system.. it was really disorienting to feel as if the car was moving as the machine worked back and forwards giving it a thorough scrub.
We have checked into the Airport Hyatt for three nights as a wind down treat to ourselves before the 27 hour flight home. Internet booking made this usually pricey place quite competative with every other motel/hotel in San Francisco which is very expensive. We decided that we deserved a treat and it is very convenient with a shuttle to the airport coupled with the cheap tourist fare on the train into the city. We will return the car to the rental depot this morning and spend the next few days repacking and pottering around the city.
For those of you who hadn't read yesterdays post when i wrote this i need to explain that I managed to edit Cleaverville out and insert the correct name Cloverdale.