Wednesday dawned – our last in the US. Having experienced Yosemite the day before we did not want to shop for gifts for home on our last day but we had to. The lady at reception told us that Sonora was worth seeing and so Tom, JJ and I drove in leaving Neil to sleep and do crosswords and sudoku over a few beers. In fact Sonora was fabulous. The sort of place we would all be happy to live – a couple of hours from San Francisco and a couple more from LA and with Yosemite and all that landscape close by. The town has a victorian feel about it and grew up in the 18th century gold rush. There are even underground passages to the bank so lucky miners did not have to take their gold on the streets which were pretty tough and lawless then – almost as bad as they are now. There are pretty balconied buildings with interesting shops at the first of which we found everything we didn’t know we were looking for. Came back later with Neil for a Mexican supper which was delicious but which kept me up half the night-it was the beans-we all suffered in varying degrees.