When the Bug crossed into California, sun broke through the clouds. The evergreens thinned out, and sticky chartreuse sprouts appeared on the hardwoods. The temperature gauge crept toward seventy. We hadn’t felt seventy degrees for six months.

In Sacramento, we stopped at a Black Bear Restaurant for lunch. Harry parked the Bug in front of a jacaranda sapling blooming with deep purple blossoms. After seeing so much white for the previous months, I was mesmerized by the rich color.

“It’s only March,” I told our waitress. “Do the trees always bloom this early?”

“It’s the dought,” she said. “All the plants are stressed.” Lakes were drying up, and vineyards and orange groves were suffering, she explained.

As our waitress set large glasses of ice water in front of us, I thought about the seventies when I visited friends in San Francisco during a water shortage. They asked me to take short showers with a bucket to catch the runoff, which they used to flush the toilet. I wondered if San Francisco would leave us parched and mildly odiferous this time.

While we ate, Harry checked email on his tablet. A friend wrote that two feet of new snow had fallen in the east and there were flood warnings—two coasts waging opposite battles.

We had booked a room through Airbnb near the ocean, but somehow we found ourselves on the bay side where the streets are as steep as roller coasters. The precipitous hills tested my driving skill, especially at stop signs when the pavement loomed vertically in front of us.

Before I risked burning out the Bug’s clutch, I pulled over and plugged the address of our host into my phone. Gertrude’s GPS voice led us through the verdant Golden Gate Park and up 24^th Avenue toward Sea Cliff. Miraculously we found a parking space right in front of what I thought was our host’s apartment building. I pulled in and called him.

“Where are you?” he asked.

“We’re on 24^th Avenue in front of your building,” I said. “The blue bug.”

“I’m on 25^th Avenue. Wait—I’ll be right there.”

Within a few minutes a good-looking guy in his late forties came running toward us, waving his arms. We made introductions—his name was Dan—and I asked if it was okay to leave the car parked where we were, just a block from his place. He looked into the Bug and shook his head.

“You’ll have to take everything out of the car.” He had a faint southern accent. “Never leave anything out overnight in the city.”

The Bug was packed to the gills with lamp boxes, camping gear, luggage, laptop and tablet.

“Pull around to my building,” he said. “You can double-park. I’ll help you unload.”

We didn’t argue. Certainly we didn’t want anything stolen.

I drove around the corner and double-parked where Dan pointed. Elizabeth, his girlfriend, came down to help and hooked my duffel over her shoulder. I followed her into the elevator with my laptop and one of Harry’s bags.

The Bug holds more than one would think. It took three trips to get our gear piled in their living room, which fortunately was large enough for the four of us to navigate without tripping over boxes and bags. They put us in the spare bedroom—one bathroom for the four of us.

When Harry came back from parking the car, Dan sat us on the sofa and oriented us in his soft North Carolina accent. He had ben laid off his job with a marketing firm and was using Airbnb to host guests for income. He suggested we hike to Baker’s Beach where we’d get a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and then we could walk to a restaurant for dinner.
It was a magnificent day, bright sun and seventy-three degrees. In front of big houses, sprinklers watered lawns, and gardens bloomed with tulips and azalea as if there was no drought.

We found the path Dan had told us about and wound through the woods to the beach. Then there it was—the Pacific Ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge, one of the Wonders of the Modern World.

At six o’clock everyone brings dogs and children to the beach. Kids dug bare toes into the sand or tiptoed toward the water. Chihuahuas, pit bulls, retrievers and beagles chased tennis balls. I felt it, too—the sense of joy from the water, the sand, the bridge, and the warm sunshine.

We lingered at the beach until I felt my stomach rumble.

“Are you ready for something to eat?” I asked Harry. Reluctantly he pulled himself away from the beach.

The Indian restaurant Dan had recommended was too fancy for us, so we went next door to a soul food place. I ordered Cajun shrimp salad, and Harry had a burger and yam fries. We both had the local beer.

Outside, a shiny red Rolls Royce was parked nose first at the curb. It was an old one that had been restored and polished to a mirror gleam. A tall man maybe thirty sat in the driver’s seat.

Harry went up to the window.

“Do you mind if my wife sits in you car so I can take her picture?” he asked.

The man stepped out and held the Rolls door open for me. When I got in, I saw that the steering wheel was on the right. He had been sitting in the passenger seat.

The car was his father’s, he explained.

“Your father must do well to have a car like this,” I said. The interior was as pristine as the exterior.

“He has four more like it at home, ’40s and ’50s models, all restored.”

I hopped out of the car and whispered to Harry, “We’re not in Vermont anymore, Toto.”

At that moment our new friend’s father came out of the soul food restaurant. The older man was Harry Belafonte handsome and had an attractive woman on his arm. He gave me a wary look. I smiled, patted my heart, and mouthed a thank-you. He gave a slight nod of acknowledgment before climbing into the magnificent vehicle.

People do things differently in San Francisco. They drive fancy cars and play happily on the beach as if droughts don’t matter. There’s something to be said for living fully in the moment, especially when those moments occur on the edge of the continent where the blue ocean rolls in and out, tides rise and fall, and the sun shines warmly on our backs.

The next morning Dan helped us pack up the Bug. Harry wanted to see the water again, so we drove down the Great Highway and parked near the paved path along the beach. It was a brilliantly bright morning, and we walked a bit then stopped to watch two people in wet suits carry their surfboards to the edge of the water. They struck a few yoga poses then picked up their boards and ran into the surf.

“I wonder,” I said to Harry. “If there’s indeed a drought, couldn’t someone figure out how to desalinate ocean water? Or collect condensation for watering vineyards and orchards?”

“Expensive,” he said.

Sure. And such things take time, I supposed. But Summer was coming, and things would only get worse.

We found a bakery by the beach and had croissants and coffee at a sidewalk table.

“I thought San Francisco was cool and rainy,” Harry said, squinting in the sun. “It feels like a tropical paradise.”

“Yes, it does,” I said, thinking we needed a little paradise. We had weathered a stormy start to our trip, but now we were ready for calm waters.“I wish we could stay longer.” I touched his arm.

“So do I,” he said, squeezing my hand. “But we’ve got to get the lamp to Seattle.”

I sighed. “Can we at least drive over the Golden Gate Bridge?”

“Of course,” he said.

With a salute to the Pacific, we climbed into the Bug and pointed its rounded nose north.