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Nancy Reagan, who seemed especially wide-eyed and gushy all week, had slept overnight on Britannia Tuesday, and marveled to an aide, "It was so clean you could have eaten off the engine room's floor." And so, she added, "What more can you ask than to spend your anniversary having dinner with the Queen aboard the royal yacht?" Friday was the 31st wedding anniversary, and it was decided to commemorate it quietly with a farewell Britannia dinner. The yacht's presidential flag flew upside down, but the Reagans beamed fondly; over champagne the President joked with the Queen that his 32nd anniversary efforts would pale in comparison.
The dreamy good spirits were sadly interrupted Saturday morning. In the rainy Sierra Nevada foothills northwest of Yosemite, a pack of three Secret Service cars was about 25 min. ahead of the royal party's limousines. An oncoming Mariposa County deputy sheriffs car drifted into the middle of the twisting road, striking the second car headon. Three agents, who had been close to the royal couple all week, were killed.
The Queen and Prince Philip spent the weekend, as planned, deep in the rugged Yosemite Valley. Amid 200-ft. Ponderosa pines and Ansel Adams mountain views, they had the luxury of the entire 121-room Ahwahnee Hotel, all native granite and stained glass.
Alone, more or less, at last, they could have contemplated their boxes of sweet, homely American gifts: a space shuttle model, some Indians' "holy sage," a porcelain quail, a prayer book, too many plaques and countless crumpled bouquets. Maybe over tea (5 p.m. daily at the Ahwahnee) they smiled together about the parade of eager California swells who marched past last week. Or perhaps the Queen and Prince Philip sat alone up in the Sierras for two days, resting in the hush. Maybe, after all the commotion, they just mellowed out.
— By Kurt Andersen.
Reported by Laurence I. Barrett with the President, Mary Cronin with the Queen and Alessandra Stanley/ Los Angeles
* Later in the trip she had scallops, shrimp and crab. Salmon was even more popular, served to the Queen six times in six days.