The San Francisco Road Trip: Part Next

Already I've forgotten some of the details of San Francisco and it's only been a few days!  That, dear readers, is why you should always get your thoughts down as soon as possible when you're experiencing something foreign or new.  I won't bother as much with specifics because Suzie did an admirable job already in her blog posts.  I probably have my details out of order too, but I don't really care.  I mean, if I don't know and I was there, how is anyone else going to know different if they weren't there right?   Anyway, here goes:

As we headed south into San Francisco I wasn't the least bit surprised to round the last curve and find the Golden Gate bridge shrouded in fog.  Isn't that how it's portrayed in virtually every movie, TV show, and book known to man?

The first thing we experienced was The Exploratorium.  It was just a timing/street-choice thing.  Basically, we just practically turned right into it after crossing the bridge, almost without really realizing it.  I had never heard of it but Sue had.  I guess it's a lot like Seattle's Pacific Science Center but I'm not sure because we didn't go into it.  Sure, we stopped, but we stopped for the outside of the place.  It was photographically very interesting!

We cruised all over town, kind of "getting lost on purpose" and enjoying the sights of the city.  It was a beautiful day for it, so why not?  We wanted to see lots of little things and had a sort of list of them.  There was some frustration fairly early on when I started getting low on gas and couldn't find a gas station, but once that was taken care of I had an "ahhh" moment and was back into exploration mode.  Suz is an excellent copilot and navigator to have on such excursions.  She gets a little angry at teeny, teeny print on maps though, and rightfully so.

One of the first places we checked out was Lombard Street, also known as the "crookedest street in the USA".  That was pretty interesting.  Basically, your reward for making it straight up the back side of that hill (I could have also probably approached the top by driving from either side of course, but I was new there and didn't know that) was the privilege of slowly easing down the switchback street while crowds of tourists looked on and snapped pictures.  I could hear the hushed tones as the crowd muttered, "Look, there it is--The famously worn Neon!" Who knows, I'm probably on a few people's cameras by just being there.  I let Sue out at the top and she worked her way down the steps that run along either side, snapping pictures as she went.  By the time I arrived at the bottom, there she was snapping a picture of me.  You can see it on her blog.

While we did our initial wandering of the city we encountered a lot of stuff we just got fleeting glimpses of.  Things like the famous cable cars that go up and down Nob Hill, and the famous Transamerica building, the Golden Gate Bridge (even though we drove on it, we didn't get to see it without fog enveloping half of it).  One thing we missed (and we were right there) was Chinatown.  Oh well, Vancouver B.C. has a good one and it's much closer.

One of the places on my list was to see the famous 60's landmark of the peace-love generation: Haight-Ashbury, so we hunted that down.  We stopped and smoked a joint with Ben and Jerry at their place on the corner.  Okay, okay--duh, of course we didn't do that.  I did see people posing in front of that famous landmark for pictures though.  It was the place where life was happening man.  At one time anyway... Jeez... Over 50 years ago!  Suddenly I feel old.

The "Painted Ladies" is a strange moniker that someone has attached to a particular group of 4 houses that sit directly across the street from a park called Alamo Square.  While they are very nice, there are plenty of places throughout the city that are nicer.  I think what make these four famous to the tourists is the fact that you can stand on a grassy hill of the park and see the city behind them.  While we were there at the wrong time of day for a good shot sun-wise, it was still a good photographic opportunity.  It's a pretty nice view spot.

While we did cruise around the city quite a bit, our main thing for Friday was our tour to Alcatraz Island.  We had tickets to the 2:40 sailing on Friday already bought before we even left home.  I can't help but wonder:  Did we do Alcatraz incorrectly?  We went not for Alcatraz and what it was as a historic prison, but for what it offered photography-wise.  How weird is that?  All around us we were dodging people in a zombie-like state while they hovered around audio tour "hotspots" with a glazed over look in their eyes.  Much like people that drive while talking on their cell phones, the headphoned tourists at Alcatraz noticed nothing around them except for the audio that was streaming through their ears.  We did our best to work ourselves into places devoid of humans whenever possible.  We were there for about 3 hours, dragging ourselves and our cameras and tripods around.  We were both very glad we had the tripods even though they were something extra to carry, because without them we wouldn't have gotten the quality of indoor shots that we did.  The whole place was very interesting to us even without any of the factual stuff the audio tour was spewing.  So did we miss anything?  Maybe... If the audio tour was punctuated with sound bites and exciting music to drive points home.  The thing is, we can read and learn about it any time.  We got PICTURES of it... And lots of good ones too!  When we finally finished I was surprised to learn what time it was.  The car was parked in a metered area and the max we could put on it was 4 hours.  My worry-wart tendencies kicked in as "zero hour" passed and we still hadn't gotten on the boat yet.  Lucky it was a short trip back to the city shore because we got to the car almost 20 minutes expired but no parking ticket.  Whew.  You can see how easy Alcatraz is to see from the Fisherman's Wharf area just by looking at the picture of the wooden ship near the bottom of this blog.  That's Alcatraz behind it.

After our visit to "The Rock" we drove around some more and found ourselves a motel, opting for one near the south end of San Fran for money reasons.  It was almost half of what the tourist areas were getting and it was still nice.  We just had to drive a little ways to get to it.  We had a nice dinner at our kind of place just two doors away from the motel.  What is our kind of place?  A quality burger or sandwich shop with beer on tap.  That's us.  We be simple folk.

We took a quick trip after dark up to a scenic viewing area called Twin Peaks, but weather wasn't cooperating with us for good shots of the city.  While it wasn't foggy, it was hazy enough to be a bother.  It looked like an awesome "don't miss" spot to shoot from to see the city from above.

Our last day in San Fran had us spending our time in Golden Gate Park and in the vicinity of the cable cars, Fisherman's Wharf, and Ghirardelli Square.  We spent plenty of time scoping out shots of cable cars and got to see them going right past us going up the hill and coming down both.  I told Sue at one point while I had my camera trained on the the top of the hill that what we need now is to have Steve McQueen come flying over the crest in a dark green Mustang.  We had a good final few hours being tourists.  Taking pictures of wooden ships in the harbor, bicyclists, street cars, and sleeping bums.  That's what photography is about baby!

The drive home?  Long.  We stayed in the same town we stayed at on our way down:  Roseburg, Oregon.  This time, however, we stayed at a Quality Inn instead of a Motel 6.  It was very nice.  I think it's safe to say it was one of the best breakfasts I've ever gotten at a motel.  That's a good thing to finish up the last leg of a great road trip with.

Next:  My Perceptions of San Francisco