Sunny Days: San Francisco

Saturday we took Sue to LAX, watched as the Vols lost to Auburn in their last SEC regular season game, and did a little housekeeping to get ready to head north. We also sprung ahead on our clock--Daylight Savings time--not sure what clock to believe now. Via I-5, Los Banos Walmart, and the Golden Gate Bridge, we are due in Marin RV on Monday. This RV park is located 10 miles north of the Golden Gate Bridge, beside the Larkspur Ferry that will take us into San Francisco so we won't have to drive and park. It also is right at the gateway to Sonoma and Napa Valley to we just head north on HWY 101 and in less than an hour we are in wine country.

San Francisco here we come. Golden Gate Bridge is neat.

Monday we went to the Presidio Park and Golden Gate Park, ending up on the beach with a fabulous sunset and cocktails at The Cliff House. Tuesday we rode the ferry across SF Bay (again we happened to see whales playing), where we got on a Hop On Hop Off bus and took a tour of the highlights of the city. It was really cold (but sunny) and so we headed inside at the wharf for a warming lunch of shrimp and crab chowder and clam chowder. We went to the wharf looking for the men that threw the fish at the market. Imagine my embarrassment when I was told we had the wrong city--that is Seattle. Oh well, we will be there this summer. Nob Hill and Russian Hill were cool, the Tenderloin Section was sad with the homeless lining the sidewalks, and the Embarcadero that housed my first employer -Levi Straus-- was good to see, we want to go back to Chinatown, and still have to get a sundae at Ghirardelli Chocolates.

Cocktails at Cliff House with a beautiful sunset over the Pacific--they said it
usually is fogged over and we were really lucky it was clear.

Beach at the Golden Gate Park

View from Cliff House

Chocolate!

In the middle is the tallest bldg. in SF
--it is empty because there is inadequate foundation and it is leaning--law suits abound

View of SF from the Larkspur Ferry

Hop on Hop off tour showed us some great bldgs.

Haight - Ashbury (famous for Vietnam era riots)
Ashbury was Haight's nephew way back

Lots of weird and neat museums

Wine country was soooo fun. We had been told that Sonoma was a little more down to earth than Napa so that is where we went Thursday. After stopping in at the Visitors' Center we went to the farthest north in Sonoma County and came back along Hwy 12 and had our choice of Wineries (and Olive groves). We first stopped at St. Francis Winery, took a walking tour of the fields and then settled in for wine tasting. YUM! Then we went to Bruce Cohen's Winery and Olive Grove. Bruce has been the manager for the Doobie Brothers for 46 years and in the 70's bought this farm. Really good Cabernet Sauvignon and Olive Oils. We then had to go get food and went into Sonoma for some Mexican food and headed home. It was a wonderful (sunny and warm) day. We went to bed early!

Sausalito is a super village just down the street from our RV home

Seals are supposed to be abundant here but all we saw was this cute statue in Sausalito

Sonoma Visitors Center is where we started on our wine tour

Tastings were fun

The farms were wall to wall in Sonoma County

Friday we rode the ferry back to SF (met an older lady aboard and she was fun--had a lot of tips on where to eat, talked about raising her 5 children in the area, and asked if we were from one of those "red states" --we assured her we were. I think she shivered like she was delightfully scandalized). San Francisco is 49 square miles and has 43 major hills so it is very hard to walk the city. So a must do task in San Francisco is to ride a cable car because they are relics of old rather than the most efficient way to get around, they are rather expensive to ride so we wanted to pick our ride carefully--we rode up to Nob Hill and walked down to Chinatown. Russian Hill with the crookedest road, and our hot fudge sundae led to: check, check, check, plus my Fitbit reports 20,000 steps and 2 happy dances. We left early to get back to watch the Vols play in the SEC Tournament but the town was winding up to be quite the party. Apparently St. Patrick's Day is big here.

Muir Woods--National Park within a half hour of the RV is a redwood tree forest. We made reservations (long, involved process) to park?!? there between 1-1:30 on Saturday before we knew that would be during the second half of the Tennessee/Kentucky semi-final in the tournament. Oh well, we gave it up to the Lord and went to the forest. The Vols pulled out the win without us, Florida lost to Auburn in the other semi, and the forest was lovely. A good day all the way around. Tomorrow we leave for Yosemite and see if the Vols can beat Auburn for the SEC Tournament Championship.

Back in the early 1900's Theodore Roosevelt decreed this a National Park.
John Muir was the first president of the Sierra Club dedicated to conservation.