San Francisco Recap #6:  Going Home

After walking a distance approximately equivalent to the length of the coastline of California on Friday and Saturday, the Untamed Shrew and I spent Sunday chilling out at her house in Santa Clara, along with her sweetly hilarious husband (who told us as we left on Saturday, "Remember, it's bad feng shui to run over the tourists!") and their darling dog, Bones:



The Untamed Shrew was just about the most awesome hostess ever. Not only did she point out the long-famous but never-before-seen Gay Viking Lamps so that I could photograph them, she also set out cut bougainvillea in the guest room (in the best vases of all time).

She also gave me two presents. Two presents! Just for showing up! She left a book about redwoods on the bedside table with a note on top that said, "This book belongs to Velocibadgergirl."



She also stashed this T-shirt from Married to the Sea in the dresser with a similar note:




On Monday, we camped at Big Basin State Park, another redwood forest. Unfortunately we got there in the late afternoon, so the light was off for taking pictures and I didn't get very many decent ones.









We set up our tent inside a ghost redwood, a circle of trees left when a parent tree falls and the trees that started as sprouts around its base are left behind. It was incredible.



Then, sadly, it was time to pack and go shopping at Lush, pack, buy this book for a pregnant friend, pack, and say goodbye to the Untamed Shrew, her hilariously sweet husband, and their dear dog.

My wistful goodbye to California and its lovely weather ended up being long and boring instead of brief and bittersweet when my flight got cancelled and I had to take a 1:19 PM flight out of San Jose instead of the 6:30 AM that I booked. Instead of getting home at 2:45 as MB was getting ready to head home from work (super convenient since he could throw a rock from the roof of the machine shop and hit the airport), I rolled in at 10:30. By that point, though, I was so glad to be home (and more importantly, not in an airport or on a plane) that I didn't even care that it was late. I had an absolute blast in California, but it's good to be home all the same. Even if the trees here are kind of puny.



"Going to the woods is going home." -- John Muir

San Francisco Recap #5:  And an island never cries.

As glad as I am that the Untamed Shrew and I missed any Critical-Mass-related traffic / mayhem, I'm somewhat upset that we missed this the following evening:  Brain-eating Zombies Invade SF Apple Store. Then again, we did have a completely kickass time on Saturday (May 26), so I guess it all evens out.

For our first adventure of the day, we visited the San Francisco Zoo. The line was immense when we arrived, but the Untamed Shrew had already decided to purchase a membership, so when the zoo staff offered line-jumping privileges to anyone who was planning to sign up for one, we were all set. Even though it was Saturday of Memorial Day weekend, once we got into the Zoo, it really wasn't all that crowded. Obviously, there were animals.

The zoo takes in orphaned and abandoned seal pups and raises them until they can be re-released into the wild. They put colored paint on the pups' heads so they can tell them apart.

Goodness, I love giant anteaters. Love them!

Mountain tapir (either Harold or Maggie) & Baird's tapir (Goober)



We stopped to check out some cool-looking (but dangerously spiny) plants.

This peacock danced his little heart out, but the target of his affections was completely unimpressed. Poor guy.

Click below to view his bootie-shaking moves (sorry it's so grainy...YouTube apparently doesn't like my camera.)

After leaving the Zoo, we went to John's Oceanside Diner, formerly known as the Doggie Diner. I wish I'd taken a photo of the apparently famous Doggie Diner dog head, but luckily I found a photo online to demonstrate it's odd ugly-cute appeal:


The former Doggie Diner is the Untamed Shrew's favorite restaurant near the beach, and it was wonderful. I had fantastic French toast and near-perfect scrambled eggs. (Also, the waitress complimented my rings, which I always like to tell MB about later.)



Once we'd stuffed ourselves, we walked down to the moderately redundantly named Ocean Beach. It was pretty neat to realize we were standing at the edge of the country, that if we could step out far enough into the sea, we'd be leaving the United States behind.

It was remarkably cold and blustery on the beach (as it seemed to be anywhere in San Francisco where the Bay or the ocean was nearby), but luckily the Untamed Shrew had warned me to bring a winter hat and gloves. We found more than 30 intact sand dollars (expired, of course), which was pretty fantastic.



(We weren't the only ones collecting treasures.)






After the beach, we headed for Pier 33 to catch our ferry to Alcatraz Island. The cruise company's website said that tickets tend to sell out, so I'd ordered a pair back in April for the night tour. Thank goodness I did, too, because when we got to the pier, the signs on the ticket booth said that the next available bookings were for Tuesday morning at 9 AM. It was absolutely frigid out on the water, but oh so worth it. Luckily, we scored seats inside and near the window for the ride out to the island.




I always kind of assumed that the prison took up the entire island, but there was a lot more to Alcatraz than just the cellhouse. Most of the buildings are in ruins, now, but it's still really neat to see.


This was the warden's house, and even though it's hard to tell from this angle, the place was absolutely huge:




Alcatraz lighthouse #2:




In this old photo, you can see the lighthouse keeper's house at the base of lighthouse #2, as well as the warden's house:




This is the old parade ground, from the days when Alcatraz Island was a military installation. According to the audio tour, the prison staff's children played here:




When the prison staff and their families lived on the island, they built beautiful gardens, which were maintained by work-release prisoners (presumably during Alcatraz's military prison days, and not its super-scary-bad-guys prison days).



The cellhouse itself was pretty incredible, and I've been trying to come up with the words I need to encapsulate it ever since I got back, but you can't neatly summarize a place like Alcatraz. It's truly impossible.






Even on Alcatraz, though, there's beauty to be found, if you just take the time to look:





Hit Shutterfly for more zoo & beach pictures and a few more Alcatraz pictures.

San Francisco Recap #4:  Forms of Immortality

By Friday (May 25), the true extent of San Francisco's awesomeosity was beginning to reveal itself. Not only does San Francisco have dangerous tea gardens, tallships, sea lions, and flesh eating beetle displays, it also has the Untamed Shrew, a very dear friend from my internet board, the very same friend whose nuptials MB and I attended in Seattle last year.

She picked me up at my hotel on Friday morning, chocolate cupcakes in hand, and we jetted out of town, intent on avoiding the possibly scary  Critical Mass riders. (Sidebar:  don't get me wrong; I'm all for grassroots action and promotion of a less-polluting lifestyle. I just can't get excited about some asshole smashing up a minivan full of kids in the name of social change.)

On our way out of the city, we crossed the incomparable Golden Gate Bridge, which was wreathed in a typical if not-very-photogenic fog.


I'd seen the bridge from the bus on my first day in San Francisco, and my first impression was that it was both not as big and just as incredible as I expected. We also crossed it on the day that we visited the crooked section of Lombard Street, on a perfectly clear, fog-free day, and I foolishly sat in the back of the van and didn't take any pictures, since I knew I'd be crossing it again two days later. Genius, I am.


I learned at some point on the trip that the name of the bridge comes not from its appearance, but because it crosses a strait known as the Golden Gate. The NPS website has some cool geology articles if anyone else is as dorky as me and wants to read them. Anyhow, we walked down the bridge a bit, snapped lots of fog-enshrouded photos, and then took off again, heading for Muir Woods.

The large trees in Muir Woods are the coastal redwoods, the tallest of all living things, and some scattered Douglas firs. The tallest coastal redwood at Muir Woods is about 258 feet, approximately the height of a six-foot person stacked head to toe 45 times. Further north, these trees can reach heights up to 379 feet, 74 feet taller than the Statue of Liberty. The average age of the coastal redwoods at Muir Woods is between 600 to 800 years, with the oldest being at least 1200 years old. This is still young for redwoods as they can live up to 2200 years.

I was expecting to be completely blown away by the size of the redwoods--they are, after all, the tallest trees in the world--but when we arrived, I wasn't initially amazed by their size. They are big trees, and very tall, and I'm sure they would've knocked my socks off if I hadn't seen the 200' - 300' Sitka spruce and Western hemlocks in the Hoh Rainforest last October.

Maybe moreso than any other forest, though, the wonder of the redwoods can creep up on you, and that's what happened to me. The Untamed Shrew and I spent the entire day at Muir Woods, walking the trails and chatting and generally absorbing the feel of the woods around us.



After an hour or so, it really started to sink in how huge the trees really are.



For all their height, they have delicate needles and really tiny seed cones.


They also have really neat, distinctive bark.



It's weird enough to think of these immense trees starting out as teensy seedlings, but redwoods can actually start as itty bitty sprouts around the base of a large tree.


Once the parent tree dies of old age and falls, the grown-up sprouts stand in a "fairy ring" around an empty circle called a ghost redwood.

Among giants, small things always look so much more delicate. As the Untamed Shrew so perfectly put it, "It's like the redwoods used up all the big, so everything else has no choice but to be tiny."

redwood sorrel

The large black areas at the base of many sequoia trees are fire scars. Even though fire may eat into the very heart of a sequoia tree, the tree can survive so long as the fire doesn't kill the living tissue all the way around the tree. Over time, the fire scars gradually heal over and disappear.

(Interesting tidbit that I didn't know:  Coast redwoods are Sequoia sempervirens. Giant sequoias are Sequoiadendron giganteum.)

Overall, Muir Woods was really amazing, and I'm so grateful to the Untamed Shrew for taking me to see it. It was a great start to phase 2 of my California experience, to be sure.



For more Muir Woods photos, as always, check out Shutterfly.

Hmm...good thing we didn't see these until we were leaving the park!

[Redwood trees] seem to be forms of immortality standing here among the transitory shapes of time. -- Edwin Markham





Lastly, for the lovely Alyndabear, here's a photo of Kitters with a yardstick for scale (he really is huge):






Reading:  Pants on Fire by Meg Cabot and Coast Redwood:  A Natural and Cultural History