Fun City and Beautiful Shorelines

After leaving iRoll, we thought we would make it to SF for the night, but even if we did, there were no hotel rooms in the entire city.  Imagine trying to book a room in SF in the first few weeks after school is out, and on a Friday of San Francisco Pride weekend and add to that the Supreme Court decision on gay marriage – talk about a perfect storm of tourism – Oh, and the weather was perfect of course. 

So, we rolled into the Warf and piers area for a late breakfast just after 10:am. Found a parking lot, covered the car for security and door ding protection and set out to explore.  We had breakfast with a view of the bay, and Joe made final connections with a seller on Craig’s List for a new Zoom lens for his camera.  He was able to meet him on Pier 39, and conduct the transaction and his food was waiting when he got back to the table. 

While I caught up on the blog from the day at iRoll, Joe explored the SF waterfront and made use of his new lens.

After an hour or so of exploring on foot and picking up a sticker for the case, we decided that we should test the car a little more, and take it for a ride up and down some of those famous SF streets.  We went up chasing the cable cars, and then down the famous Lombard Street.  We got some hill start challenges and we stopped at the top of these streets for pedestrians.  I did this driving because I don’t think I was ready for Joe to try even if he was.    Suffice to say, the repairs held up, and confidence was growing in our renewed systems. 

After a few hours in SF, we headed north to cross the bridge – Golden Gate – that is.  We had hoped the fog would lift, but as we left the waterfront, we still could not see the bridge, but crossing the Golden Gate is special under any circumstances.  So we were off, and of course stopped on the other side for photos, and climbed the hill for some shots with the background, but the fog never really cleared.  Time to move on…

After a quick lunch, we headed toward Rt 1 and Muir Woods.  We would spend the rest of the day on Rt. 1 eventually stopping in Gualala in a campground of redwoods for the night.  We kept running into “campground full” signs, but this one did not, so we took a shot.  We were the last car in, and took a spot by the river. 

Campground photos .

This was a throwback to the old days of road trips on the CA coast, but it was populated with all the modern road trippers.  One of the camp sites / compounds actually had an inflatable movie screen for the kids to watch.  They had also lined their entire camp with LED rope lights, and they did not turn them off all night.  I did not let that distract me too much from the rest of the natural beauty of this place with the river and the ancient redwoods. 

A wonderful nights sleep, and breakfast in town and we are off to Crater Lake today if we can make the miles. 

I will let photos tell the rest of the story of the day from here –

ODO = 38979, total distance = 4,557