Avenue of the Giants

I think the pictures of the redwoods pretty much speak for themselves.  They were majestic.

The roots of a fallen giant.

After exploring for several hours we drove north to Bandon, Oregon. We stopped to eat salmon and crabcakes along the way.

View from our hotel in Bandon.  Beautiful.

Coastal Driving

Because of slow internet in SF and the redwoods, I'm two days behind in blogging.  This is good and bad, as it's annoying that I'm not necessarily blogging about the things that are most vivid in my memory, but its also nice to remember.

We left San Francisco the morning of the 6th.  Making our way back to the airport from our hotel and then driving across the city was our challenge, and actually, it wasn't too bad.  We started early and were going to ride the BART system all the way back, but a cabi kindly and lucratively informed us that it was not running until 8:30.  Our car pickup time was scheduled for 7, and we didn't want to wait around for traffic to get bad...so we took the cab.  It was expensive, but also low in stress.  He took us directly where we needed to go.

Driving across the city was also uneventful and actually very easy.  It was early and no one was out.  The bridge was cold and foggy of course.

We drove the coast for 12 hours.  It was supposed to be about 7, but it took 12.  It was absolutely one of the most beautiful drives of my life though!  Its crazy, like driving from Garfield to Eureka (for those of you who know what that means ;) for 12 hours straight.  Hundreds of hairpin turns, just back and forth and back and forth.  We would get an incredible view of the ocean for about 5 minutes, then turn back into the forest.  Occasionally, and especially at the beginning of the trip, we kept driving past the smell of eucalyptus, and realized it was growing wild along the side of the road!  One of my favorite smells.  

At Mendosa we stopped for lunch and took some clam chowder for a picnic to look at the Pacific.

Jacket and hot clam chowder for a picnic in July.  Totally different weather than home!

This guy really really wanted to share our lunch.

We also stopped in Fort Bragg to check out the Glass Beach.  Basically, it was an old dump in the 1950's.  And now, the glass and metal that was dumped into the ocean, has been churned and churned into a beautiful, glistening carpet of sea glass.  It's a very unnasuming town and the area you park in is still industrial...you'd never find this gem unless you knew where to look.

A few of my favorites

 We also enjoyed the wildlife in Fort Bragg.  I made up a story about this squirrel, that she was the squirrel wife of a sailor squirrel who went away to sea and hadn't made it back yet.  She waits, patiently on this rock day in and day out, and someday, he will return.

Shortly past Fort Bragg, we turned inland toward the Redwoods.  The road was still crazy and Allen enjoyed his turn zooming and pretend racing through the forest until he made me car sick and I made him slow down.  

The first gigantic redwood we came to was this "treehouse."  Its a tree that was struck by lightening, but lived.  The burned out portion in the bottom was hollowed out by a woman in the 1930's.  She actually lived inside the tree and installed doors and windows.  We were so excited to have finally made it to the redwoods!

Past the treehouse we drove toward our cabin in Miranda.  The trees kept getting bigger and the woods thicker.  Miranda Gardens was our destination and we were not disappointed when we got there.  It is on the road called the "Avenue of the Giants." and several giants were right inside the complex.  Dissapointment did set in, however, when we realized just how remote we were and that there was no food to be found in the little town of Miranda at 7:00 PM on Sunday night unless we drove back 15 miles or forward 30.  WiFi was also extremely spotty, so researching a restaurant was difficult.  Luckily, we made the decision to go back, kicking ourselves for not stopping on the way...and found a little hamburger place that saved us!  We were starving.

I'm happy here!  I was turning into that person from the Snicker's commercial.  

Mmmmm! Food!

Three Highlights

There were 3 highlights to July 5th.  Alcatraz, lunch, and after dinner dessert.

Alcatraz is just cool.  If you ever get a chance, go.  They give you an audio tour that is narrated by ex-guards and ex-prisoners that experienced the prison themseves.  Its really well done.  

You can see we were well prepared for the cold wind today.  This is a view of San Francisco from Alcatraz...

The second highlight was Shanghai Dumpling King.  Its an unassuming little restaurant that seats maybe 30 people and is in an area of the city that you really have to work at to find.  We used our recently gained knowledge of the bus system along with our feet to make it.  I had researched a bunch of restaurants in preparation for our trip and this place was high on the list for good and cheap.

We really weren't sure what to order, having never been to a Chinese dumpling restaurant before.  So we asked the waiter for recommendations and this is what we got.
 

Green pea sprouts...don't turn up your nose.  This dish was to die for!  Allen aptly described them as tender shoots of asparagus attached to spinach leaves.  They were tender and buttery with a hint of garlic.  I'd go back just to eat them again. 

The dumplings did not disapoint either.  They came out steaming.  Tasting like tender little sausage balls, wrapped in a noodle.

We ordered two different types.  This one was a litte more spicy and had rice inside along with the sausage and veggies.  

Dessert was a sesame rice dumpling.  This was the strangest part of the meal.  It came in a warm, sugary, clear broth.  The dumplings were pure white, and when you bit into them, they were thick and chewy with a grainy sugar/sesame filling.  We liked them more for the experience than anything else, they were fun.

As we were complimenting the waiter on the food, we told him we like to blog and asked that he tell us the names of everything we had eaten.  He obliged and was impressed with the voice to text feature I used on my phone.  He even went to get his so I could show him how to use it.  He also suggested we try one more thing, the sugar egg puff.  It was yummy and fresh and tasted like funnel cake.

We left the restaurant quite pleased with ourselves for finding it.  Next door was a little Chinese market and we bought Oolong tea, which I am currently enjoying while I type, and also candied ginger.

After eating, we explored the De Young art museum and also the Japanese tea garden in the Golden Gate park. 

I hate to say our dinner was a let down after lunch...it really wasn't...but it wasn't a highlight either.  We decided on a tourist favorite and waited in line for about 45 minutes to get in.  Really, it was very good.  If we hadn't had out of this world earlier in the day, I might have even said it was great.  It just wasn't quite the same.  But, it was good.

Waiting in line.

 The final highlight of the day was our dessert, bubble tea.  We had already enjoyed it the first night in SF, after our ramen experience.  The last thing we did in San Fracisco was go back and get one last glass.  Its a cold milky tea drink with tapioca balls in the bottom.  The straws are large so the tapioca balls can get sucked up in each slurp.  They are like really gummy jelly beans...its just good.

Fourth of July SF Style

We were so excited the night of the 3rd that we didn't really sleep soundly.  That combined with the time change equalled about 4 hours of sleep and waking up at 5:00 AM.  We left the hotel at 6:30 and decided to hit up Walgreens to buy snacks and water which we packed into our trusty backpack and headed out in search of adventure.  We wandered up and down the amazingly steep San Francisco hills for about an hour and a half before finding ourselves at the bottom of the steps leading to Coit Tower on Telegraph Hill.  When I was planning our trip I had read many recommendations to walk down the steps and enjoy the gardens surrounding them.  But now, we found ourselves at the bottom instead of the top, so what else could we do but climb up?  Climbing the steps was beautiful, but steep.  The picture shows just a small part of the stairs.  We climbed for about 20 minutes.  The flowers were the most gorgeous we saw in San Francisco.

We hoped to be able to catch our first glimpse of the Golden Gate Bridge from Coit tower, but after climbing up, we found it was closed to visitors until 10AM, at this point it was only about 9.  So, we walked down the other side of Telegraph hill toward Pier 39 and the ferry to Sausalito.  We had decided to ferry across the bay and then walk back across the bridge.  Once at the pier we bought our tickets, marveled at how few people were out on the morning of the 4th.  We explored Fisherman's Warf and Boudin Bakery was my favorite stop in the touristy area.  They are famous for sourdough and we bought a sourdough asiago loaf that became our snack the rest of the day.  They shape their loaves into all kinds of animals and you can even pay to go on a tour and shape your own loaf.  We didn't, but it did look fun.

We were admiring this loaf with all the sea creatures through the window and the baker picked it up to show us, saying she had created it herself!

We also enjoyed Musee Mecanique which contains antique arcade games that you can still play.  We checked our grip with one and Allen got "Out of this World" while I got "Puny."  Haha, he has a strong grip.  

This is a shooting game Allen loved.  It shot metal marbles and you were supposed to knock down little tabs with painted animals.  He's a pretty good shot.

Finally, four and a half hours after we had started wandering the city, our ferry took off.  We shivered while loving the views of the city, the bridge, and Sausalito.  It was cold!  In fact, this has been by far, the coldest week in July that I have ever experienced.  We haven't gone one day without wearing our jackets, and in San Francisco, we didn't dare wear shorts.  The fog is just icy, it rolls over the bridge and the hills surrounding it and chills the bay.  But, we still loved it.  We were on a ferry in San Francisco Bay!

This was our view of the Golden Gate.  Pretty much all you could see was fog!  Haha.  

Beautiful Sausalito.  As soon as we ferried past the bridge, the fog cleared and the sky was blue.  You can imagine how it rolls in over the hills from this picture.

In Sausalito Allen bought me earrings.  <3  He is a sweetheart.  Then we roamed some more, looking for lunch.  We really wanted Sushi Ran, a place I had scoped out in preparation for the trip, but it was closed for the 4th. :(  Sad because it looked amazingly clean and modern.  We would definitely recommend people try it just from looking in the window.  After being indecisive and wandering by foot for about and hour, we gave up on eating in Sausalito.  Actually, what happened was, we decided on a restaurant we found online, started walking toward it, not realizing just how far it was...walked about 45 minutes...then found it and we were not happy.  So...we called a cab to take us to Vista Point, the area right at the Sausalito side of the Golden Gate.  This was part of the original plan because we knew we wanted to walk the bridge and we had been told the walk from Sausalito to the bridge was rough.  On the cab ride we munched on our sourdough and a snickers we got at Walgreens earlier.  Preparation in action! 

You can see a little more of the bridge and less of the fog from Sausalito.

Allen likes the rivets.

When we arrived back in San Francisco, we got on a bus that we thought would take us back to the Fisherman's Warf area...wrong!  Whoops!  The number of the bus was correct, but it was going the opposite way.  The plus side of getting on the wrong bus, though, is that you figure out public transportation...this was the same way we learned in Rome, which is the subject of another, older blog post (Lost in Rome)...so we rode the bus around...made a couple connections...rode through the Golden Gate Park...and finally made it back to Fisherman's Warf about 4:30.

We were just glad to be off our feet a while. We had been walking from 6:30 to about 3:30.  That's 9 hours!  And I'm NOT kidding.  We had sat down a little at Fisherman's Warf while waiting for the Ferry, on the 15 minute Ferry ride and on the 10 minute cab ride.  Both of our feet were killing us, we hadn't eaten a real lunch, and were exhausted.  This is not to say we weren't happy.  It was amazing!  But, we were hungry and tired...

and we made a horrible culinary decision because we were about to collapse...

We ate at Applebees...I know! We ate a Applebees in San Francisco!

It's a sad truth, it was mediocre, and we felt better after we did it...basically, it was accesible and we had a gift card.  They gave us giant glasses of water and we both had hamburgers.

When we left Applebees it was getting really crazy at the warf.

We decided to tour the USS Pampanito because we had seen it earlier in the day and it was a little out of the way and further from the crowd.

Listening to the audio tour in the submarine

Back out on the street, the crowd was thick. Earlier in the day, there was barely a sole, but now thousands of people had gathered for the fireworks show later that evening.  We decided that despite the distance, it would be better if we went back to the hotel, at least for a nap before coming back to watch the show.  As we pushed our way through the throngs and back up the hill, we enjoyed some of the street performers including these acrobats.

It took us another hour, partially walking, partially using busses, to make it up the hill and to our hotel.  We were beyond tired and told ourselves we would take a couple hour's nap and then go back to watch the fireworks...

We didn't.

We slept through the night.  We were in San Francisco for the Fourth of July and we didn't see the fireworks.  I know, we're old, we're lame.  Haha.

We had an awesome day anyway.