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Just like the old song says, I left my heart in San Francisco. Thankfully, we were here on a weekend and traffic was so bad and slow that I quickly noticed the loss and found it again before we had traveled more than a few feet. After marveling at the wide-open spaces of the West, San Francisco has been a jolt back into the reality of urban living. This is one crowded place!
We started the day by driving to the Golden Gate Bridge and visiting the Golden Gate National Recreation Area around the bridge. This park is the largest urban national park in the United States. The grounds are well kept and many people use this area for exercise and relaxation. Ann found a pet cemetery below the approach to the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge and spent some time walking through it. We then drove up to Muir Woods, home of some tall redwood trees about twenty miles north of San Francisco. We must have gotten a late start because the rest of people in town beat us to the location. Not only were there traffic jams getting to Muir Woods, there were no parking spaces available. The trees weren't even visible from the road so we never saw the trees.
Thinking that we needed to try something else we drove on to Muir Beach. There were no parking spaces there, either. So we continued driving North on Rt. 1 through Point Reyes National Seashore. We wanted to cut over to Napa Valley to visit wine country. The roads didn't go that way and it took us a long time to make it to Napa. We visited one winery (I've already forgotten the name) and then we drove back towards San Francisco. We were wrong about all of San Francisco being at Muir Woods. At least half of them were in Napa Valley visiting wine country. We got to one country intersection that had at least a twenty-minute wait to get through the 4-way stop.
We felt as though we had wasted the day but we had one last chance to redeem ourselves. We drove to Fisherman's Wharf to find some dinner and possibly some entertainment. We saw a magician free himself from a straitjacket while standing on a tight rope. But Fisherman's Wharf is not all goodness and light. Baltimore's Harborplace and Boston's Fanueil Hall are far superior to Fisherman's Wharf. We found it smelly because of the sewer venting, it lacked nice affordable eating places, and the street people were everywhere. We were surprised; we thought we would like it. We did take a drive through the city that was fun. There were lots of people out and about enjoying their Saturday night.
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