We took a couple days off and visited San Francisco, our favorite if-you-want-to-do-urban-do-this place. There's no way around it, The City is a bottomless well of things to do and beauty to enjoy. The fact that we both came home sunburnt, broke, and exhausted should say it all...the classic American vacation.
It was in the 70's so of course I burned. I'm Scotch-Irish you see, and where the freckles aren't, it's epidermal pastures. The air was typically opaque, with teeny-weeny droplets of moisture too small to be fog which basically magnified the sun. I looked like a tomato after the first day of hiking around Crissy Field just east of the Golden Gate Bridge and Fort Point. It used to be an Army airfield, a lifeboat station, and a base for several long distance record-setting flights.
Then OF COURSE one has to have oysters on the half-shell along with a bottle of wine. You must understand that dining out here is an investment not to be taken lightly. A hundred buckaroos buys a mediocre meal and tipping is well, an adventure. There must have been two dozen top-end restaurants of all stripes within blocks of our motel. Luckily we didn't have time for them all.
The room (Cow Hollow Inn) was $82. A pittance compared to $50 to see Tutankhamen at the de Young or $150 to tour Angel Island (parking, ferry, Segway tour). And Crissy Field was free.
Day two was Pt. Reyes National Seashore because the weather was even warmer and it did not seem like the kind of day you want to spend indoors in a museum. The park is huge and probably the reason we use words like "verdant" and "pastoral". Carnation's Contented Cows were all over and the vast open expanses reminded us of Scotland. The road wandered for miles over rolling pastures of ranches that dated back to the 1850's. Oddly, they were lettered __ the "M" Ranch came first on the way out and the last one we saw was the "B" Ranch. Not sure where "A" went and there were several letters missing in between, too. Probably off north or south of the road somewhere.
At the lighthouse gray whales were heading north and we saw one spouting. There is a no-way-in-heck 300 step stairway down to the actual lighthouse ( down, because the regular fog would have smothered it on the bluff top) and some younger sorts were scampering around down there. A few cardiac cases in the making were crawling back up.
We made the mistake (okay, it was my call. Sally wanted to go the way we'd come, over from 101) of returning via Highway 1 through Stinson Beach and Bolinas. Despite the torturous hairpin turns Sally had memorable views of the ocean and beaches. My memory of that span of course is a solid yellow line, no way could I take my eyes off the asphalt.
Next time we would stay over in Olema, the jump-off town on Highway 1. There were several cute b & b's and it would save a whole lot of driving.
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