Golden Gate Bridge

Morning sun in Menlo Park. It's sweet to wake up every morning to another sunny day-the delight slightly tinged with anxiety about the fact that it isn't a day with much-needed rain.



We drove up I-280 and Highway 1 through San Francisco to Golden Gate Bridge. There's parking at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge, where we left the car about 11:00 a.m., walked to the south end, got a small lunch, and walked back.

Fog hanging in the hills of the San Francisco State Fish and Game Refuge along I-280.

Highway 1 follows 19th Street north through the city to Golden Gate bridge. The row houses, each one different, for miles along the street are what I think of when I imagine San Francisco.

A glimpse of  the Bay from Golden Gate Park (we have never spent enough time here; always someone to see elsewhere in the city).

Fog shrouding the bridge as we headed north to the parking area on the Marin side.

Fog looking east toward the city.

We took a photo of a couple and their daughter, at their request, and they in turn took this one of us. The man works in Fairbanks often, so we compared notes briefly on the weather there.

A movable steel maintenance platform that runs on rails on the outside of the bridge.

Looking up, to the top of one of the towers.

A memorial plaque at the south end of the bridge. Perhaps at the time that the bridge was built, Marin was considered "nowhere" by some, and maybe people thought that it was foolish to build a bridge to get there?? Building bridges to nowhere is a sizable issue in Alaska politics.

A calla lily in the garden at the south end of the bridge.

We thought that this spooky-eyed bird in the visitors' area was a starling, but it is actually a Common Grackle.

The Visitors' Center had a few relics of the bridge-building days, including this raffle ticket.

A view of the bridge from the south end. I, for one, was very hungry by the time we reached the south end of the bridge, but found that the cafe was closed. The little convenience food place specialized in "C"s -- Coke, chocolate, chips and cookies -- so I ate chips and nuts that we'd brought along for sustenance.

Amid all of the dignified and straightforward memorials associated with the bridge is this one, put up in 2010  [wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E_Clampus_Vitus] by a "drinking historical society."

We started out return trip, and took more photos of the surfers catching waves,

the greatly increased numbers of small sailboats on the Bay (an hour earlier there were two),

the fog lifting over the city,

the Matson container ship sailing under the bridge,

the pair of double-masted boats coming out of the marina (looking like something out of a fairy tale), and

the love-remembering padlocks on the fence near the end of the bridge.

At several points along the way were telephones, with reminders of a more somber side of the bridge. I don't mean to make light of the message, but the wording seems cumbersome: "The consequences of jumping from this bridge are fatal and tragic." Is someone who is maybe not thinking clearly going to process that? I spent some time trying to locate information about the use and effectiveness of the phone system, but found none.

Looking south along the bridge.

Our home for the night is the Marin Lodge in San Rafael, a charming, spacious, well-appointed room for the rock-bottom price of about $106 (with the 14% California tax). If you get a chance, it's worth staying at.

Later we drove at a very slow rate from San Rafael to Petaluma to meet more California cousins for dinner. We were due for some crawling traffic -- else how would know we were really in this state? Luckily, Marin and Sonoma counties are exceptionally scenic.

Petaluma bills itself as a town preserved from the worst effects of the 1906 earthquake and fire. As a result, it still has Victorian houses and buildings in greater quantity than other parts of the area It also has a river, that it is now starting to take advantage of, cobblestoned alleys, and many antique stores and boutiques.

An old bridge over the Petaluma River.

Nearing the end of the spring flowering season, and it's only late March.

Cousins at dinner: Rafael Flores Jimeno, Jim and Teri Carns,Terry and Nick Gibbens, and Rory Gibbens Flores.

Clear skies mean moon and stars. The moon at 6:00 p.m. (the time stamp is still on Alaska time). As we drove back to San Rafael (in a different traffic jam for the first third of the trip), the moon was higher in the night sky, just above Orion, and a few dozen other stars.

A last view of surfers below the Golden Gate Bridge.

Walking by San Francisco Bay, March 20, 2015

Sailboat seen from the Embarcadero.


We took the train from Redwood City into San Francisco, and walked along the Embarcadero from the train station to Ghirardelli Square, accumulating about nine miles in the process. We put on and took off jackets half a dozen times as the clouds covered and uncovered the sun, or the wind blew in our faces or at our backs.

The Embarcadero is about four miles of walkway along the city's waterfront. We walked past the Giants stadium, the Ferry Terminal building and market, Fisherman's Wharf, and Ghirardelli Square. It's a course in history, poetry, artworks. One stretch has words from the Rammaytush Indian language.

"Star" = "muchmuchmish."

Posts along the way featured waterfront photos and stories from earlier days. This one described a revolt of Italian crewmen over the bad food aboard a ship. "Let them eat the dog," is a far cry from Marie Antoinette's supposed quote, "Let them eat cake."

Architectural details were often things that one would not be likely to see in Anchorage -- these bas-reliefs were on a building across the street from the Giants stadium.

Mostly, we were focused on the walk and the sights along it, but across the street was the city itself, with Coit Tower, framed by palms, colorful buildings, and immense variety in the architecture.

The people on the street are intriguing in their infinite, city-style variety -- bare feet, for example.

Jim doing his best to contribute to the interest in the photos. Note the cranes on the buildings in the background -- lots of construction going on.


The camera can get closer to the object than I can, and I look in new ways, frame things, take more time to observe. But I also find myself wrestling with the camera to make it take the picture that I am seeing and that it won't take, or isn't technically capable of capturing. So it is friend and foe, tool and barrier, a road to both insight and frustration.

Old dock gray morning.

Same dock, afternoon, with more sun, more reflections, better contrast between the lines of the bridge and the dock. Not sure which I like better.

We walked through the Ferry Terminal Building, looking for lunch. This artist was sitting on the floor, creating today's sign for his place.

Bouquets of freesias, beautiful in scent and color.

Acme breads -- we bought a sourdough cheese roll (delicious), after lunch at Slanted Door.

More sights along the walk:

Sedums in planters.

Bronze disks set into the sidewalk with pictures of some of the denizens of the area in the days before it was filled in and became the waterfront.

Guys playing catch on a lawn.

A remarkable gentleman with white gloves, a cane, hat, pale gray suit, bright tie, and sweet face.

A lot of sea lions, a cormorant, some gulls, all hanging out alongside the Aquarium.

This gull was barking at the woman eating her lunch on the bench, demanding his share.

The Alioto-Lazio building at Fisherman's Wharf (for my Lazio family members).

An immense dog in Ghirardelli Square.

Jim's favorite sight of the day -- a beach, just down the hill from Ghirardelli Square. We sat on a bench eating chocolate  watching the little girl play on the sand and a few (very hardy) people swimming in the Bay.

The Boudin Bakery has bread-makers working in front of plate glass windows so that people can watch the process. Here are a large and small alligator, with a baker posing for the camera.

Bubbles blowing on the wind.

A starling (Regina calls them "cloisonne birds") on a sculpture.

Jim at the west end of a couple of miles long "artwork" -- glass tiles set into the sidewalk.

The description of the "sculpture;" we followed it from one end to the other, and back.

Jim at the beginning of the ribbon, not far west of the Giants stadium.

A woman with a fur coat -- stylish, but too warm for the weather.

Straight lines, angles, clouds.

A large sailboat, well-populated.

A guy catching the late afternoon sun; pigeons, ditto.


Such a civilized day -- train, walk along the waterfront of one the most interesting cities anywhere, take the train back home.

Daylilies in the late afternoon sun, Redwood City train station.

Apple blossoms, making way for the fruit.

We're staying with one of Jim's cousins in the Palo Alto area; here's her neighbor's Meyer lemon tree.

Hummingbird at the top of the tree next door.

Another neighbor's wisteria.