San Francisco and Bodego Bay, August 2021
Thursday August 5th
Flight: awesome views of Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; small fire in Yosemite; watched Collective documentary about scandal in Romania
Walked around Embarcadero to visit: Exploratorium, Ferry Building (dead on a Thursday evening) and dinner at Harbor View (excellent Chinese food albeit in a very touristy setting)
Friday August 6th
Chinatown including Fortune Cookie Factory (factory = two old ladies working on two old machines)
Cable Car museum, freaking awesome; cable cars themselves aren’t running regularly yet (amid pandemic) so we never did ride
Aquatic Park including tombstones (mostly a bust)
Fort Mason and Long Now Orrery (a bust, closed) and aborted attempt to get to Wave Organ (but later tries were successful, below)
Lunch at nice little cycling-themed cafe in Richmond District called Velo Rouge
Golden Gate Park: Dahlia garden, Hippie Hill, AIDS Memorial Grove, Lily Pond
DeYoung Museum: oh yay brutalist architecture is still alive and well; LOTS of great painting / portraiture from late 1800s; James Turrell installation (would be better at dusk), creepy sculpture garden
Parrots in Sue Beirman Park (not Telegraph Hill), dinner at Mario’s Cigar in Little Italy
drove down Lombard Street like a damn tourist
drinks at hotel bar until douchey crowd showed up
Saturday August 7th
Japantown and the Kinokuniya bookstore
Golden Gate Park: windmills, buffalo
the old Cliff House location (and the Camera Obscura, sadly closed)
drive through the Presidio
Fort Mason Center again for lunch at Radhaus and a visit to the Long Now Foundation
drive across Golden Gate Bridge and up to Petaluma and Bodega for 5 days with family!
Sunday August 8th
walk the beach, hang with family!
Monday August 9th
drive up to Fort Ross, Russian orchard, Russian cemetery
lunch on Russian River
drive loop through Guerneville, Sebastopol, Bodega and back to Bodega Bay
Tuesday August 10th
hike around Bodega Head:
- Hole in the Head (abandoned 1960s construction site for nuclear power plant, basically on top of San Andreas fault, duh)
- 200-ish seals on island off shore, making a racket
- impossibly beautiful cliffs
- beautiful, calm weather, which was apparently an abberration from the strong winds normally there
Wednesday August 11th
tide pools: sea stars, anemone, barnacles, mussels, limpets, kelp
lunch on Russian River (again)
hike to hilltop across from Shell Beach
Thursday August 12th
family stuff
Friday August 13th
family stuff
back to San Francisco!
drive around Mission District, Potrero Hill, Dogpatch, Noe Valley, Diamond Heights, Sunnyside
dinner at cozy little Japanese restaurant in Sunnyside
Saturday August 14th
Stanford University and:
- Rodin sculpture garden
- Papau New Guinea sculpture garden
- Andy Goldsworthy installation
- SLAC linear accelerator driveby
Apple “UFO” HQ driveby
lunch at a goofy Italian place
Winchester Mystery House tour
drive back along Pacific including Moss Beach and Mavericks
dinner at home
Sunday August 15th
Presidio and Andy Goldworthy’s Spire
Wave Organ
Regrets / next time:
Eye / Opthamalogy museum
Alcatraz
Angel Island