February 4th – February
10th 2013
Saturday and Sunday will be described
later. We took a trip along the coast, all the way to Crescent City
seeing Redwoods.
On Monday we left the home at about ten
o'clock and drove to San Francisco (west side). We wanted to see the
coast, the bridge and an area around Presidio. Unfortunately it was
somewhat cloudy and the sky was gray, but it was not too bad. The
rush hour was over, so the drive was not too bad. We parked close to
the Ocean beach and walked a bit around. We actually stopped on some
battery park before Ocean Beach. Battery Davis. It was a bit strange
place, there were mostly local people and many dog walkers. Still, it
was pretty nice.
On Ocean Beach we saw the man pulling
the cart with his dog. I saw the same picture on my walk on Friday.
We drove a minute and parked close to
the Cliff house and Lands End. Next to the ocean was as well the
ruins of Sutro Baths. There was a trail going down, but we stopped on
the top and started to talk to the volunteer (nice old guy). His
ancestors were from Slovakia, he were in Japan and Germany, in
Vietnam with the army and during the life learned at least few
sentences in several languages. He even said Good Day in Czech. It
was really nice talk. We were told about the baths that used to be
there, huge pool and seating for several thousands people. After that
we took short walk to the Sutro park, where used to be viewing area
built by Mr. Sutro (rich guy who owned big part of west SF and was as
well mayor of the city. In that area, we saw the bridge first time,
the fog made it kind of interesting.
We made several stops, really enjoyed
the sites and the views. We drove through the area with really fancy
houses (at least four millions). There was a small public beach,
China Beach, we walked down there and stayed there for a bit. We
drove along the park and ended up somewhere close to the golf course
and the Hall of Legion (or something like that). Nice views of the
city. There was as well the art installation to remember the
holocaust. It was somewhat raw and strange, but life is sometimes
like that.
From several places, we had pretty nice
view of the Golden Gate bridge. It was pretty magical with the fog
hanging around and time to time hiding small part of the bridge. It
does not really get old.
After driving around, we stopped in the
middle of Presidio. We found visitor's center (closed) and as the
afternoon was moving along (fast), we had a quick look around and
left. We took some city streets (not too bad traffic) and drove
through the Golden Gate Park (looked pretty nice and interesting).
Somewhere there, we got back on the road number 1 and head home.
On Tuesday, we reserved our walk at Ano
Nuevo to see the seals (hopefully with nice weather). It was again
partly cloudy, but there were some glimpses of sun. Normal drive (as
we drove that road several times). It was still pretty nice and
pleasant.
It was relatively early (our walk was
at 9.15), the weather looked fine so we were ready. There were some
people, but it was not too bad again. I think our walking group
consisted of 10 people (unfortunately there were two small babies).
The walk was fine, the guide-volunteer
was new, so we were not really happy with that. Directly on the
beach, there was a park ranger (actually the same one as last time)
and he was funnier and better then our guide. The weather was pretty
nice (some clouds and some sun). There was many animals. We made few
stops and passed few lonely animals really close. It was pretty funny
to watch those sleepy lazy chunks on the beach. There were noisy
males, females with the babies and bunch of birds. It was really
amazing.
On the way back from the park, we
stopped at Butano State Park. It was a bit out of the way, but pretty
area. The entrance was deserted, so we drove in, there was small
parking lot and road continued (and ended by the campground). It was
all deserted and kind of sad looking. We drove back to the parking
lot, parked and took small walk. It was nice, nothing really special,
but quiet, peaceful and just really pleasant. After the walk, we were
pretty much done and drove to Pascadero. J. wanted to walk around and
look at all eight stores in the town. Unfortunately all of them were
closed (but the grocery market). Too bad. We got back on Highway 1
and drove home.
On Wednesday, we had quiet morning, J.
was doing some monkey business and we were quite unsure about the
day. Just before noon we went out and walked towards the marina,
where was CuriOdyssey Park (mainly for children). It was pretty nice
day, warm and the tide was low.
It was small park with few animals,
some monkey business for children and kind of laid back atmosphere.
We were pretty quiet as we were in strong disagreement about few
things. There was few animals, bobcats, sea otters (really funny and
they came after being called by trainer – faster then our dog). It
was nice walk and fun to watch those animals. After getting back to
home, we had to head out to get J.'s parking permit and do some
grocery shopping for our trip. We got beginning of the rush hour,
unpleasant. Following two days J. was working and I did not do much.
