Girl Scouts and San Fransisco

More farm animals at the KOA in Petaluma. These are peacocks. Look closely at the feet of the peahen on the right, and you can see peachicks. One wonders why one would keep peacocks at an establishment where people are expecting to sleep. They scream frequently, even at night.

Last weekend was a Girl Scout function involving tents. Their leaders and the Scouts have really mastered logistics. They came in on Friday night, set up, did Scouting stuff on Saturday, and by mid-day Sunday they were packed up and gone.


The weather Saturday was sunny, cold and windy. We decided to drive into San Fransisco, erroneously believing that like other large cities, they would have pay parking lots. But first we took a tour of the Marin headlands. It used to be an Army post called Fort Cronkhite. It was initially a Coast Defense Artillery post for the defense of San Francisco. With the Cold War came Nike Missile Sites to defend against the bombers that thankfully never came. This is one of the old Nike missile sites.

The view back across the bay - that is the Golden Gate Bridge. The government had some fabulous real estate.

Enlarge the picture by clicking on it, the buildings with red roofs are old military barracks for the soldiers stationed here when the fort was active, not a bad place to be stationed, if one was in the army.

After walking around a bit, we got back in to the car and drove into Sausalito. It's a very expensive area situated above the bay, looking at San Francisco. It's densely populated.

I love this park, with the elephants on pedestals.

We then drove in to San Fransisco. By that point in time we needed food. We failed to grasp how residential SF is. After driving for a bit in really terrible traffic we finally found a Quiznos. Thus fortified, we set out towards the water front, still believing that there would be parking. There are many Victorians in various states of repair. This one still has a lot of painted detail, but the door is covered with a construction fence.

This is some sort of government plaza, and was the site of the Black and White ball, which was to be held that night. KD Lang and Tony Bennett were the primary performers. The proceeds go toward keeping music programs in grades K through 5.


Finally, the water front. We found parking meters. Three dollars an hour! I thought Seattle was bad. We went into a Safeway and bought quarters from the checkers so we could get out of the car and walk some.


I have to tell you, there is no good reason to go to the water front. After tearing down the Embarcadero elevated freeway, and opening the water front up to the rest of the city, they then populated it with T shirt shops, $10 fleece jackets, assorted souvenirs, and stuff nobody needs or wants. By August you will not be able to stir them with a stick.


They do have some cool street cars, however. These are old and restored.


Look in the back ground, that's Alcatraz. Look in the right foreground on the dock, that's a sea lion.

After walking about for an hour in the rip roaring cold breeze, we both had headaches and returned to the truck and for home. This is the Golden Gate bridge on the way out.

The weather continues to try our patience. We dressed out for riding this morning with undershirts and glove liners. After 3 or so miles it started raining on us and we gave up. It was an official laundry day.