San Francisco - Day 3

Wow, what a switch from the last 2 days.  Today was 60ish, foggy and windy.  The 2 days prior we wore no jacket and were wishing we were in shorts and sandals.  Today we both had to buy a fleece jacket to put under our windbreaker. It was a good day to take the "hop on hop off" bus tours and see different areas of the city tho!

We had breakfast at this really fun restaurant called Lefty O'Doul's.  It is decked out with baseball history and pictures and what not on every wall.  There is even a life size model of Marilyn Monroe.  She married Joe DiMaggio in San Francisco at city hall.  You would have really liked this place mom.












We walked around Union Square - they are starting to put up their holiday decorations.  Was really strange to see this

on one side of the park and this

on the other.










This is an ice rink they set up every winter in Union Square.

Yummy
Oops, how did this picture get here??? I was going to show you a picture of our breakfast. Hmmmm . . .  oh well, this is on the front of Macy's - and it is 5 stories tall!  ya, like I said, yummy!

Also, went to see my BFF Penny.

 These are  beautiful Victorian houses that have been re-stored.  They are just the most amazing homes to see.  They are tall and close together and have very little yard of any type.  Most I think are multi family dwellings.  A lot of them have businesses along the street level.  I cannot imagine living that close to the traffic.

San Francisco

The city of San Francisco, California, due to its mild climate and its social programs that have provided cash payments for homeless individuals, is often considered the homelessness capital of the United States,^[97] together with Los Angeles. The city's homeless population has been estimated at 7,000-10,000 people, of which approximately 3,000-5,000 refuse shelter. The city spends $200 million a year on homelessness related programs.^[98] On May 3, 2004,^[99] San Francisco officially began an attempt to scale back the scope of its homelessness problem by changing its strategy from cash payments to the "Care Not Cash" plan. At the same time, grassroots organizations within the Bay Area such as the Suitcase Clinic work to provide referrals for housing and employment to the homeless population. In 2010, a city ordinance was passed which will disallow sitting and lying down on public sidewalks for most of the day, from 7am until 11pm.^{[ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_the_United_States#San_Francisco}

I found it really sad to see all the homeless people in San Francisco.  It does appear that they have a lot of programs (Kylie told me about this when I was wondering why there were so many homeless).  A  lot of stores leave their trash such as cardboard etc in front of the store for pick up.  I also saw lots of supplies being brought into the downtown stores by smaller carts hand pushed to the stores.  I am assuming that there are not alleys etc to collect garbage and deliver goods.  Many of these homeless people gather up the paper and the cardboard and push grocery carts stuffed full of these items all around the city.  This morning we saw cardboard boxes made into little covered/sheltered beds.  People sleep huddled up against the shops and under a tree or where ever the spirit moves them I guess.  A real shock to see this but I haven't really been in that many huge cities where it would be warm enough to live outside all year round.

 ^{They have these toilets out every few blocks.  There was no way I was going to try this but it is not that easy to find a washroom sometimes and we read the sign posted on the outside of the building.}

<sup>Well, I hope you can read this - but basically it self cleans after every person uses it.  I was thinking - whoa  great idea, ima gonna get me one of these new fangled toilets for my RV.

It was still disgusting!</sup>

 These pictures are from the Golden Gate Park area.  There are beautiful gardens and a Science Centre here.  We were too wimpy to walk in the drizzle and check it out.

 Unfortunately these are the best pictures I could get of the bridge because of the fog. And this was at 1 in the afternoon.

^{This is the Palace of Fine arts in the Presidio Area.  This is close to Bakers Beach.}  

San Francisco - Day 2
We walked the 1 or 2 miles from the downtown to Pier 39. Was a really nice walk and much to see - was just fun looking at the scenery and watching the people - totally free - no charge for this tour!

Today was a full day of exploring San Francisco.  We started late as we were told the public transport was crazy busy early in the morning.  The problem was that we could not even get a parking spot at the train station when we got there at 9.  Tomorrow we are going to try to go early and take our chances with having to stand on the train.  Mostly we walked around Fisherman's Wharf area once we got to San Francisco.

This is Alcatraz.  We were super lucky, apparently most days it is too foggy or smoggy to see - plus they had record temperatures today.  It was over 80 and absolutely excellent!





This is at Pier 39, lots of shops and restaurants and many places to leave your money!  There were tons of sea gulls as well as various other water birds to watch.

These sea lions were so funny to watch.  They just all hop on the dock and bask in the sun.  One of them must have had a cold because he was coughing and sneezing and snorting.  These are the goofiest creatures!


We had lunch at Bubba Gumps seafood restaurant.  There is seafood everywhere along this area.  You can see them cooking crab and shrimp everywhere.

 If you want your waitress to stop and help you, you flip this sign

 If you don't need any help from your waitress you leave this sign down.  I am not gonna lie, really wanted to give this a few flips to see what would happen.  Our waitress was so good and sweet that I refrained.

We had 4 kinds of shrimp with 3 kinds of dip - it was a super fun lunch  (low cal too!)

These are just random fun pictures.  Honestly we saw so much that I am overwhelmed at this point.

City Hall

There are a couple of buildings like this one.  They are called book ends because they are offset and look like books on a shelf.  Very hard to get pictures in the downtown as the streets are so narrow and the buildings are so high!

 The greenish one on the right is made of copper that has turned well, green.

We had this delicious pizza right in Pleasanton at Gay 90's a little local pizza place. My veggie side even had artichoke on it.

Oh Wow, Olive this place.

Since my last blog we have driven from Redding to a town called Pleasanton.  Pleasanton is a town of about 65,000 and it is 25 minutes from San Francisco.  We can take the public transport from very close to our RV spot and travel around San Francisco and area for the next few days.

On the way we saw some really cool stuff! We stayed in a nice spot that backed a meadow - with mountains in the background.  Wow, can you say the best of both worlds?  I even heard a meadow lark or savanah sparrow singing its little brains out this morning.

The place we parked overnight was so pretty, there were tons of birds, and a lot of hummingbirds darting around and chasing each other as hummingbirds like to do.  There were also lots of cute little lizards.

We stopped in a town called Corning and they have three olive processing plants.  All along the way we saw olive trees for miles and miles.  We stopped in a shop called the olive pit and tasted olives and olive oil.  I even tasted a chocolate olive oil.

I ended up with 4 jars which I will eat all by myself as Don thinks olives taste like dirt  (pfft what does he know?)  The Doublet olives are stuffed with an almond and pimento - yum!  www.olivepit.com

We drove by more fields of olives today as well as rice.  For some reason I didn't take any pictures.  Well, the reason is I was totally wondering why there was water sitting in the fields as there is no water sitting anywhere.  Even the streams, small rivers and creeks (many with bridges over them) do not have any water in them.  It is so odd to see - we are guessing these fill up in the spring.  The rice fields are amazing, I saw so many water birds such as egret, swan, some brown goose (not Canada goose) and lots of smaller water birds.  By the time Don suggested rice it was too late for pictures.  The rice growers work with the government to protect these water birds which is pretty cool as I am thinking they probably eat a lot of their rice!   calrice.org/wildlife

The rest of the country side was for the most part flat or rolling hills - really nice.  We just missed the veterans day parade in the town today which looked really neat, there was even a helicopter.  The town has tons of old shops and really fun looking restaurants on the main street.  No excuse for not taking the camera, I also forgot the phone UGH!  I will do better tomorrow  :)

   Warning - this is a long blog entry - sorry but so many pictures I had a hard time editing today!

Shasta State Historic Park                                                                                 This is basically ruins and some restored buildings from 1861. There is one of the oldest Masonic lodges in California as well as a  Courthouse with original jail and gallows.

 There was a group of grade 3 students touring when we were there so we sort of joined their class and learned some really interesting bits of history from this area.  Many people were tricked into coming to California in the 1800's to strike it rich from the gold.  There is a lot of information on a man who was a slave in eastern US who was sent to California to strike it rich and give his "owner" money to buy his freedom.  His owner was not very honourable and sold him to another owner after taking all his money. He went to California a second time and the new owner did allow him to buy freedom for him and his family . They came to California again and he struck it rich a third time, this time using his money to build a school so that all could have free education.

the displays were amazing as well as the 400 pieces of artwork from the era as well.









The museum also had a lot of hands on displays like this one about gold

 The gold miners took in the gold and sold it, this display shows what an ounce of gold would buy in 2000.

This is what an ounce of gold would buy in 1850.













The justice system was very strict. There were serious consequences for any type of crime.  One of the punishments for smaller crimes was to cut off their ear so they were marked forever.

 Off of this room were the 2 tiny jail cells which held sometimes 18 prisoners.  Absolutely no comfort here.

There were lots of these ruins from the different businesses.  The town lost all its buildings twice in a fires in the 1800's so they decided to go with all brick which is still partly standing.

Today . . .   was an amazing day. For one, it did NOT rain. For two, we toured the Shasta Lake Caverns.  The lake is not nearly full as you can see in the next pictures, the water in the spring is up past the red rock.  I think it looks so cool with this ridge of rock showing.

the water would be up past where I was standing in the spring

There are  30 kinds of fish in this lake, it has four arms and each arm of has different species.  There were tons of houseboats tucked away that people rent in the summer.  The water temperature was 76 today which is pretty warm - I am so confused with the temperatures being in Fahrenheit and the speed in MPH.  I am metric in these and it is difficult to convert now.We walked down a long way to get to the water where we went across the lake by boat, and then up about 700 feet to the cave entrance by bus.  That was one narrow windy road!  Apparently they do get snow but not that often.  No chance would I go up there in snow!  Last year 55,000 people toured these caves.
We went into 3 "rooms" and each had different types of deposits.  Apparently there are 30 different types of formations in these caves- stalagmites, "tites" and what not,  and usually there are not more that 10 kinds in an area so they are very special caves.  There were popcorn, bacon, drapes etc.  and one cave was just beautiful crystals.
We were so lucky as we were the only ones on the tour ( the tour in front of us had 50 kids - can you say lucky?)  We had our tour guide Jeremy all to our self which was way cool.
This tour involved a lot of stair climbing, and it was excellent to get some exercise after all the days of rain and driving we had before this.

 These are the sparkles you can see in one of the caves.

I have already forgotten the name of these formation but they grew in all directions.

   

 These are called drapes, so amazing, there was a whole room of these formations.

This was written in the side of one of the caves by the fellow, CM who discovered the cave and the expert he had to help him explore the cave.  It was written on Nov 11, 1878









We also got to see a very different type of forest than I have ever seen.
These beautiful trees are called Manzanita.  The bark is a really deep rusty red and the leaves are very interesting.  They have many types of oak, including black oak and poison oak.  Another really pretty tree was called a grey pine. It is really delicate and well, fluffy!