Wednesday, September 12
We began today by driving into San Francisco so we could claim that we drove across the famous Golden Gate Bridge. Our other two days we had taken a ferry into the city and only seen the bridge from a distance. After the Bridge (which included a brief stop to walk a portion of the Bridge), we drove through the city and then across the bay bridge to Oakland and onto an RV park just outside of Yosemite National Park. Driving in San Francisco reminded me why we had taken subways and public transportation into other major cities. City driving with an RV is just a little more than my heart can handle. After leaving the bay area, you get into a desert. Temperatures are much hotter during the day and there is lots of wind, which is why they have a huge wind mill power generation field in the hills west of the bay area. I found it odd that there were tons of fruit crops in this area. Obviously irrigation makes it possible. I have noticed back in Virginia that some of the produce we buy is from Califronia, after today I understand why. The RV place here outside of Yosemite is on the site of an abandoned gold mine. They have a trough where kids can pan for gold. Levi and Seth were mighty disappointed they didn’t find any after 40 minutes of panning. Seth wanted to hike to the gold mine but the combination of a large sign at the RV park entrance stating that this was mountain lion area and the setting sun made me hesitate. I’ve heard one too many mountain lion attacks on this trip. The kids set a record for showers today needing three. The standard morning shower, one after playing in the sand pit before dinner and a third after playing in the sand pit after dinner. I keep forgetting to mention our evening entertainment during dinner. We have found that each time we eat outside, we are greeted with yellowjackets. I get a kick out of trying to trap them in tupperware that has food we have finished. I leave the lid off and shut them in once they go inside. Then I shake the tupperware like crazy and the bee dies. This provides dinner entertainment. Well, tonight I almost paid the price. I was using a box we had received from one of the meals in San Francisco. The box didn’t quite have a tight seal. I shook that box as hard as I could, but in shaking it, I flung a bee right on my upper lip. Thankfully, I’ve got plenty of hair there since I haven’t shaved in 70 days. I’m also thankful I didn’t have my mouth wide open or I’d have a stinger in my tongue. The bee quickly flew off and we all promptly went inside for the rest of dinner. Oh well, I’m signing off for the night. We will be out of internet coverage for a few days so check back in about 4 days for more updates.
Tuesday, September 11
Today was our second day in San Francisco. We began by touring the Boudin bakery. They had some pretty high-tech machines that did a lot of the tasks we used to do by hand in my high school days when I worked at the Bagel Bakery making dough and baking bagels. We finished the day by touring Alcatraz, which is a highly recommended tour if you are in San Francisco. They give you an audio tour which plays for about 45 minutes and tells you stories of escapes and other interesting facts about the prison. There were several escape attempts, but only one worked. 3 guys actually escaped during the night. No one ever figured out what happened to them. Some (fellow prisoners) believe they fled to South America, others (the government) think they drowned in the frigid bay waters.
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