Bonus Chapter 11: Back Where We Started
In the morning, we met up with my cousins again for some coffee at a local shop, just because we enjoyed their company and wanted to hang out one more time before leaving. And by some miracle, they agreed to see us again.
Afterwards, we hit the interstate for a 3-hour drive back to San Francisco. It was three hours of driving during which absolutely nothing happened, which means it was still better than watching Shakespeare In Love.
Traffic was getting jammed up near the city, so we got off at Highway 37, which would take us to the north around San Pablo Bay. And we promptly ran into a traffic jam.
We eventually started moving again and, since we’d used up all of our PB&J supplies, we stopped for lunch at the California institution:
In N Out Burger. It wasn’t our first time here, but since we don’t have them on the East Coast, it makes for a more exotic fast food lunch than most other places. As for the food itself, it’s fine. Most Californians that travel east seem to speak of In N Out in hushed, rapturous tones. I find that the burger is decent, and the fries are lousy. But it all beats PB&J.
We navigated a myriad of turns and hills north of the city and finally found our way to
Muir Woods National Monument. This is a grove of majestic redwood trees named for the famous naturalist, Dr. Albert Schweitzer. No, I’m kidding—it’s named for John Muir, of course, the environmentalist who worked to protect Yosemite and so many other natural areas from construction and development. This land was protected from a dam project by California politician William Kent, who appealed to President Theodore Roosevelt himself for protection in 1908. Roosevelt agreed, writing:
“My Dear Mr. Kent: By George, you are right!
P.S. Those are awfully good photos.”
He was going to name it the Kent Monument, but Kent proposed that it be named for John Muir instead, since he was at the forefront of so many campaigns (along with President Roosevelt) that had eventually helped form our National Park system.
Because it’s so close to San Francisco, Muir Woods is typically overrun with visitors. Parking had been a nightmare for years, so they have no instituted a system where you can
make an online reservation for a timed arrival and be guaranteed a spot, or ride a shuttle from various locations. Because I am a professional vacation planner in my mind, I had made a reservation for an arrival between 12:30 – 1:30 p.m. We got there right on time.
And we were promptly told that the lot was full, and we needed to drive down the road to the overflow lot.
So we did, and the attendants there told us that the overflow lot was full, and that we would need to drive further down the road to the overflow overflow lot.
So we did, and the attendant there was pulling a barricade across the entrance, and waved us further down the road.
We drove another mile only to discover that there were no more parking lots. Many people were just pulling off onto the shoulder wherever they could and just leaving their cars.
Not wanting to hike 2 miles back to the park, we turned around and drove back to the overflow overflow lot. This time, we saw someone pulling out, so we were able to get in and find one of the few available spaces. I’m going to go ahead and say that I don’t think they’ve solved the parking issue here.
At the gate, we displayed our VIP National Park Pass and went inside. There are several miles of hiking trails in the park, but we just took the main trail, which is about a mile loop through the grove of redwood trees. It basically looks like something out of Lord of the Rings. Or, if Star Wars is more up your alley (like me), the moon of Endor.
There’s a nice little boardwalk trail that makes it easy to follow the path. It also keeps 5-year-olds from destroying the forest ecosystem. Don’t ask how I know.
It was a nice walk, and the trees of course are incredibly tall. I couldn’t help but feel a little underwhelmed, though, because the trees weren’t as massive as the ones in Sequoia that we’d seen earlier in the trip. In addition, the park was very crowded, and it felt crowded. So it didn’t feel like the peaceful retreat they had envisioned so many years ago.
These displays are always fun, though.
We retrieved the van and drove south towards the city. I figured it didn’t count as an official trip to San Francisco unless we drove over the Golden Gate Bridge at some point. But before we did that, we got off at the last possible exit so we could take a look at it from the north side.
We miraculously found a parking space at Battery Spencer, an old fort built into the bluffs. We hiked a short trail up the hill and found that we all had to hold onto our hats or risk losing them into the bay. The wind was fierce off the Pacific.
The view was pretty great.
Towards Alcatraz:
The fog was rolling in quickly. By the time we actually did drive across the bridge, the clouds had arrived.
Cheapskate alert: you only have to pay the toll if you’re driving north, out of the city. Thank goodness we were heading south.
We’d come full circle at this point, and one of our last points of interest of the trip was in the same place as the first: the Presidio. It’s not really advertised, but not really a secret, either: one of the office complexes here houses the offices of Lucasfilm (makers of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones movies). It’s a place of work, so there are no tours, but the lobby and plaza areas are open to the public, and it’s worth 15 minutes for a stop if you’re a Star Wars fan.
There’s a Yoda fountain outside in the plaza.
We discovered this was a good place to practice How Not To Be Seen.
Inside the lobby, there are a few bits of Star Wars memorabilia scattered around.
One more stop to make: we drove down underneath the bridge to visit
Fort Point National Historic Site. This is part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, built between 1853 and 1861 as part of the Army’s defense system for San Francisco Bay. Mostly, it’s an old fort with a cool view of the bridge. It’s only open on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. We just went to get bridge photos.
Evening was approaching, and so was rush hour, so we tried to leave the city. Unfortunately, everyone was leaving early for a Friday night, so we had to fight our way through traffic. It was slow going through the city streets, and driving was a handful between aggressive drivers and traffic signals every 50 feet.
Getting close to the Bay Bridge ramp, a yellow light caught me as I was approaching an intersection. I decided I wasn’t going to make it and hit the brakes. I happened to stop just over the crosswalk. Cars jammed the streets all around me.
I glanced to my left, where a police officer was manning the control box for the signal. He waved his arm in the air at me. I wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean. Then I looked around and thought..maybe I’m blocking the crosswalk? I was probably hanging over it by about a foot or so. People were already crossing the street in front of me.
I looked up in the rear-view mirror, and traffic was right on my bumper. I had nowhere to go.
Next thing I know, the officer is walking behind my fan and taking a photo of my license plate with his phone. He approached the door and I rolled down the window.
“I got you for failure to yield and obey an officer,” he said.
“Wait, what?” I said. “I don’t have any room to back up.”
He turned his back on me and waved me off, saying something unintelligible. I just shook my head in disbelief. The light turned green, and I drove off.
That put me in a foul mood the rest of the day, so I’m sorry to say I don’t have anything special to report for the end of the trip. We crawled across the Bay Bridge to Oakland with the rest of the traffic and stopped at a restaurant in the city called
Drake’s Dealership. It’s a brewery that was built in an old car dealership, which makes for a cool atmosphere. They had very good pizza and beer.
For dessert, I had planned a grand finale at
Fenton’s Creamery, an Oakland institution which happened to be featured in the last scene of the Pixar movie Up. But as luck would have it, they only had about 5 parking spaces, and of course they were all full. We drove around for about 20 minutes and couldn’t find a single place to park. This put me in an even fouler mood. Mark no function ice cream well without.
We started driving back towards our hotel near the airport, and Julie offered to do a search on her phone for other local ice cream places. I grumbled agreement, mostly wondering how much the traffic ticket was going to cost me. She found a place, and gave me directions. But when we found it, it was a sad-looking shop in the middle of a low-rent neighborhood surrounded by an industrial area. I thought it looked sketchy and didn’t want to get out of the van.
We ended up getting McFlurries from a McDonald’s inside a
Walmart. Fail. Double fail, even.
I bet Fenton’s Creamery was better.
So, our California Adventure ended on a bit of a sour note. We flew home from Oakland the next day, which began with a beautiful view of San Francisco and was interrupted by a short delay for a late-April snow shower in Chicago.
We should have known better than to fly through Chicago in the dead of winter like that.
But we made it home no worse for the wear. As we flew into Philadelphia, I got a shot of the sports complex, home to my favorite teams. At this point in the season, the Phillies were still halfway decent. I wasn’t looking forward to football season at that point.
Narrator: by June, he would be.
As is our tradition, we updated our family travel map. Getting so close to filling it in…
It would be late July before we left on our next adventure. But that, my friends, is a different trip report. As always, thanks for reading this one.
P.S. I never received a ticket from San Francisco. I don’t know if the cop was lazy, or forgot, or found it was a rental and decided not to pursue it, or what.
But…hopefully my family will forgive me for being so grumpy afterwards.
. #foreshadowingforanotherTR
I caught it too!!!!!
