San Francisco – Honeymoon Adventure Part 4
Sunday May 31st (not June 1st) – We left the spectacular Silver Lake Campground just as the sun was waking up. At the advice of our campground neighbor, we returned to Tioga Road for the venture to San Francisco. My GPS would not catch at the campground so we weren’t sure if this was the fastest way or not, but it was definitely the most scenic.
Long story short, we drove and drove. We drove for 6 hours. In the scheme of a road trip, this is not a long time but the driving required a lot of attention to the road. We went from beautiful single lane mountain passes with cliffs on either side to five lane highways with frantic drivers moving fast. We reached the Bay Bridge and came to a dead stop. We hit massive traffic, which for us Pennsylvanians on a Sunday afternoon was unheard of. Below us, we saw why the traffic had stopped. 7 lanes of traffic plus our two lanes converged into tolls. We sat in traffic for just under an hour and traveled 2/10th of a mile. Finally, at the toll, we paid and came to a massive line of cars stopped at a light that then ushered us onto the bridge. Once on the bridge, I made a final check of our reservations for the night. That’s when it hit me!
I realized that I had mixed up my days. SHIT. We were arriving on Sunday May 31st and our reservation was for June 1st. (Days later, I realized that not only had I mixed up my days, we left our reservation at Inyo one day early – this was a really crappy mix-up on my part). We stopped at a small park and called our Air B&B host, hoping for a miracle that we could get into our house one day early. We were feeling homeless for the night, in a big unknown city. If only I had realized my error sooner, we could have camped at one of the many spectacular campgrounds we passed along our way.
After no word from our host, we made a decision to call the nearest hotel we could find that was not astronomically priced. We were able to book a room and found our way to downtown San Francisco. We were forced to Valet Park our car which turned out to be traumatic for me. We had lived out of this car for over a week. This was my sanctuary. I had my methods of organizing and suddenly I had to drop the keys into someone’s hands with half of our gear still in the car. We were both very uncomfortable.
The hotel was old and musty. As we were checking in, a bus load of people trucked into the lobby and we both immediately felt the culture shock. It was strange to be around the hordes of city people again after 8 days in the wilderness. There’s a lot of truth in the fact that you do not just acclimate back into society after many days in the mountains and woods.
We arrived at our room, down a long and dimly lit hallway on the 3rd floor that was straight out of The Shining, and dropped our luggage. The melt down that followed was natural and necessary. I knew that the only way to solve this was to call home. After the call, Tom and I took a deep breath and left the hotel to catch a bite.
– – – – – – –
There are a lot of great things about San Francisco and it’s a shame we didn’t get to experience more.
Over the next day and a half we ate some of the most amazing food we have ever tasted, sipped delicious wine and truly loved the urban explorations we did.
The highlights from our first full day included Patxi’s Pizza, St Francis Fountain, and Taqueria San Francisco. There was a dramatic difference from the streets downtown to our rental in Bernal Heights. Even as experienced hikers, the hills in our neighborhood felt intense and downright crazy. The people watching was extraordinary and turned out to be a nice change of pace from being by ourselves. Once we crossed the Golden Gate Bridge, the beautiful rolling hills and farms reminded us of the beauty just beyond the congested highways. We loved Sonoma and Benzinger Family Winery. The vineyards were stunning.
We decided to be a bit spontaneous on a tip from a friend and wanted to mark our experience with something permanent. We drove to Black Heart Tattoo and both got new tattoos. Tom had given me a compass necklace as my wedding gift. The symbolism behind it was a reminder for me to never lose my way in life. I decided on a compass rose on the back of my neck to symbolize my need to stay on this path and remain focused on what makes my heart sing. Tom had “Wanderer” tattooed on his forearm to represent the last two weeks of our lives, wandering together but never lost. I love our decision to mark this time and place in our lives.
After spending a few hours learning about the area from the local tattoo artists, we went in search of ramen for dinner. Yelp guided us to Coco Ramen on Mission Street. We walked the 1.5 miles from our house and arrived to find a small, hole in the wall establishment.
We were in LOVE with the place. The atmosphere and the food were amazing.
We had Japanese beer and ordered seaweed salad, Albacore tataki and pork belly ramen. Absolute HEAVEN! The broth was out of this world with flavor and the pork belly itself was indescribable. The flavor was that of almost tea and spices. We ate every last bite in happiness.
Tuesday June 2nd –
We woke early to head to our scheduled tour of Alcatraz Island and the Penitentiary. The ferry ride was cold and surprisingly crowded but once on the island I was glad that we decided to do the tour.
The structure was stark against the natural beauty of the island.
In 1969, American Indians who called themselves the Indians of All Tribes occupied Alcatraz for nineteen months. Today, the graffiti that remains on the island stands as a reminder of this pivotal protest against abusing land treaties.
We saw many birds that were nesting and had small babies alongside of them.
The tour was a self-guided audio tour and we followed the instructions on our headphones through the prison. I find touring a place where people were so desperate to leave a bit morbid but the tour kept us intrigued. The most intriguing part was that the audio presentation featured both prisoners and guards as tour guides.
The entire experience was sad and depressing but very interesting. I felt for anyone who had to spend any time on that island; especially the families of the prison guards who lived on the island. It must have been torture to have this small view of the beauty of freedom just off in the distance.
We left Alcatraz on the next ferry and wandered to Fisherman’s Wharf for lunch. We decided on Boudin and a balcony seat outside. We were refueled for our trip down the coast.
We packed up, leaving San Francisco and the frenzy of traffic and people behind. We continued through Pacifico which was our first real glimpse of the Pacific Ocean. It was hard for me to understand how downtown San Francisco held so many people, when such a beautiful ocean side town was just 15 minutes outside of the city.
We stopped for gas and a couple groceries and our final tacos of the trip on the outskirts of Pacifico. We had stumbled on a gem of a Taquiera. The chicken tacos were delicious; Tender chicken with fresh avocado and chewy tortillas!
In this small seaside town outside of San Francisco I watched a man weed wack his hillside. He stopped and looked up before continuing to chop down the beautiful wild flowers that had taken over the hill. I suppose that’s what living in the foggy shadow of a frenzied city does to you.
We continued down CA Rt 1 South loving the views. We stopped at many of the bluffs to admire the cliffs below us. We especially marveled at White Whale Cove beach and Half Moon Bay.
Finally, we came to Pescadero State Beach. The state beach had beautiful elephant seals resting on the water’s edge and stood above them at the start of the trails.
Thinking about how locals must know these beach trails as their local hang outs made us jealous and happy.
We came to Butano State Park a short distance later and loved the forest atmosphere with tall trees and heavy vegetation. We drove into the Ben Ries Campground and found a large site that we liked. With such a dense forest surrounding the campground, we chose a site that was one of the few that still had sunlight streaming through the trees at 5pm. It offered a bit of warm light for us as we unpacked the car. Surprisingly, the campground was very busy and we were glad to have found a site so spontaneously. We set up camp and settled in for dinner.
The next day we would drive further down the coast and spend our last night camping in California for the trip. Thinking of this experience ending has me feeling very reflective and appreciative. I also feel sad for it to be coming to an end. We’ve had many nights of silly, uncontrollable laughter for no reason and also nights of sitting and staring into the darkness with nothing and everything coming to mind at once. I guess that’s the point of all of this; to really experience and soak up everything we can. Highs and lows and all of the in between mixed together. We have learned a lot about ourselves, and what we truly want in life is becoming clearer with each experience. We have become closer as a couple having to spend so much time in such limited close quarters. We have also come to terms with what our limitations are. We know and trust each other and the skills we both have. We accept who we are and the place that we are in right now. I am interested to see how the lessons we have learned carry home with us and convert into our new reality.
On to Big Sur tomorrow.
As the sun set, we listened to Ciaran Lavery’s song “Little More Time” over and over as we danced next to the fire. We both had such a new appreciation for each other, camping and exploring together. This may have been my favorite moment of our entire trip. We hugged good and long as the music played on.
