Going through San Francisco. OH MY! There is no way I can express the anxiety of that experience in getting to the Golden Gate Bridge. But I will try to highlight a few moments. The route was plotted correctly so we did know which way to go. But when we were in the middle of San Francisco and backed up at every traffic light we wondered if this really was the route to take.It was 19th Street and if you know that it is bumper to bumper traffic, some blocking intersections and at every traffic light there is a back up. It is all up and mostly down hill. Dozens of traffic lights to get from I-280 to The Presidio which finally enters the ramps for the bridge. That was (crossig the bridge) the best part of the drive for me. Much easier that the “Big Mac”. Pulling the trailer on the US 101 is always exciting as from San Jose to I-380/I280 it is solid traffic through all the towns along the way.
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| There are the towers of the Golden Gate , but we are stuck in traffic! |
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| Got off the highway to get gasoline and ran into the Google World HQ. |
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| There it is. This was the easiest part of driving that day. |
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| A few very large cedars in San Francisco |
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| A few very large cedars on the ride to the coast. |
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| Angel Island in San Francisco Bay |
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| Our campsite at Olema CA in Point Reyes National Seashore. |
At one point I told Ruth I would get a full tank of gas before we crossed the bridge in case there were any delays. In California there are many laws against having signs higher than 6 feet or so. So it is nearly impossible to know where the gas stations are located. You cannot see any signs. I turned off near Charleston and thought we were going through a college campus. Ruth indicated that all the buildings were the World HQ of “Google”. The age of most of the walkers in the area indicated that was true. A young man from USF (The “Dons”) gave us the right info and we found the gas station. (see)
Once across the Golden Gate bridge we missed the last turn to the Pacific (it came up too fast) so had to back track through Sausalito in local traffic at a crawl and reroute south on US 101 to get to our final road to Point Reyes. All this with the trailer behind. The last 10 miles were winding, but it was a good road (see). That road was like the one to Morro Bay ( see 5 days ago) but better paved and wider for the most part. The large cedar trees (see) were the items to look out for on the curves of the two lane road. The town …no…village, of Olema name came from "Olema-loke" or the Mi’wok Indian for little coyote. Olema has less than 100 population. In 1700 it was estimated that there were 11,000 Mi’wok people.
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| The Douglas MacArthur Tunnel on US 101 N. of San Francisco |
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| A larger view of the campground at Olema. Many tenters tonight |
Some of you may remember that Olema was also the title subject of the late-1960s country-rock song, "Hippie from Olema", The Youngbloods' rejoinder to Merle Haggard's "Okie from Muskogee”.
So we set up our trailer in a very “family oriented”campground with many families here this weekend. It is good to hear those young voices having fun outdoors. A short stop at the Park HQ gave us the info we needed to start tomorrow finding some 8 or 9 major birding sites as well as Sea Lions and the Elephant seal’s haul outs near the Reyes Point Lighthouse. Today we saw 16 birds enroute and a few here. our total species now is around 230. I should have Ruth's total tomororow.
Last night, I neglected to tell you a bit about the town of Gilroy near where we stayed the one night. Gilroy is well known for its garlic crop and for the annual Gilroy Garlic Festival, featuring various garlicky foods such as garlic ice cream, leading to the city's nickname as the "Garlic Capital of the World". Gilroy also produces mushrooms in considerable quantity. Gilroy is well known for boutique wine production, which is a large part of Gilroy's western portion, mostly consisting of family estates around the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains to the west. Many of the towns in the Salinas Valley have a “specialty “ crop they center around. Watsonville (strawberries), Morgan Hill (Silicon Valley), Salinas (Salad Bowl of the world), Delano (grapes) to name a few.
Tomorrow we will still be at Olema Campground, exploring the 35,000 acres of the National Seashore .
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