07/03/13 – San Francisco and Muir Woods
Link to San Francisco / Muir Woods Facebook Pictures
We woke up today and drove out to San Francisco. When we caught our first glimpse of the Golden Gate bridge, the fog was almost too thick to see it. We parked at a small “overlook” but could only see a piece of red through the fog. It wasn’t even worth taking a picture! We drove across it, and from the other side we had a much better view. This time, we got out and took pictures with the 100’s of other tourists lining the pull-off.
I saw on an information board that Muir Woods was nearby, and so we had to check that out. It is quite the popular destination – we had to park on the side of the street and walk for about 10 minutes just to get to the visitor’s center. There were three different loops that you could do, which all overlapped each other. Of course, if you had the whole day to hike, you could do a longer hike and be in complete solitude. That would have been nice, but we didn’t want to risk it. I knew that within 3 hours or so of San Francisco, every campsite would be booked or overly expensive. We would need to make it at least 3 hours north, near the Mendocino area and the redwoods, to be able to find a (hopefully) free and unoccupied campsite. We decided to do the 1 hour loop, and spent quite some time strolling through the redwood forest which is John Muir Woods. Those trees are pretty massive – we took some pictures, but I’m not sure they do them complete justice.
Molly wanted to go to Chinatown, and I wanted to see the Haight-Ashbury area of town, so we plugged those into the GPS. By now, it was about 3-4pm and traffic was horrendous. We made our way to Haight-Ashbury and didn’t park, for fear of having to pay $1000000 for 15 minutes of parking. Realistically, we saw signs for $4.75/half hour, or comparable fares to that. We wouldn’t have known where to park anyway. We drove up and down Haight-Ashbury, saw some hippies, and saw more hippies in a park sleeping. With that being said, it did look like a pretty cool area. Too congested, though. Molly’s people made it here – there was a Thai noodle restaurant on Haight Road.
Next it was off to Chinatown! We plugged in the Chinatown Gate into the GPS, figuring that would take us to the center of Chinatown and a market where Molly could buy something exotic to eat. In reality, we got stuck in more traffic and even had to drive on those STEEP dragon-back roads that you think of when you think San Francisco. It was like watching a circus in front of me – so much going on at once. It was hard to take it all in. On one of the downhill sections, I stopped to let a girl in a Honda squeeze out in front of me, and the guy behind me was honking and waving his fist angrily. He was old. I don’t know what his problem was, but we were moving at a snail’s pace. He could have gotten out to talk to me for 10 minutes without having to move his car.
After San Francisco we decided to head toward Mendocino to try and find a more reasonable place to camp for the night. We ended up driving up the 101, for fear of the sun going down before we found a place. On a tip from Paige, we headed toward a place called Jackson State Park. We had to turn off the 101 onto 20, which cuts between Willits and Fort Bragg. On that road, I saw the most beautiful sunset I have ever witnessed. The sky was PINK.
We stopped to check that out for a minute, then headed on to Jackson State Park. When we got there, we were sad to learn that it was $15/night. At this point, I decided we should just bite the bullet and pay for camping. That is much more reasonable than the $35/night they wanted a night before. We found two pull-offs for Jackson State Park, and ended up camping in a part of the state park that was designed for horse owners. We had already paid the $15 by putting $20 in the box (which I will never see my $5 change of, I’m sure), and the site that we had paid for was already being occupied by somebody else. So we decided to go to the only other ones available – the horse camp, and explain to a ranger in the morning if one came up. It was sprinkling and lightning when we set up the tent – a nice change from the month of no-rain we have experienced this far. We set up tent, laid down on a welcoming and soft earth, and fell into a deep, relaxing slumber! If you can’t tell, it was a much-needed change from the Wal-Mart parking lots of the prior days!