Ann vs. Jason

By Jason

We are ridiculously behind in posting what’s going on in our lives in NorCal (this is what the kids call it).  We have been fairly busy, though, what with all the gestation going on.

Last month my parents came for a visit and we gave them our comprehensive tour of the Bay Area.  They flew in around noon and Ann brought them directly from the airport to Google for lunch.  I gave them the grand tour (which, despite all the practice, I have yet to master) and we ate at the No Name Cafe.  Within 10 minutes my Mom managed to get the all cooks singing Canta y no Llores.  It was one of those great moments that is both endearing and a little embarrassing.  Dad was impressed by all the different languages spoken and how people seemed so social and engaged in discussion.  It really isn’t like any other workplace.

The next stop on the tour for which I have pictures available was San Francisco – hopefully we’ll post an addendum later to fill in narrative gaps like this.  We parked near the financial district so that we could take the cable cars up California Street and then down to the Hyde Street Pier and Fisherman’s Wharf.   I think my dad could have ridden the cable cars up and down the hills all day.  Mom kept wondering whose idea it was to build a city up and down so many steep hills in the first place.  I think it was a conspiracy between cable car union and the post card industry.

To get an idea how steep the ride is, here’s Mom and Ann with Hyde Street in the background:

As always, you can click on the photos to see larger versions.  Next is a picture that should be pretty familiar to anyone who’s traveled with my Dad – reading all the informational signs:

Next we took a cruise around the bay, out to the Golden Gate and around Alcatraz Island.  Here’s a photo on the boat with the bridge in the background.

This picture is a little more newsworthy but also a bit sad.  Can you tell that the tug boat is pulling something?  That would be a dead whale, which had drifted under a pier and was stuck for a few days.  We just happened to be heading back as they towed it out to sea.  I wasn’t the only one taking pictures, it looked like the city’s entire fleet of news helicopters were circling above.

Next we wandered around Fisherman’s Wharf for a bit, taking a look at the Lefty’s leftorium, which is just like Ned Flander’s store in the Simpsons, and the other shops and galleries.  We walked down to the end of Pier 39, which you can see here:

Our next adventure was to Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park, which we also visited with Ryan and Jessi.  Next door is the Roaring Camp Railroad.  We couldn’t take the ride because this part of the year they do group events like weddings, but we got to watch as one of the old steam locomotives headed out.

Dad got to talk a bit with the engineer.  One thing you might notice in the picture is that the train doesn’t have the usual pistons and connecting rods on the sides of the driving wheels.  Think of the arm motions you would make if you were pretending to be a train in a game of charades.  Since these trains had to go up steep grades they actually had three big pistons up front with a central drive shaft down the middle.

Here we’re watching the train leaving the station.  Ann is eating old-fashioned horehound candy which does wonders for nausea.

The big attraction of the park is the giant redwood trees.  You can get an idea how big they are from the picture below.  We had a chance to crawl inside one tree that was completely hollow inside, maybe 15-20 feet up.

One thing I don’t have a picture of is a giant banana slug.  I have been hoping to encounter one every time we’ve taken a trip to the redwoods with no luck.  As we headed back down the trail we heard a bunch of commotion ahead of us.  On the ground was a (relatively) small, very stunned banana slug.  Apparently some kids had run ahead for their parents and found it on the tree.  They dared each other to kiss it, at which point on of the little girls freaked out and knocked the poor thing off.

Our next day was spent in sunny San Jose, where we visited the Winchester Mystery House.  There’s no real mystery, but it is a great story – Sarah Winchester, wife of the creator of the Winchester rifle, was left a widow with a ridiculous sum of money.  She worried that she would be haunted by the ghosts of all those killed by her husband’s rifles.  Supposedly a psychic told her she must never stop construction on her house (ghosts don’t like loud hammering), so she didn’t.  The end result is a sprawling complex with no central plan and lots of expensive details:

Here’s a picture from one of the upper floors but this doesn’t really give you a good idea of how big the place is.  It’s a lot of fun, though the tours are a bit pricey and our tour guide was less than knowledgeable.

It used to be on a big estate but now it’s right in the middle of San Jose, you can see office buildings behind us.

Mom liked the place because Mrs. Winchester had lots of mini-steps built in the staircases.  It was like the house was designed for her.

As always, there are more photos of the trip here.

Up next:  shirt trips to Golden Gate National Recreation Area and Rancho San Antonio Open Space Preserve.

By Jason

Ryan and Jessi came out to visit us in California and see all the sights. We tried not to disappoint them, taking them on a whirlwind tour of the Bay Area. In this post I’ll talk about the first few days, in the south bay and down to Santa Cruz. Next I’ll write about our day in San Francisco.

First we bummed around Mountain View a bit. Here you can see us pondering a poster offering Scientology “personality tests” for free. Later we had to politely brush off an actual Scientologist. It’s like we’re in Hollywood! We ate at Shabuway, which you might remember from a previous post.

Next Ann took them on a tour of the local wineries. I wasn’t there so she’ll have to fill you in on what happened. We also had lunch at Google and I did a little tour. You would think by now that I would be getting pretty good at giving tours, but it’s mostly: “here’s some weird thing, here’s the dinosaur, and let’s eat!”

I took Friday off and Ann is finished with her contract at Oakland Kaiser so we were able to drive down toward Santa Cruz and the beach.  Our first stop was at Henry Cowell Redwoods State Park where they do indeed have giant redwoods.

This picture might help give you an idea how big the trees are, click on it to see larger versions at Flickr:

We just took a quick walk around the Redwood Grove Trail.  No wading through ice-cold rivers this time.  I was pretty disappointed because we didn’t see a single banana slug, though at the end of the trail this squirrel jumped out of a rustic decorative garbage recpetical and posed for our cameras.

Jessi was kind enough to procure some hoarhound candy at the old-timey store which has done wonders curing Ann’s nausea.  I don’t have any hoarhound pictures but here’s a shot of me licking all the green apple flavor off old-fashioned rock candy.  Rock candy always seems like a good idea but then I get sick of it almost immediately.

We ate at Redwood Pizzeria and then headed down to Santa Cruz, home of the famous Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk where The Lost Boys was filmed.  We didn’t see any vampires, but we did see sea lions from the wharf.

We walked along the beach a bit but the water was too cold for swimming.

The boardwalk has an amusement park with roller coasters as well as a couple of large arcades.  Everything shut down at about 5p.m., thought, which seems kind of strange for a Friday night.  Maybe it isn’t really boardwalk season yet.  Before everything closed Jessi got her fortune read by this creepy old fortune machine but it did not cause her to wake up as Tom Hanks the next morning.

We took a quick drive over to Natural Bridges State Beach to see the natural bridges.  There’s actually only one left.  It’s a pretty cool little park, with a creek flowing into the ocean on a small sandy beach.

The dunes where covered with what I think is ice plant flowers (but please correct me if I’m wrong), which you can see in the picture.

Up the beach was a rocky area where we watch waved crashing and looked for sea life in little tide pools.  There were a lot of anemones and a few little crabs but no sand dollars or any other pelagic currency.

Next I’ll write about our trip to San Francisco.  In the mean time, I have lots more photos up on Flickr (and follow this link to see photos on Ann’s Flickr page too).