Saturday, April 14, 2012

San Francisco

Sight seeing by the bay
For the past few days while I've been in San Franciscog I've hardly thought about my hike.  I have talked about it with people that I've met, but I've hardly thought about gear, hiker food, schedules, and mail drops.  I haven't been keeping up with the PCT-L or the Facebook Class of 2012 group beyond the post about the weather.  The trail has been getting some spring snow storms.  The locals are saying the snow won't last long, not this time of year.

First night in the city
I've used some of my gear here.  San Francisco has been colder and rainier than I expect or hoped for.  I've worn my rain jacket and insulated jacket around the city.  On Thursday I carried around my new chrom dome and only used it for about 10 minutes after dinner while walking back to the hostel.  Better to carry it around all day unneeded than have a rainy day.   

I've been doing a lot of walking as I expected.  Sometimes going up some of the hills here I think I should be wearing my pack, but I've been only too happy to leave it stowed in a locker at the hostel.  My first night here I went out to find dinner and happened to look west and there was the Golden Gate Bridge cloaked in gold mist.  I walked towards it, dinner pretty much forgotten, and walked for about an hour along the water and through a park.  It was a lovely start to my trip.  Going up the stairs of Telegraph Hill to Colt Tower I really felt like I should have had my pack for practice.  Instead I took a dozen photos of the semi-tropic flowers and listened to the wild parrots.

Sea lions sleeping at Pier 39
For some reason I thought I'd get to go up close to the sea lions at Pier 39, so Pier 39 didn't live up to my expectations.  It's probably for the best that you can't pet the sea lions.  The conservatory was a lot smaller than I expected, but it was great going to the topics for a little bit instead of cold San Francisco.


I poked around China Town today.  It is a very colorful there.  Lanterns hanging over the streets, shops bursting out onto the side walk, and the buildings.  I  Had lunch there--a huge plate of fried noodles.  It was great and very filling.  I ended up staying there longer than planned and one of the museums I wanted to go to closed but I ended up going to the cable car museum instead.  That was cool to see how the cable cars climb the hills here and to learn about their history.  I went on all the lines not to go anywhere but just for fun.

Tomorrow there is a bike across the Golden Gate Bridge tour with the hostel.  It's supposed to be a beautiful weekend.  Should be an awesome trip.

The pulley system running the cable cars

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