San Francisco

As it turns out, US Hwy 101, the highway that the Golden Gate Bridge is on, happens to turn into the busiest city street in San Francisco before returning to near interstate status. This silly turn of events makes certain that you will waste an hour in the middle of town, in traffic, while you are trying to get to the airport to turn in your Jeep Grand Cherokee. By the time we got to the hotel, we were pretty exhausted but we took a bus to Fisherman's Wharf anyway.

I had always heard about Fishermen's Wharf and I guess that it is THE place to visit in San Francisco. It reminded me of a sort of mix between Bourbon Street, Michigan Avenue and Navy Pier (Chicago) and Times Square, but in all cases, with a lot less people. The restaurants serve the biggest boiled crabs I have ever seen. They were Dungeness crabs or something like that and they had the same basic shape as our local blue crabs, but they are about 4 times as large. We decided to wait until the following day to try them and walked around a bit. Fishermen's Wharf is more of an area than an actual Wharf. There are multiple docks, most with shops on them.

The crowd on Pier 39 watching the seals basking in the sun and fighting each other.

We ate at the Rainforest Restaurant which might be good but for all the loud animatronic distractions. Still pretty tired, we just headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest. We decided to walk to Chinatown the next morning and check out the availability of tickets to a comedy show on the way. When we got there some guy in a camera shop tried to sell me a much needed lens for about $200 more than it was worth and we did plenty of other shopping.

The "Gate" to Chinatown.

I guess I was a little disappointed with Chinatown since it might as well be a shopping mall. So we left there after deciding to find the comedy club that was having a special pre-presidential-election show in which four comedians and a political columnist were going to do acts concerning the presidential election and then field questions later. We never really found the comedy club that morning, but when we wandered into the park, we saw the makings of a protest beginning. There was a group of people erecting some sort of big sign and another group waving Israeli and US flags. So I took a spot on a bench to figure out what all of it was about and to see if a fight would break out.

Protesters of the wall in Israel building a mock up of it with protest slogans while

their protest is being protested by the people waving Israeli flags.

As it turned out, the big signs were mock ups of the West Bank Wall that Israel is building to keep out bombers and to establish a de facto border with the West Bank. The people building the mock wall were protesting it while the people with Israeli flags were protesting the protesters. Some guy was waving a U.S. Flag, but I really couldn't figure out what his deal was. I guess it never dawned on any of these people that Israel is nearly opposite San Francisco on this planet and that there was a U.S. presidential election in three days. Of course, maybe that's what the guy with the U.S. flag was telling all of them. . .

So after the protest and some more shopping and another walk to Fishermen's Wharf to see if Alcatraz tickets were available (they weren't) we walked around a bit more to see what we could see and stopped in to eat a Dungeness Crab. Mmmmm.

Sherry and I in the museum of old arcade machines at Fishermen's Wharf

On the pier to the West of Fishermen's Wharf

We went back to the hotel and decided that we were too tired to be tourists anymore and so we went to see "Saw," a movie (it sucked) that was playing next door before heading over to the comedy club. When we arrived at the comedy club, we were seated next to a straight married couple. The husband immediately tried to get me into a political discussion. Obviously everyone was there because of the political nature of the show and the upcoming election. Before the very entertaining night was over our tablemate was yelling "Republican is another word for mental illness." Most all the San Franciscans in the club, except the conservative columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, probably agreed. At the end of the show, one of the comics only half-jokingly suggested that the columnist be given a bodyguard to see her safely away from the club.

All in all, we had a great time on our trip. I have only cursorily gone through what we did and posted only a fraction of the 1500 or so photos that we took. Seriously, if you ever get the chance in your lifetime to visit Yosemite, you should do it. Just don't mention hunting to the clerks in the Village store.

The following pages are simply photographs that I took on the trip.