Hop Hop Happy Easter!

The repairman showed up yesterday and spent a few hours working on the furnace, we finally have some heat in the house! It's nice to wake up in the morning and not be harshly awoken with the cool house when I climb out of bed.

Yesterday I blogged our San Francisco experience, but we didn't finish all the sightseeing we had, so we spent an hour of our day in San Francisco finishing up a few places we wanted to go. We went to Alamo Square, which is a popular location for filming television and movies. "Full House" is the first tv show I think of.

From Alamo Square we ventured down the road to the corner of Haight & Ashbury. If you don't know about "The Haight" then that's ok. I thought it was a much more widely known place than it is. Here's an excerpt from Widipedia:

The Haight Ashbury's elaborately detailed 19th-century multi-story wooden houses became a haven for hippies during the 1960s, due to the availability of cheap rooms and vacant properties for housing in the district. The bohemian subculture that subsequently flourished there took root, and to a great extent, has remained to this day. San Francisco and the Haight gained a reputation as the center of illegal drug culture and rock and roll lifestyles soon after, especially with the use of marijuana and LSD and other hallucinogenic drugs. By 1967, the neighborhood's fame chiefly rested on the fact that it became the haven for a number of important psychedelic rock performers and groups of the mid-1960s. Acts like Jefferson Airplane, the Greatfull Dead and Janis Joplin all lived a short distance from the famous intersection. They not only immortalized the scene in song, but also knew many within the community as friends and family.

When Laura and I climbed out of the Canubaru I was wearing by Nebraska Cornhuskers t-shirt and jeans. I clearly was not dressed for the atmosphere. I didn't realize that the hippie culture was still in such force! We received several stares as we snapped a few pictures and high-tailed it out of there! In fact, we were getting out of town.

We jumped on Highway 101 and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge and then did some driving around the Golden Gate Recreation Area, which is on the north side of the bridge. That was a neat area to visit because it is actually part of the old fort and the gun turrets are still on the tops of the hills.

From there we jumped on Highway 1 and began our long drive north to Fort Bragg. It actually wasn't a long drive - only 180 miles - but we had a lot to see. Our first stop was at Muir Woods National Park (another use for our National Parks Pass). Muir Woods is one of the places where you can see the giant Redwoods, and it is just a short drive from San Francisco.

We spent the remainder of the morning walking around the woods and reading all the information given on the signs. We are now giant Redwood experts!

From Muir Woods we continued north on Highway 1 to Point Reyes. You can see from the map on the right that Point Reyes extends out into the Pacific Ocean quite a distance. It is about a 20 mile drive off of Highway 1 to the end of the point. Another interesting fact about the point is that the San Andreas Fault runs between the point and Highway 1. If you look at the map closer you can see the fault line - on the north side where the water flows into the point.

We took a short hike to find a geocache that was on the San Andreas Fault line. The fault line is marked out by blue posts, showing where the fault runs - the plates actually slide past each other here, they don't collide. I got a heavy dose of plate tectonics when I was in college so it was great to actually see something I had studied so much about. Here I am standing on the fault line with one foot on each plate. To give you an idea of what the fault is doing, I am standing next to a fence - from where Laura took the picture she is standing next to a fence as well. The two actually used to be connected, but the earthquake moved them apart 16 feet! I was kind of hoping for a small quake while we were on the fault, it would be amazing to see the ground move a few feet while standing on it.

We drove out to the point and then walked out to the viewing platform above the light house.We stayed out on the point for several hours and finally spotted a Gray Whale. The whale isn't in the picture, but when we spotted it, the whale was just to the right of the lighthouse. The view from the viewing platform was excellent, even though the temperatures were a little cool and the wind didn't help either!After spending a few hours at Point Reyes we had to boogie up to Goat Rock State Park. If you are familiar with the 1980's movie The Goonies then you might recognize the place. It's where the final scenes were shot when the ship sails out of the caves and everyone sees it.As you can see, the sun was getting low on the horizon and we still had about 80 miles to get to Fort Bragg. We drove awhile and then took a few pictures of the sunset before continuing on.We had another full day and by the time we reached the hotel we were ready for some rest. We made it just before 10:00 p.m. and hit the hay to get ready for the next day.

...and finally, everyone have a happy Easter! Laura and I are talking of dying some eggs this evening with friends. We don't have any real plans for the weekend, but I am sure we will stay busy. We are slowly putting the house back together after getting the furnace taken care of. Have a great weekend and a happy Easter! Until again

-=Nolan=-