North Beach 6.14.08

This morning we had a wild turkey gooble gooble gooble us away nice & early! He was just outside our tent making his way to the trees...and he was loud!! One more wild animal to the list…

We were up & around and went to a U-haul as we’ve been having trouble with our stove/propane setup. The stove works fine on a small bottle, but with the large bottle & hose, it doesn’t work. As Michael suspected…the bottle was still mostly full. Bummer.

We jumped on BART & jumped off @ Powell Street. We started a walking tour starting at Union Square, over to the St. Francis Hotel where the grandfather clock and the phrase "meet me at the St. Francis" came from (OK, honestly, I had never heard this phrase...but I guess it's a historic one!), through the financial district, through Chinatown & many of it’s alleys,

through North Beach & up to Telegraph Hill/Coit Tower.

We even got to see a protest (“the Cult of Scientology”).

North Beach was having it’s annual festival & there were lots of people, vendors, arts & crafts, live music, & street chalk drawings.

It was a beautiful day and lots of folks were out enjoying. I especially wanted to see the chalk drawings & there were about 10 spaces where artists were painting. Most were still in production but they were way cool!

From there, we walked up Telegraph Hill to the Coit Tower, down & back up the Filbert and Greenwich steps, & enjoyed the wonderful views.

We spent some time in Chinatown, went to the Mee Mee bakery where they showed us how they made fortune cookies, to Jack Kerouac alley, and to the Good Fortune Parking Garage where fortunes were on each space.

And my personal favorite...

After we shopped til we dropped, we BART’d back to the Jeep.

Figuring the propane problem could only be the hose now, we found a Big 5 store & purchased a new one. Success! How a hose goes bad, we don’t know…but it appears to have been our problem. Jill (our GPS) took us a ‘new way’ (we’ve started calling her that as she never takes us the same way twice) which was right by a geocache in the area so we stopped & stomped through a briar patch to find it.

Back at the campsite & after an easy dinner, the fire ban has been lifted so we’re planning a campfire and a mellow evening. Tomorrow…Muir Woods!

More to follow…
Rene