Today was our planned walking day around San Francisco. For some reason it's called hiking when your in the mountains, but it's called walking in the city. In either case, the bike stayed parked for the third day, while we enjoyed another day of urban life. Today, the plan was to head over to Golden Gate Park, a mere 1.5 miles away. Of course that would be if we took the direct route, which we all know is impossible. So we started by heading up Noe St, a path all too familiar after Thursday's escapade of the hair. At the top of Noe, we passed through Duboce Park, one of the nice little neighborhood parks that seem to be everywhere. Continued on up Pierce St to Alamo Park, the site of the Painted Ladies. The Painted Ladies are the most famous of the Victorian houses that are painted in multiple colors, But they are also all over various other areas of the city. Alamo Park is a much bigger park, and it even has a sign in one area warning you that this is a dog area, and expect to see dogs running around not on a leash.
     After taking a few pictures around the famous Painted Ladies, we took pictures of other less famous Painted Ladies along our way . We left Alamo Park, and headed back down the hill to Haight St, to follow it all the way through the Haight-Ashbury District to Golden Gate Park. Haight-Ashbury still looked pretty wild, with smoke shops, record stores, Tibetan gift shops, vintage clothing, and Grateful-Dead stuff. It wasn't really as touristy as I expected. Most of the shops were really for the use of the locals, with only a few of the t-shirt and Grateful-Dead shops for the tourists. Of course we had to stop at the famous Ben & Jerry's at the corner of Haight and Ashbury to take a picture. They even lowered the street signs in front of Ben & Jerry's to make the picture taking easier.
     By the time we got to Golden Gate Park, it was time to find a restroom, but the public restroom at the entrance to the park was closed for cleaning. As we asked the guy cleaning how long it would take, some young homeless guy was more than willing to give us a dissertation on the locations of all the restrooms in the general vicinity . He assured us that our best bet was the McDonald's across the street, and even though the sign said you had to buy something to use the restroom, they would let you have the key as long as you didn't look like some street kid, which we did not. Taking his advice, our problem was solved.
     Golden Gate Park is pretty large, it is about a half mile wide and 3 miles long, with all kinds of stuff to do along the way. We stayed on the east end of the park, checked out some of the scenery, and concentrated on heading to the California Academy of Sciences and the de Young Art Museum. The park is heavily used by the locals, with soccer fields, baseball diamonds, child's play areas, Lawn Bowling Club, Polo Fields, Golf Course, not to mention the typical jogging and biking. There were also street performers along the way, some of them very talented. We stopped by the bandshell, and some kids had set up a stero and an amplifier, and were practicing dance on the bandshell floor. We watched for a couple of minutes and took a picture .
     When we reached the California Academy of Sciences, it wasn't too busy yet, but it was Saturday, and the crowds were picking up. The California Academy of Sciences is basically a big science museum. It has 3 main sections, a planetarium, an indoor rainforest and butterfly house, and an aquarium. As experienced science museum buffs, we made a beeline for the planetarium before all the tickets were gone. Tickets were free, but you still needed to ask for them so they could keep count. Since it was only about 11:00, and we didn't care what show we saw, we were able to get into the 11:15 show of Fragile Earth. It was a great show, lots of motion, and beautiful photography. We never get tired of planetariums!
     Next stop, after a little coffee to warm up, was the aquarium. Located in the basement, there are some hints of what is below in the pools on the first floor. It is a pretty good sized aquarium that even included one of those tank tunnels where you could walk through the tunnel with fish and water all around . The fish were really beautiful, some of the tropical varieties were really colorful.    We took a lot of pictures in the aquarium, but a lot don't come out well due to reflections and distortions in the tank glass. We then visited the remaining exhibits, and saved the rainforest for last.
     The rainforest is actually a huge glass sphere, 3 stories tall. You enter on the first floor, but the base of the rainforest has a pool of water that is the fish tank from the aquarium below. It is full of rainforest trees, but there are also butterflies and small rainforest birds flying loose throughout. It's also very warm inside, and after several days in the cold, we really appreciated the heat.   We walked the dome all the way to the top, and then road the elevator down and out of the building.
     Next stop was across the courtyard at the de Young Museum. It looks like a pretty good art museum, They are somehow connected with the other big art museum in town, the Legion of Honor, but we didn't really have time to do both so this one was closer . It was kind of a mixture of various art, some modern, some classical, but the emphasis was on African and South American art. Lots of masks and wood carvings. Some very old, some 20th century. All in all it was a good collection. It made Jody happy.
     On the way back to the hotel, Haight-Ashbury had finally awoken and we were able to check out some of the shops. It was all pretty fun, but when we got back to the hotel, we realized that we had walked over 21,000 steps or about 9.5 miles. No wonder our feet were sore. So we decided it would be pizza for dinner tonight, soi we found a local spot within walking distance and headed over. When we got there, we realized it was takeout only, no tables! So we had to change plans quickly and ended up back at Hecho, the Mexican place we went on the first night. Enchiladas for me and Fajitas for Jody, just as good as the other night!
     Sadly, this is our last night in San Francisco. There are so many more things to see and do around here, but tomorrow we are off to Yosemite National Park. After 4 nights, it is time to fire up the motorcycle and head back out. The weather in Oakhurst where we are staying is in the mid-90's so we will finally get to warm up for a few days.

0.0 miles today
11,512.7 miles total

0.0 gallons today
275.053 gallons total