Left our nice beach front campground this morning, drove through more redwood forests on our way south, and crossed the Golden Gate Bridge into San Francisco in time for lunch. We had trouble finding a place to park our RV, but finally found two parking meters next to each other that were free so we went and got $10 worth of quarters to feed the machines, and set off to explore Fisherman's Wharf and have some lunch – clam chowder in bread bowls- Yum! It was interesting to watch all of the tourists there. It is the same kind of tourist area you would find next to any beach type community – lots of junk for sale, lots of restaurants, and people all over the place. I was fascinated by all of the conveyances people were using in addition to the standard cars, buses, and bikes. There were “duck boats”, a fire engine taking tourists across the bridge, electric bikes, smart cars about as big as a child's wagon which are controlled by computers, segways, roller blades, bicycles built for two, open buses, motorcycles, and I'm probably forgetting two or three more.
The National Park has a nice maritime park on the wharf with about ten or fifteen old boats to look at. I think they also take people out for a sail sometimes.
The most fun we had was driving up, up, up the streets, and then going down, down, down. It was kind of scary going down because you'd come to what looked like the edge of nothing, and then the road appeared to drop off before you went down again. I can see why in the Hollywood chase movies through San Francisco the cars actually get airborne! We were afraid we'd scrape bottom, but we didn't. We also went by the crookedest street in the US, but not down it – I don't think the RV would have fit.
Since we were heading out toward Sacramento, the GPS routed us through most of the city, so we got a good tour – including China Town.
Traffic was horrendous, even though we thought we left town early enough to avoid rush hour. It took 4 hours to go about 100 miles. We stopped near Sacramento because Bob was worn out with the stop and go traffic on the interstate and the morning's drive own windy, bumpy route 101 out of the Redwoods. That road was in such bad shape that everything rattled for two hours (usually nothing rattles in the RV) and gave us both a headache. So the driving was bad today, but we had a great time exploring San Francisco.