We bumbled into a birthday party. It was the Golden Gate Bridge’s 75th birthday in San Francisco, on Sunday. Dave, Anne and I drove from Monterey to San Francisco. We stopped in Palo Alto, to shop at the Stanford Mall. Anne wanted to check out the Territory Ahead store. She didn’t find what she was looking for. We continued north to the Fresh Choice in Redwood. Once upon a time Fresh Choice represented the holy grail of salad bars. Time and the completion have caught up with it. It is still good, but it has lost that wow factor that it once had.

I recently read a HuffPo article that highlighted that Honolulu had displaced LA as the most un-drivable city in America. I swallowed this second place demotion by also picking up third. San Francisco of course won third place in this assessment and lived up to my expectations. We ended up decamping at a Travel Lodge near Fisherman’s Wharf, at Lombard and Van Ness. It was well situated for the festivities.

The Golden Gate Bridge was finished in 1937. Our house was built-in the same year. I guess that I should lavish gifts upon my house like the City of San Francisco has upon their bridge. I hope that a new roof, new gutters and a new awning qualify as lavish.

I heard a weather forecast for a record low on Sunday night. Mark Twain famously said that he was never colder than on a sunny summer afternoon in San Francisco. A cold arctic high brings clear skies. This makes for chilly, but perfect weather for the bridge’s birthday party. The evening’s fireworks show did eventually become fog enshrouded, but it was a gunpowder smoke fog.

David Sleeps with the Seals

Anne noticed a certain similarity between the harbor seals on the beach and Dave in his sleeping bag. A little bit of PhotoShop and we can all visualize this similarity. In case you can’t pick him out from the crowd, he is the one in the lower righthand corner. As I write this post, Dave sleeps. Below, is a photo of Dave’s namesake avenue in Monterey.

UPDATE: David is up! Time to pack and then on to San Francisco.

David Ave

It rained this morning, which is unexpected this time of year. It didn’t rain very hard, really just drizzle, but it was enough to get everything wet. We decided to go to the aquarium because of that, but then so did everyone else. Yes, it was crowded, very crowded. This is a holiday weekend and Monterey is a resort town, so this came as no surprise. Still, it is the finest aquarium that I’ve ever seen and well worth braving the crowd for. I’ve included a few pictures of some of the marine life on exhibit. We had lunch afterwards, but although there was a calamari and clam chowder festival going on, the general consensus was for beef. For which, we headed to a brew-pub forthwith. Dad fixed his own variation of Mom’s clam chowder recipe for dinner.

While we are on the subject of our family name, Frank noted that we have our own deodorant line. You might have heard of it. At one time, he had presented his thoughts on our name. Entitled, “The Center of Axecellence and that’s no Axecrement”, he went on to Axeclaim, “You’ve heard of the Axis of Evil, well, we’re the Axes of Good.” Anne mentioned that Dan’s second grade teacher once marked the word axe misspelled, because he had spelled it with an e. When Anne met with the teacher, she could offer no reasonable Axeplanation.

This morning, after we dropped Dan off at the train station in Salinas, Dave, Anne and I went to Pacific Grove. Anne wanted to visit a yarn store to get some advice on her current project. She had been knitting on it merrily until she discovered that she had made a mistake. Then she had to tink. Tink is knit spelled backwards, which is what she does, when she unravels what she had already knitted. After she got her advice, she bought more yarn as payment.

The photos with this post were taken outside the Hopkins Marine Station. It is the marine laboratory of Stanford University. Located adjacent to the Monterey Aquarium, just west of Cannery Row in Monterey, this marine research and educational facility also harbors seals during pupping season. A cyclone fence keeps the public out year around, but during pupping season this fence is lined with a tarp. The tarp is supposed to provide the seals some measure of privacy during this delicate stage. Unfortunately, for the seals, the paparazzi were not detoured by a canvas-covered fence. One could hold a camera over the fence.

We went to Point Lobos State Nature Reserve today. After three days in the mountains, it was time to hit the coast. Point Lobos is off Highway 1, just south of Carmel-by-the-Sea. Ringed with rugged rocky outcroppings its shoreline makes a picturesque home for a wide variety of marine wildlife. In addition to the flora and fauna pictured with this post, we saw sea lions and sea otters, pelicans, cormorants, vultures and sea gulls. We got there after low tide, so Anne was able to do some tide-pooling, before the rising tide made that too risky. Afterwards, we went out to lunch at California Pizza Kitchen.

I feel old and creaky the day after our hike up the mountain. My feet hurt from all of the rough terrain that we traveled. When we set off, the boys took off up the mountain. We only saw them again when we reached our summit. When I say our summit, I don’t mean the summit. We only made it as far as Columbia Rock and then the lower fall’s overlook, but that is all we had time for. The full trail runs three miles and climbs 2000 feet. We only did half that, but it was enough for me. Near our summit, a crew was working on the trail. I wise cracked, “You’ve got one heck of a commute.” To which one of them responded, “Yeah, but when I go on vacation, I can spend forty hours in a cube.” “Touché!”

When we got to our turnaround point, we were level with the base of the upper falls. The trail continued on to the top of that falls. The overlook above the lower and middle falls was enough to give me a fear of heights. The iron railing just seemed too flimsy for my taste. You could see clouds of pine pollen blowing off the trees on the valley floor.

The work crew was placing foot square granite blocks. Too heavy to pick up, these blocks were hand winched into place. I meant to ask on the way back down, how did the dozens of granite blocks that littered their building site get up the mountain? I suspect pack mules did it, but I don’t know for sure. Certainly, no wheeled vehicle could have made it up the path.

On the way back down, we passed people on their way up. Some looked like they weren’t going to make it, while some were still springing up the trail. One young couple were still running up the trail at our turnaround point.