San Francisco

Bright and early on the morning of September 2, I was up to catch the Horizon PDX flight.  I met up with my old college friend, Ivan.  He had moved to Corvallis, just south of Portland, to go to graduate school.  So he caught a bus up to the airport, and we met up to fly together to San Francisco.

We bought tickets to take the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) to downtown San Francisco.  We emerged from the underground tunnel to find ourselves around tall buildings, and electric cables running everywhere that powered the trolleys.  We walked down to one of the first piers, and got some good views of the Bay Bridge that crosses over into Oakland.

There was also an old river boat that appeared to be turned into a restaurant, next to the pier.

We continued walking along the waterfront, until we reached Pier 39.  Pier 39 is the most famous one, with lots of restaurants and shops.  And the famous group of seal lions that has decided to stay.

By that point we were getting pretty hungry.  A friend from work told me I had to go eat at In & Out.  I had never been there, so we found it.  I have to say, the fries were amazing and the burger was pretty good too.  After that, we headed back to the pier.  I had seen what appeared to be a submarine on display.  I was right.  It was the U.S.S. Pampanito.  It served in the Pacific during WWII.  I would have loved to get a tour of the inside, but I didn't want to pay the money.

Behind the submarine was a Liberty ship, also used in WWII.  This particular one, Jeremiah O'Brien. It participated in the landing at Normandy, France, on June 6, 1944.

After that, we decided it was time to go get up close and personal with the Golden Gate Bridge.  We walked to a bus stop and took a couple buses.  The second one dropped us off near the bridge.

For a while it was foggy, and the top of the bridge became obscured.  But the wind cleared it out.  We hiked down to the base of the bridge and went inside an old fort, called Fort Point, built during the Civil War, to help protect San Francisco Bay.  A lighthouse was even built; one of many built along the entire California coast.

It was very windy, but we went up to the top of Fort Point.  It was a gorgeous view of the Bay to the east, and the opening to the Pacific Ocean to the west, and the bridge above you.

The fort closed at 5.  We sat around at the base of the bridge for a while, resting, and enjoying the cool breeze.  Finally we hauled our butts back up tot he top, and walked out a ways onto the bridge.

After that we waited for the bus to take us back to a connection point with BART, and we rode back to the airport.  We wanted to print our boarding passes for the morning, and sleep behind security.  However we weren't allowed to, so we struggled to find a place to sleep, and eat.  After some research we found some restaurants in the International Terminal.  One of them was a grill, which we went to.  Then we went to Terminal 2 and found an area with some large flat cushioned benches and chairs.  We we set up "camp" and went in and out of sleep until 5 am when we got on our flight back to Portland.  I parted ways with Ivan, and then waited to fly back to Boise.

Overall it was a good trip, even though I was already exhausted from work.  :)