 | Day 5 - December 23, 2009 |
Day 5 - December 23, 2009Berkeley to Bodega Bay - 260 mi
Big day, the Nike museum is only open from noon to 3pm, so I got up before the sun and got ready to go. The first stop is the Moon Tree in Tilden Park. Back in the 70's when they sent those people to the moon, they took along some seeds! This is one of the Redwood trees they took. Unfortunately, no one who cares about trees also seems to care about space. Most (including this one) don't even have a plaque to mark the tree. The only way I found it was because another web site had a photo and exact location, which he had gotten from an old park ranger who remembered planting it. Some day they'll cut the tree down, and they'll have no idea what they've lost. Also, the tree is HUGE.
The sun was still below the mountains, so I drove around trying to find a nice place for a photo of San Francisco. I finally found one, and the city was amazing at 8am from a mountain top above Berkeley.
There's an abandoned Ferry Loading Pier that I checked out. It's a fishing pier now, with the railroad part separated.
Then the day went bad. The inverter blew a fuse, which is what powers the laptop, which is what has google earth, which is how I find out where to go next. I tried a new fuse, but it blew immediately. That was also the last spare fuse... So I tried a Target, which had nothing. Then I tried a 76, they had four choices of glass fuses, one box of mini spades, some new fangled bar fuse, and zero of what I needed. Farther along I finally found a Kragen. Unfortunately, the piece of shit chinese crap inverter I bought last year was the problem, so I had to buy a new one from Kragen. The Navy maintains a mothballed fleet of ships, there's about 20 of them stored in the river. They could all be readied for service within 30-120 days.
Off in the distance to the north is a huge windmill farm.
Finally made it to the Jelly Belly factory for the tour! The whole place is themed, and the tour was a lot of fun. They've got the elevated catwalk where you can see most of the process to create Jelly Bellies. Heading back to Golden Gate Park there's an old Navy shipbuilding yard. On one of the drydocks there's a conning tower from a submarine!
Finally headed to the Nike Museum, but first there's an old gun battery that overlooks the bridge and the city.
Next was the Nike museum! After getting up at 6am and traveling about 180 miles, I hit my target spot on and got there at 2pm, plenty of time. Turns out, the tour guide decided to call it a day early, and to take the rest of the week off. What they neglected to do is update the website. Giant disappointment. So I was pretty mad, so I drove north on the 1 for a while. Ended up at the Point Reyes Lighthouse right at sunset, which was great.
So now it's dark, and I have no place to go. So I end up driving in the dark for a while, find a motel with open wifi, where I find another local hotel which is cheaper, which ends up being a $50 total room! Great! |
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