 No toll going north on the Golden Gate Bridge...San Francisco is a
great city but I only have one more day before I have to go back to San Diego and wanted
to check out some of the surrounding areas like Marin County. |
| Panorama looking back at the city from a point just north across the
bridge
   
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|   Closeup of the city from across the bridge. It was quite windy and cool
on this side of the water.
Another bridge picture. |
|  Headed towards Muir Beach and Muir Beach.
Even the roads TO the scenic places are scenic around here! |
|  Muir Beach looking sort of north. There are a bunch of nice houses
hidden back in the hill on the right.
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|  Looking south on Muir Beach. Notice the hill on the left.
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|  View back towards the beach after climbing up the hill from the last
picture.
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|  View south on the other side of the MUCH larger hill that you can't see
in the above pictures.
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|  At the entrance to Muir Woods National Monument Park. Here's an old tree
that they cut up and labeled with dates of historic significance.
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|  I had some technical problems with the digital camera for most of the
pictures in Muir Woods. Ok, ok... it was user error. As a result several of them are not
quite in focus.
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|  
Lots of redwoods fall over because their roots are very shallow. It's another way they
propagate themselves; new trees sprout from all along the fallen tree.
|
|  Some flowers much higher up the trail. There are actually several trails
you can pick from depending how much time you have and how vigerous a hike you want. The
small trails stay near the entrance and are flat and paved. The medium trails go up the
hills a little. The "advanced" trails go up where I took this picture, but
they're still pretty mild hikes.
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| Random pictures... a little creek bed headed up towards the high
trail, some trees that are probably 175 feet tall down at a lower part, and the a really
high part of the trail with small trees.
  
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| Down by the entrance to the park (where it's nice and flat and the
trails are paved)..
  
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|  The biggest trees in the park. They said the tallest is about 250 feet.
The giant sequoias further north get to be up to 350 feet and of course are much wider.
I'd like to see them but I didn't have time on this trip.
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| Heading back towards San Francisco I passed a road called "Scenic
Boulevard." So of course I had to take a short detour to investigate!
  
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| Back on the south west side of the bridge in time for sunset. These
shots were taken just to the right of an old WWII gun bunker. The high caliber guns were
mounted up on this hill in order to defend the bay if the Japanese tried to invade. There
is probably some irony about driving Japan's premier sportscar to this spot to take
pictures but I'll leave it for you to consider.
  
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| I even had time to go across to the southeast side of the bridge and
then back into the city before the sun actually set.
  
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|  My biggest gripe with most "consumer" digital cameras is that
they lack controls like shutter speed and aperature setting. The professional ones have
these controls but cost several thousand dollars. The consumer level cameras are finally
starting to get such controls (the new Olympus C2000 is a good example). My Olympus D400Z
which just came out last October does not. As a result, the cool effect of the last rays
of light from sunset bathing part of Alcatraz in a bright golden light were totally lost
as the camera tried to pick the "best" exposure settings for picture as a whole.
The D400Z does have spot metering mode but the lighted part of the island was too small
for it to meter properly. I'm upgrading as soon as possible. Sorry for the rant!
|
|  Fog City Diner for a late dinner. Don't be fooled by the name
"diner" and the neon, it's actually a faily upscale place.
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