During and inlightening read on web material, I came accross an upcoming film, Who Killed the Elecric Car. It's a documentary on the reasoning and dissapearance of an alternative to cars using solely gasoline and is due out at the end of the month at select theatres and hopefully nationally following.

Door Posting

Good neighbors are a wonderful treasure!

During the remaining course of the visit, I took the Cal train into the city and walked around. It was really nice, wandering through the various areas of San Francisco. Heading towards the Mission District, I came across this fabulous little Vegetarian Cafe that also has
massage and yoga. It was a nice little place filled with lots of positive energy.

After a nice lunch, I continued walking and made my way north wandering into China Town and then stopped at a park and took a knap. It was a great place to people watch. People came with their dogs and let them run around the park. A park surrounded by buildings. It was like a
haven of grass in a cemented environment. A few blocks over was the Fisherman's Warf, which was very touristy. On another trip into the city, I made my way over to Haight Street and Ashbury Street area, near Golden Gate Park. This area was also touristy, but locals also frequented it as well.

On another outing, while Shawn had some work in Sacramento, I spent the day in Berkeley. It was a nice town and had a good feel. It was weird to look over and see the mountains so close. While walking I came across an awesome restaurant, called Cafe Gratitude. The food
was glorious and the people working there were really nice. It would be nice to have a good restaurant like that in Greenville.

The holiday was good on so many levels. Shawn and I were able to finally hangout and we cooked so many good meals. I use some cooking lessons from him, that's for sure. Erik and I also were able to hang-out for one day and we visited the De Young Museum in Golden Gate Park. They had a unique and diverse selection of contemporary artists, including a gorgeous painting by Georgia O'Keefe.

The trip also gave me opportunity to explore on my own. In the few trips I have taken, I have not explored much on my own and this trip allowed me to branch out in that area. However, I have come to the determination that more time exploring is still needed. Perhaps I will
be able to do more traveling after my degree is completed. We'll see what opportunities are revealed....

Over the weekend, Shawn and I headed over to Yosemite National Park. It is a huge park and is booked well into October, but he was able to get us a campsite. Though it was car camping and we had an annoying family next to us, we made the best of it and had a great time. We arrived late in the afternoon and eagerly made our way to one of the trails in the valley. Being a national park, it was much more developed than we had anticipated. They had buses that looped through the valley, stopping at various trailheads and scenic areas.

After exiting the bus, we started hiking on a trail that would give us a good view of Half Dome. Half Dome is a large structure composed of one piece of granite. On the left side of the photograph are two other structures called Achilles Heel. Mirror Lake is located between them and was a popular recreation area. However, today it appears rather small and unavigatable.

That afternoon we hiked around five and a half miles. For dinner we had brought lots of veggies and a few potatoes to grill on the fire, in addition to some bananas and pineapples for desert. Dinner that night was the best camping dinner I have ever had, and that isn't because of my appetite that evening. The vegetables came out so good, mm... it makes my mouth water just thinking about it.

After a good nights sleep, we decided to do a short hike up to some waterfalls in the southwestern portion of the park. The falls were beautiful; so powerful, roaring over the precariously piled rocks, smoothing them. The water was very cold and the wind coming off the falls was dry and brisk. We sat on one of the smoothed stones lying horizontal and took in the beauty of the area. I was amazed at how the power and roar of the waterfall was greater than that of the ocean.



Before heading back to San Bruno, we drove farther south to check out a Sequoia grove. The trees were amazing. They are in the same family as the Redwoods and are very similar. The sequoias were used for timber and were over exploited. This has to do with their reproduction needs. To start with, these trees need bare mineral soil to germinate with an open canopy above. If the tree does germinate it grows rapidly and does not bear cones until it is mature at an age of 150 to 200 years. These cones can stay on the tree for 20 to 30 years and are then only dropped from the tree by external forces, such as storms. Fire is also a necessity, to keep ground cover down and also as an agent of releasing seeds from the cones.

We hiked until mid afternoon and then headed back towards the house. The roads are extremely steep with switchbacks one after another. I was so happy I was not driving, because it would have taken us two days to return home. We drove through these fields of windmills, generating energy. The windmills were so large and beautiful turning on the hills. Shawn was telling me that there has been some controversy over them because they can actually change the wind pattern and migrating birds become confused.

After arriving late Thursday night and visiting shortly with Shawn and Erik, I headed to bed. The next day after attempting to work some, Shawn rang and said he was finished with work. Since it was early afternoon, we grabbed some lunch and headed over to Golden Gate Park. Before the fog rolled in, we eat lunch and enjoyed a game of chess. After loosing the game, although with somewhat of a fight, I was eager to roam around the botanical gardens in the park.

The grounds were beautifully kept and there were sections within the
garden with plants specific to various areas, such as Chile. I could have spent all day wandering around the botanical gardens. It made me ponder how wonderful it would be to work at a botanical garden and help maintain the plants. Ah... that would be nice.