Fun day in Point Reyes

Walking on the beach at Drakes Bay, Point Reyes National Sea Shore.

To wrap-up the fun week Anna and I had (see previous post), all three of us went to Point Reyes for the day.  The Friday started out with the plan to go to SunSplash water park in Roseville.  It turned out they were closed.  We were left with the desire to play in the water, but there aren’t any good beaches in Sacramento.  So, I said “Lets go to Point Reyes”! and that’s all it took.  Next thing we were packing for the day and heading out to our favorite spot.  I’ve posted many more photos on my flickr site, as well as my smugmug site.

View of Drakes Bay as we walk down the beach.

We walked down the beach enjoying the breeze and surf, looking for unique rocks and shells.  Then Anna and I kicked off our shoes and played in the surf and dug trenches and pools in the sand.

After getting covered in sand, we cleaned off at the visitor center and drove into town for a bite to eat at our favorite restaurant Cafe’ Reyes, then walked down the main street of town checking out the many art shops.

We found a new art shop called Viewpoints that had some great photos of the area and paintings.  We picked up a few little souvenirs in the form of fridge magnets.  The paintings represented on these can be found at the artists site: Christine Decamp.  Oddly the gallery doesn’t have a web site yet.

Turtle Turtleback & Storm.

Annual Father Daughter Week! Day Three

After spelunking through mines and caverns yesterday in the Gold Country, it’s back to San Francisco to visit the De Young and the Japanese Tea Gardens.  Today the King Tutankhamun exhibit is the main attraction.  Going mid-week turns out to be great. We didn’t have very many people at the exhibit to wade through just to see the pieces.  Anna wasn’t all that into the King Tut display, but when we passed through the gift shop she liked all the King Tut related stuff.  I ended up buying her a bracelet, writing pad, pencil, & bamboo book mark with a turtle carved out, and a gem stone turtle for mom.  Once we made it out of the souvenir shop, we ran into Adam, who’s working at the De Young.  Actually I was too focused on Anna and deciding what to see next when Adam ran up and caught our attention.  It was a short conversation, I’m sure he couldn’t break away from work too long just to shoot the breeze but I’m glad we ran into him.  After talking to Adam we caught lunch at the nice restaurant at the De Young.

After lunch we browsed the rest of the displays.  The African exhibit up stairs was more interesting to Anna than King Tut was.  Once we had seen all the art, we headed outside.  I’d planned on going straight to the Japanese Tea Garden, but instead we walked around for a few minutes and ended up at this neat pond next to the museum.

Turtles and lily pads next to the De Young

Anna met a little girl and they played around this pond and park area for awhile.  I talked with the girls parents while shooting some photos. Turned out they were from Korea and the dad is a visiting professor for a year.  Their daughter didn’t speak any English, and the mother only spoke some.  However, we still managed to carry a conversation, and enjoyed watching our daughters play together.  I think Anna enjoyed that play time more than the museum or the Tea Gardens.

After a while we headed over to the Tea Gardens and I shot a few photos of Anna and the gardens.

After checking out the Tea Gardens, we headed out of town.  We were going to stop buy Anna’s Aunt’s house in Vallejo on the way home and visit for a few minutes.  Her aunt Katherine loves art and museums and Anna, so I though she would like talking to Anna about what she saw at the De Young and the Academy of Sciences.  The only problem I had was getting out of town.  My GPS was having a difficult time locating the satellites, so I just drove by feel until it finally synced with the satellites.  I was close!  Only a couple blocks from the freeway on-ramp.

Day four we stayed in town while waiting half the day for a tire place to put two new tires on my car.  We did manage to walk to Starbucks to meet mom for lunch while my car sat waiting its’ turn.  We were so hot by mid after noon when my car was finally done, we went straight home and jumped in the pool.

Annual Father Daughter Week! Day Two

We had planned to visit the De Young and see the King Tutankhamen exhibit before it left California for another 30 years, but after spending a whole day in S.F. just to see the Academy of Sciences… we thought it better to reschedule that for later in the week and try something different.

Tag board to track who is below in the mine

So, we packed our cameras and flashlights and headed for the hills looking for the Mother Load.  First we went to the Sutter Gold Mine, a real working mine still producing lots of gold.  There we took an open mining car down into the mine.  Anna was a bit scared as the car drove down the tight road to the mine entrance but she seemed fine once we were in the mine zipping down the tunnel in the dark.  Kind of the opposite of what I would have expected.

Entrance to the Mine

Once we got about 1200 feet into the mine there is a safety room dug out of solid “green rock” which is very dense hard rock.  Then they reinforce the room with steel bars drilled deep into the rock and a mesh anchored to the walls.  This is the room they go to if there are problems in the mine.

Zipping down into the mine!

Further down we got out and walked into a narrow side tunnel where they were following a vain of quartz.  Here the miner showed us the difference in appearance between pyrite and gold.  He then showed us several pieces of powered equipment the miners used to drill into the rock.  We learned about problems with dynamite and what the modern safer explosives are that they use now.

600ft or more below the surface

Then a quick ride back to the surface!  Anna had a blast and since the tour didn’t take much time, we headed out for lunch and then drove on to California Caverns.
The caverns were so dark that I don’t have many photos that turned out for that trip.  When I tried using a flash the dust particles in the air (though unnoticeable otherwise) nearly obscured the subject of the photo.  Here are the few photos worth anything.  These turned out because of some marginal lighting the had installed.

It was a long drive home on the winding roads, I didn’t use a map I just relied on my GPS to get us home, hopefully in the quickest way possible.  Next, it's back to S.F. …