Well, it’s Tuesday and we’ve bunched together a few things that are in the same geographical area to visit today but first things first: breakfast. We’re heading again for Kate’s Kitchen which we enjoyed several weeks ago. The special is $6.00 for a farmer’s breakfast of 2 eggs, cottage fries, toast and coffee. Quite a deal in the city here and the potatoes are specially herbed and the toast and jam are homemade. Great food and a good price and off we go.
We had a terrible time finding parking in the area where we wanted but finally looped around and found a place. We know that parking is difficult in the city and we happened to choose Tuesday, street-sweeping day in the Haight Ashbury region so you know that the right hand side of the street has to remain clear. That cuts our parking choices in half in a city where they are rare to begin with. Oh, well, we are walkers and we found a place with a bit of walking. We got out of the car and noticed that my backpack with a bladder in it was leaking terribly. Long story short, we wiped up all the water, resealed the bladder correctly and were on our way.
1 1/2 miles later we got to Kate’s 10 minutes after the special ended, at 10:00. Shucks. But the breakfast was just as good as before and we sat there satisfied, planning our day. First off were a few sights in the H-A area, of old hippie fame. What a coincidence - Ben and Jerry’s located at the confluence of Haight and Ashbury where every tourist trips along.
Piedmont Boutique. I can’t even begin to describe what they sell. They sell clothing for those who want to make a statement.
hot pants - for men and for women - in every color and pattern available. You want orange hot pants with pink polka dots trimmed with a neon green feathered boa? You got it. Yes, they not only have clothing here for sale (which they make) but they will make whatever you want to order.
feathered boas in every color of the rainbow.
g-stings - again for men and for women - in rainbow colors. Of course, I haven’t spent much time looking at walls of g-strings in my life so this was a unique experience.
masks - in every color imaginable in every style imaginable.
wigs - electric blue, hot pink, flaming orange.
bell-bottomed hip-huggers. Yep, just like the 60’s. Me, I had a pair in bluish green paisley and did I ever have fun swishing the bell bottoms. 24 inchers, they were and they went wide.
Well, you get the idea of what the Piedmont Boutique has. Both Gary and I were bemused. I wish I had pictures for you but, since they make their own clothing, they don’t want pictures out for others to copy so I have only this picture from the front window.
Janis Joplin’s home - yes, she lived in the Haight in this beautiful Victorian home. I don’t know how it looked back in the 60’s, but it’s very nice now.
We walked back to our car and, because it was in a 3-hour parking spot, we moved it closer to our next stop on our list today, This was also a 3-hour spot, so Gary set the timer on his phone ap and we were off to visit the:
California Academy of Science - with a planetarium, an aquarium, a living green roof and a rainforest all in one building. Pretty neat stuff here. Let's go.
We began with the Rain forests of the World with examples from Borneo, Madagascar Costa Rica and the flooded Amazon. Their main theme is how valuable the rain forests are to the world’s ecosystem and how they fast they are disappearing. New species are still being discovered there and I can only imagine that many species will never get discovered because the rain forests will have disappeared. How many species have already disappeared that we never even knew about?
The Rain forest is in a 90-foot diameter glass dome and we circled around the outside through the various levels of the canopy of a typical rainforest. The temperatures are kept at 82 - 85 F and the humidity rings in at 75%. Man, I was dripping wet at the end. Then we looked up and saw why we were so wet - look, they’re misting the whole area. Well, of course, that’s what a rainforest is.
Next we went through the aquarium which had some species which the other aquariums we’ve seen on this trip did not have.
Oops, our 3 hours are up on our parking space and it’s time to move. We walked back to the car, examined the back tire thoroughly and didn’t see any marking from the meter maid but thought we’d move just in case. Of course, we made sure, after we parked that there was no mark showing. And, we hied our way back to the museum.
Look at this neat insect. It looks like a torn up leaf but that’s its disguise to get other insects to come near it.
Lastly we went through an African taxidermy shop - well, they called it a Natural History Museum here. While I appreciated seeing the size of the actual animals, it did remind me of the old Natural History Museums where there were loads of dioramas with stuffed animals. I finished viewing one of them and, as I was turning my head, I noticed some movement in the background. Sure enough, in the background of this diorama is a herd of elephants moving across the savanna. Done with cameras but very effective. Neat touch but I’m sure most people miss it. In fact, I had a hard time getting it to show up in my picture. The elephants are the darker spots between the green tree and the green bushes.
Then the planetarium where they had a huge Imax type theater with seats that leaned back, at least 10 screens at various heights spread out across the huge screen and a nice stereo system. It began neatly with a picture of a forest, then it zeroed in on a tree, then the leaves and then the atoms of the leaf. Wow. It kept going in further and further. I really enjoyed where they were going. Then they went through the origin of life from the big bang onwards and lost me completely. I’m a historian, not a physicist or biologist. Beautifully done but I haven’t a clue what they were saying.
We didn’t have time to get to the living roof but I’m sure it’s like the Des Moines library, which also has a living roof. It absorbs rainwater rather than letting it run off into sewers, provides superior insulation, creates a new habitat for bees, butterflies, etc and costs less in materials and is so much more environmentally sound than most roofs.
There is also a very rare albino aligator at the Academy.
Then on our way home we stopped at the Beach Chalet Restaurant, part of the Golden Gate Park but at the western end, facing the ocean. Again built during the 30’s and decorated with murals financed by the WPA. Beautifully done.
Finally, after 7:00 again, we wend out way home. We have so much to see and find so much more along the way that it’s hard to get home early.
6.9 567’
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