Aylmer Express "MoHo" Extravaganza 2006

[I finally got the photos uploaded ... enjoy!]

For the first time since Portland, we woke to something other than a beautiful sunny day. In this case it was a foggy morning. Since we are staying outside of San Francisco it was a little surprising to see the fog make it out this far. That, of course, was not good news for our sight-seeing plans. But after some deliberation we determined that we would still go to the Muir Redwood forest since it would not likely be adversely affected by the fog. It is just north of the Golden Gate bridge and is accessed by some of the skinniest, windiest roads you can imagine. Not ideal for MoHo but not so bad in the Matrix. I actually enjoyed driving these roads but I must admit that my bravado was kept in check by the sheer drop-offs along many of the guardrail-less corners. The old growth redwood forest itself was quite impressive. However, having experienced something similar on Vancouver Island, it did not impress us as much as we were hoping. Some of the trees were quite large, to be sure, but it left us wondering if we should have made the extra effort to see the more famous redwood forests closer to the border of Oregon. We did experience a very enjoyable hike and even passed a deer along the way. Then, since the fog was still hanging tough, we decided to use the rest of the day for a museum tour. We chose the Exploratorium which is just on the other side of the Golden Gate bridge. This trip also gave A-P and Morgan their first glimpse of, and trip across this famous landmark bridge. It is a truly impressive structure and I enjoy it every time I cross it. Once we got to the museum we couldn’t believe how good it was. After about 40 minutes I think we had only made it about 40 yards into the main hall. We were all having such a good time. The entire place is “hands-on” and we had a blast as can be evidenced by some of the videos we took there. Defintely check them out. I think I actually broke a world record in one of them, as you will see. We didn’t even finish the checking out the first floor before the 5-minute warning was sounded and we reluctantly obeyed the call for surcease. We are pretty sure we are going to swing by there again before we leave. For dinner we had made arrangements to meet up with a friend of mine, Pat, from Ottawa, who just happened to be in town on business. We ended up heading to a brew pub on Haight street, just down from Ashbury. The Haight/Ashbury area is known as the birthplace and epicenter of the of the 60’s counter-culture so that was kind of cool to swing by there. After dinner we dropped off Pat at his hotel and made plans to meet up tomorrow to catch a San Francisco Giants’ baseball game. On our way home we made our way across the city and then started back across the Golden Gate once again. As we approached the first of the two massive support towers we were surrounded by darkness on either side. And ahead all you could see, as you cast your gaze upward, was the huge, reddish-coloured, metal arch, which was rather dimly lit from below, stretching what looked like forever into the inky-black sky. André-Paul, who was obviously drinking all of this in, commented that it looked like “the gates of hell”. Hmmmm … what books has he been reading lately?

Today’s word:

surcease \SUR-sees; sur-SEES\, noun:
Cessation; stop; end.

# posted by Jeff, Chantal and the kids @ 1:18 PM