We carpooled from Santa Rosa down to Larkspur to catch the ferry over to the Ferry Building in San Franciso. Once there, we branched out a little: Dave wanted to find a few geocaches, so he ventured out on his own. Denise, Kelsey, Mike, Jim and Janice decided they wanted to hoof it over to Pier 39. The rest of us thought it would be fun to ride a trolley over to Pier 39.
Once we got to Pier 39, a few of us into geocaching thought we would go ahead and pick off a "webcam cache" that is located near the Ripley's Believe It Or Not Museum. The object is to stand in view of the camera and have a buddy at home use their Internet connection to capture the shot of you in the photo holding up your GPS receiver. Yeah, to the uninitiated it sounds pretty goofy... The cab driver who pulled over to a screeching halt when we all raised our hands while standing near the curb thought we were pretty goofy, also. So did that lady in the black SUV with the window down where we could see her pointing at us to the driver. We assured her we were perfectly normal and we could tell by the way she smiled at us (as if she was thinking to herself "If I just nod and smile, they won't hurt me.") that she really believed us! And just so you can see, here is the webcam geocache photo.
At this point, Larry and his family headed off to the Presidio to go check out an exhibit celebrating a Century of Flight. It was a replica of the Wright Brothers' airplane. The rest of us decided it was lunch time. After lunch we wandered over to the Hyde Street Pier and split up again. Some headed up toward Ghirardelli's Chocolate Factory and a few of us went on out the pier to check out some ships. When we were done, we regrouped and headed back to see the Pampanito Submarine exhibit over at Pier 45.
Now we were keeping track of our time because we had taken the ferry over to San Francisco and our only way back was via the ferry, also, unless we wanted to pay some really big taxi fare (NOT!) So after the submarine we headed on over to Joe's Crab Shack for dinner. Joe's Crab Shack is quite an interesting place. Every so often the waiters and waitresses dance to some of the music for the customers. (Be sure to check out some of the photos taken inside this establishment below and on the next pages!) The food was very good but we had to keep watching the clock because we had a deadline to meet and believe me, it really was a deadline! Before we all were finished, Kelsey and Brian (KG6PUG) went downstairs to "go next door" to look at clothes and the like. Oh sure.... If only it was just next door! When the rest of us were finished with dinner we went to leave and expected to pick up Kelsey and Brian "next door" where they said they were going but we were unable to find them. (tick, tock, tick, tock) We looked up and down the street. If only one of us had thought to equip Kelsey with a cell phone or Brian with an HT it would have been much faster. We finally found them down at the end of the block and then we had to race to catch the last trolley that would get us to the Ferry Building in time to catch the very last ferry! That made the end of our journey to the city quite an exciting trip. We met some "interesting" folks on the trolley ride back. One of them seconded the motion to elect Janice club president once again and left us his card complete with phone number and email address.
The trip back across the bay on the ferry was non-eventful compared to the just completed race against time to make the last ferry crossing. (We were the very last people to board the ferry before it left.) The ride back gave us a little time to reflect on what a great time we had and be thankful for our friendships. It was a nice way to wind down. We are looking forward to next year's San Francisco trip which will probably be earlier in the year. We don't want to press our luck too much by waiting for mid October again.
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