Fill yourself up...

If you go to San Francisco...be sure to wear flowers in your hair .......enjoy!

San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair)" is a song, written by John Phillips of The Mamas & the Papas, and sung by Scott McKenzie. It was written and released in June 1967 to promote the Monterey Pop Festival. This video is a real visual of the times. Some nice shots of Jimi Hendricks, Mama Cass and Janis Joplin. (all died too young) Peace-Love and rock and roll!

Really cool information about the Monterey Pop festival for those like me who love this era of music!

When we left Yosemite National Park, we traveled west across the state of California. Our destination for the day, San Francisco. My motivation for including this place in my trip was actually my curiosity of The Rock, also know as Alcatraz. My plan was to take my boys on a tour of Alcatraz. Being the tourist that I am NOT...I didn't consider that the tours might be booked up for a month ahead.
So...plan B was to take the Bay Cruise. It didn't take us to Alcatraz but it took us all around the bay and very closely circled Alcatraz. On the boat, we each got a pair of headphones to listen to the audio tour as the boat cruised around the bay. The audio tour was full of interesting information about San Francisco and the surrounding bay area.
I learned that much of San Francisco was once covered with high sand dunes covered by dune scrubs. Dune scrubs are coastal scrubs that cover areas with thick vegetation and wildflowers.

The sandy soil has very little moisture and nutrients and is subject to high winds and salty air. The plants have water conserving adaptations such as small leaves, hairy leaves, waxy or oily leaves, and deep root systems. The beach-dune ecosystem is one of the most sensitive and declining habitat types on the West Coast.

Snowy Plover

Brown Pelican

Human threats to the beach-dune ecosystem include chemical runoff, litter and pollution, disturbance and habitat loss. Some species like the Snowy Plover,
Brown Pelican
and the San Francisco Lessingia are on the federal Endangered Species List.

Lessingia

In the 1850's, hydraulic mining released massive amounts of sediment from the rivers that settled in parts of the bay that had little or no current. Later, wetlands and inlets were deliberately filled in, reducing the Bay's size. Despite its value as a waterway and harbor, thousands of acres of wetlands at the edges of the bay were considered wasted space. As a result, soil excavated for building projects or dredged from channels was often dumped onto the wetlands and other parts of the bay as landfill. The bay was also filled with abandoned buried ships from the gold rush days and all of the wreckage from the Great San Francisco Earthquake of 1906. They literally pushed it into the bay to fill it in. The Great San Francisco Earthquake was a 7.8 magnitude earthquake that killed 3000 people and destroyed 80% of San Francisco. This is the same quake I eluded to in my San Andreas Fault blog.
There are many islands around the bay including a notorious one called, Alcatraz. The island initially housed military personnel. It also held prisoners during the civil war. After the 1906 earthquake, some prisoners were moved there for safe keeping. During World War 1 it housed "conscientious objectors." These were people who refused to be part of a war based on thoughts, conscience or religion. Alcatraz also housed some of America’s most difficult and dangerous felons from 1934 to 1963. Some of those who served time there were the gangster Al Capone and murderer Robert “Birdman of Alcatraz” Stroud Starting in 1969 the island was occupied by a group of native american activists . They claimed Alcatraz was theirs “by right of discovery,” but offered to buy it for “$24 in glass beads and red cloth”—the same price that Indians supposedly received for the island of Manhattan. The activists added that they didn’t mind that the island was underdeveloped or lacked fresh water, since most of them had already endured similar conditions on government Indian reservations. Other activists supported the occupation by shuttling supplies. Canned goods, clothes and thousands of dollars in cash had poured in from donors across the country. Celebrities visited the island and lent their support, and the rock band Creedence Clearwater Revival even gave the Indians a boat, which was christened the “Clearwater.”
Alcatraz opened as a national park in 1973, and today visitors can still see the Native Americans occupiers’ graffiti on several of the buildings. The National Park Service even had some of the slogans preserved or repainted when they restored the island’s water tower. The Rock continued to serve as a focal point of Native American social campaigns. A pair of nationwide protest walks in 1978 and 1994 both began at the island, and since 1975, people have met at Alcatraz every November for an “Un-Thanksgiving Day” celebrating Indian culture and activism.

I was excited to visit Pier 39 in hopes of seeing the famous sea lions that frequent the piers there. There were only 3 sea lions there but they were enjoyable to watch. From late July (we were there a few weeks too early) to mid May, there are typically hundreds of sea lions hanging out on the piers. In June and July most of the sea lions go south to breed on the Channel Islands. The Channel Islands of California are a chain of eight islands located off the coast of Southern California along the Santa Barbara Channel.

The sea lions have chosen PIER 39's dock to "haul out" on because there is plenty of food nearby in the bay and the ocean. Also, their natural predators, the White Sharks and Orcas don't feed in the bay. Hauling out means to leave the water for a period of time. The docks are easier to lay on than the rocks. As the tide goes in and out, the floating docks move up and down on the water. The sea lions just keep sleeping instead of having to move up and down the rocks with the tide.
A few California sea lions began “hauling out” on PIER 39 shortly after the Loma Prieta earthquake hit San Francisco in October 1989. By January 1990, they started to arrive in droves and completely took over the dock, much to the dismay of PIER 39′s paying tenants.
The marina tenants were eventually moved to different docks to accommodate the sea lions. Yay! They have come to the dock ever since and have become a huge tourist attraction.

Original Good Morning America report on the invasion of the sea lions

Driving the elevated streets of San Francisco was at times, alarming, as we got stuck at a red light while sitting at a 25 to 30%grade incline. I felt like the car was standing on its backside. The only thing I saw out the windshield was the sky.

San Francisco is an energetic and crowded city. Too energetic and crowded for me though. I was glad to cross the big bridge and begin our travel north. The most exciting and most anticipated part of my adventure was yet to to come.

Here is something else special about the San Francisco area. Within the Golden Gate Recreational area is 240 acres of Old Growth Redwood Forests. It is called "Muir Woods."

Before the logging industry came to California, there were around 2 million acres of old growth forest containing redwoods growing in a narrow strip along the coast.

By the early 20th century, most of these forests had been cut down. Just north of the San Francisco Bay, one valley named Redwood Canyon remained uncut due to its inaccessibility.

A U.S. Congressman from California named William Kent learned about the valley. He and his wife purchased 611 acres of land from the Tamalpais Land and Water Company for $45,000 with the goal of protecting the redwoods and the mountain above them.

In 1907, a water company in Sausalito planned to dam Redwood Creek, thereby flooding the valley. When Kent objected to the plan, the water company threatened to use eminent domain and took him to court to attempt to force the project to move ahead. Eminent domain is is the power of a state or a national government to take private property for public use. Kent sidestepped the water company's plot by donating 295 acres of the redwood forest to the federal government, thus bypassing the local courts. One year later, President Roosevelt declared the area a national monument. It was named after the naturalist, John Muir.