Golden Gate Park

Today's adventure was exploring a little bit of Golden Gate Park. It is nowhere near the Golden Gate Bridge, FYI. It is a little like Central Park and the National Mall. It is very big with lots of trees, paths, lakes, museums and gardens. However, the museums, unlike the National Mall, are NOT free. We chose one museum for the day - the California Academy of Science.
Nathaniel really enjoyed the museum. Davis - so so.

We also walked through an arboretum and saw a fantastic fox. It was an urbanized fox and cared little if we were there or not.

The day was sunny, but windy and cold.

Not so windy that the windmill was working, I guess.

Wind coming off the ocean to the right. We tried 4 different places to get hot chocolate. Not a hot chocolate friendly park.

Japanese Garden

Amphitheater

Living roof of California Academy of Science building.

Free range Strawberry Poison Dart Frogs in the rain forest exhibit. Any kid could have picked them up and licked them. (Think about it... you probably know some kid who would.)

Blue jelly fish (never seen blue before.)

Jelly Belly

Took a tour of the Jelly Belly factory in Fairfield, CA. Really fun. You get to see the real factory working (unlike the Hershey Factory tour in Pennsylvania). It smells great and they hand out lots of jelly bean samples.
Everyone has to wear these paper hats so no errant hairs float down into the jelly bean factory works. There are many examples of jelly bean art like this bear. Nathaniel thought they went overboard with the Ronald Reagan jelly bean portraits.

Who wouldn't love a jelly bean bug?

The big Jelly Belly himself.

Muir Woods in the Rain

Muir Woods is in Marin County on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge. It was worth exploring - even for a short muddy walk.
It was rainy (you can see the drops reflecting the flash.)

Kind of dark in the photo because of the heavy cloud cover, but it was very green in real life.

Chris and Nathaniel in one of the giant redwoods.

Hollow log too small for Chris.

The hollow log is just right for Nathaniel.

Nathaniel and I were searching for Banana Slugs, but he only found psychedelic (looking) mushrooms.

Probably would have been nicer without the rain, but it is very green and mossy so it must rain alot there.

The Garners go to Alcatraz

The boys are out of school and into prison - for the day anyway. We took a ferry out to Alcatraz Island. It was surprisingly sunny for Alcatraz, so the grounds were very pretty. But it would be absolutely depressing to have to live in the prison. The cells are so small and you would probably never be warm. No wonder they all tried to escape.
Nathaniel found a bird that was willing to pose for a picture.

A garden shed on the grounds looked almost inviting.

The narrow strip of ground to my left was some of the prisoners' gardens.

There would be a cot in the cell for the prisoner. Lovely.

Self portrait

Prison in the background. Agave growing over rubble from military family housing off to the left.

Yeah, just in case you didn't know it was illegal to help prisoners escape.

Nathaniel didn't like the signs all over the place that said, "Access restricted for your protection" He would have liked to go up all the stairs (like the ones on the guard tower in the background).