Bird Feeder Yard!

The rest of the updates from San Francisco, with pictures, will be coming shortly (probably right after this!), but I wanted to give a little update about our bird feeder yard!

We are in a bird feeder arms race against our neighbors. We put up one, then observed them up a ladder adding more suet feeders to their tree, and... well... considering that we have eight feeders and two bird baths now, I think you can guess what happened.

We now have some regulars frequenting our feederfest, so I wanted to introduce them!

This is Chacha, the female downy woodpecker, demonstrating proper use of the tail plate on the suet feeder:

A male downy also visits our feeders, but I don't see him as often and have yet to get a photo, so he doesn't have a name yet.

This is one of our yet-to-be-named chickadees. Andrew is voting Cockapoo, but understandably I am reluctant:

They are bold, sort of bratty, wonderful birds. They are some of the smallest who come to the feeders, and they absolutely terrorize everybody else. They stole a piece of apple from the platform feeder, hid in the tree and spent most of the afternoon eating it:

Looking cocky (can you tell I like our chickadees?):

Here are Debby and Dale, our Eurasian Collared Dove pair that appears to be nesting on the eaves of the house across the street:

This is Goldfinger and Pussy Galore, the Lesser Goldfinch couple who monopolize our thistle sock most afternoons:

And this is Randy and Jolene, a house finch pair who also love our thistle sock and sometimes sit out at our platform:

And this is Sanjay, our scrub jay who waits for Andrew to put out peanuts in the morning and then spends the next few hours stealing them one by one. He does a lot of screaming while he is at the feeder, grabs a peanut, disappears for a while, then comes back and repeats until all of the peanuts are gone.

We are hoping to draw in some robins, so we've increased the dry mealworms we have in the feeder, and have also added some raspberries and blueberries. One can dream?

(This is like playing Viva Pinata with birds. And it's AWESOME).

Mmm, crepes (again, but better this time!)

Wednesday evening Andrew and I found ourselves in a little bit of a conundrum-- we weren't entirely sure what to do in the city on Thursday. We had intended on spending about 3 hours total doing the Alcatraz thing, and had done a decent amount of wandering on Wednesday instead, but weren't feeling the inspiration to go back into the city right away. Ta-da, Kristine to the rescue! She gave us a map and a guidebook for a hike through the Portola Redwood Forest, which was about a 45 minute or so drive away. (Kristine, if you're reading this, I just realized I have your guide book! I'll text you and mail it back to you!)

We woke up and high-tailed it to...

A really great crepe place :) No sense in having a long hike without some French bistro food to fuel us! It's sort of funny, because when we told Kristine that we had breakfast at Crepevine on the first day she wasn't very enthused, and suggested we go to this place instead... WHICH WAS A TOTALLY JUSTIFIED RESPONSE. Crepevine was heavy and totally Americanized by comparison, and my mouth is watering a little bit just looking at these pictures and remembering how yummy it was.

The place is called Bistro Maxine, and it felt like a little slice of Paris in Cali. It had teeny round bistro tables in a really small inner dining area, and smelled sweet and savory at the same time. The crepes were thin and moist, but still had a little bit of crisp around the edges, the filling was really flavorful (Andrew got a savory crepe for breakfast and we shared a banana/Nutella crepe for breakssert, and the sweet crepe was maybe a bit too heavy on the banana, but was delicious); the croissant was flaky and buttery like all good croissants should be; and the chef and waitress (I assumed husband and wife, but this could have just been a story I fabricated in my head, because I also named the waitress Maxine and decided she owned the restaurant... I'm only realizing now the elaborate story I had started to concoct without knowing at all if it was true) had French accents... sigh! Definitely a place we'd like to go again next time we're in Palo Alto.

Next up, Portola Redwoods!

What alternatives to Alcatraz look like

Wednesday ended up being a great example of why it's important to stay flexible with your plans when you are on vacation. We had CityPass booklets to help us with our adventures in the city (thanks Mom and Dad!), and one of the perks we didn't use the first time we got city passes when Andrew and I visited San Fran with Loni in 2008 was the Alcatraz Cruises. Andrew has been several times, but I have only watched The Rock, and assuming it isn't a perfect replacement for the experience, wanted to go see it. We booked our trip out to Alcatraz ahead of time, and were set and ready to go explore the island at 12pm.

We got up early, grabbed some bagels on our way out and took the Caltrain into the city (we are now experts at using ClipperCards).

We actually got into the city early enough to stop in at the Ferry Building Marketplace, where we picked up some pastries and coffee (I had an apple turnover and Andrew had an empanada, but we ate them too fast for photographic evidence).

We took a quick street car, then walked the rest of the way down the pier!

 Being once again slightly ahead of time, we walked the rest of the way down to Pier 39 to say hi to the harbor sea lions, who were noisy and lazy all at once.

 

We walked back to the pier for the Alcatraz ferry and waited a bit for the 11:30 trip to head out. Unfortunately when 11:30 rolled around, instead of loading onto the ferry the massive group of people in line poured out from the waiting area and mobbed the ticket booths-- turns out the water was too choppy to get to the island so they cancelled all of the remaining ferries for the day. 

Rats!

Lucky for us, we had plenty to do! First next stop was the Exploratorium:

 We explored the Exploratorium (because what else is one to do?) until about 2:30ish, then realized we were getting extremely hungry and needed to solve the issue of food. Our original plan was to get chowder at the pier at Le Boudin, but the plans had been derailed for the day anyway, so we once again went off book and decided to find some dim sum.

Which we did! 

Our dim sum came from Wing Sing Dim Sum. There were no English signs and everybody spoke Chinese, but we figured it out (largely because of Andrew) and enjoyed this incredible food.

We still had some time to kill in the city before we were going to meet up with Kristine and Hunter in the evening, so we went to Macy's where I ooed and aahed over the Inglot counter (we don't have one of these in Utah!), and then we got Ben and Jerry's and ate ice cream in Union Square Park.

 

Because after doing all that, we clearly needed to go get MORE food, we met up with Kristine and Hunter, chatted at their place for a bit, and then walked into downtown Palo Alto and caught a meal at Tacolicious. It doesn't sound like a very dignified place, but this joint was HIP. They weren't quite entirely tapas, but were sort of 'small plates style' with a bunch of different gourmet/fusion tacos and other fun dishes, like house-made mini churros (THE BEST I HAVE EVER TASTED), 'drunken' black beans, and a mexican 'apple pie' that was maybe better described as a deconstructed sandwich-style apple empanada? I don't know, don't listen to me, I just ate it. It was really dark at the restaurant, so unfortunately no pictures survived.

Oh, and I can't forget, we moved on over to Kristine and Hunter's place at this point for sleep overs! They were SO kind and generous and let us crash on a (n incredibly comfortable) aerobed in their living room, and we were able to spend more time with them. I'm really moved by the generosity of the people who care about us. 

A lovely SF afternoon

Jenn and I had a blast in San Francisco. After a lazy morning (because we're on vacation, dammit!) we went to Golden Gate park to visit the museums there. First was the National Academy of Science where they set up an excellent indoor rainforest exhibit. Inside a giant sphere they house different birds, bugs, and plants representative of the different rainforests around the world. This included Costa Rica, so we were able to see familiar butterflies and spiders, and birds. 

The museum was really impressive. Particularly the aquarium it houses, which had awesome 8 foot tropical fish, and a neat hands on experience with starfish. 

Jenn wanted to go see the museum particularly for the penguin exhibit they have. It was your typical penguin habitat, except they're kept at the end of a hallway of taxidermy African animals. As we watched the birds playing, I heard a little girl ask her mom if they were real. I don't blame her for being confused after walking through that hall of corpses. 

With time to spare we dashed across the street to the DeYoung. It's always been on the backlist of things we've wanted to do in SF, and the exhibits they had were pretty good. I was surprised I enjoyed the wing of traditional/folk art far more than the American art galleries. Its funny, because I used to dismiss those sorts of things as"craft", not art (much to grandma's chagrin). Comparing the tribal masks and figurines to painfully symbolic Randian early american works, I was able to appreciate the artistry and personality of the folk art far better. Jenn and I were excited to spy an installation by earth artist Andy Goldsworthy outside the museum- a single, seemingly random crack stretching from the street to the entrance of the museum. 

Also the view from the DeYoung tower is magnificent! We also wandered around Golden Gate Park a bit.

For dinner we found a nice little Indian restaurant (called Tikka Masala). It's been so long since we have had proper naan and tikka masala, it was over whelming! 

 A nice little walk around inner sunset and then we decided to join the commuters on their trek on the Caltrain. Jen is out girling it up with Kristine, and I'm a tired old fart whose going to bed. 

Tomorrow: ALCATRAZ

Palo Alto breakfast, then the city!

It is a beautiful morning in sunny Palo Alto! The rest of our drive yesterday was increasingly more spectacular, by way of views. We kept trying to find scenic vistas (but getting lost, including taking an exit to a town called Meadow Vista, which in actual fact was NOT a vista of a meadow, but a town with a gas station and some cute homes), but finally found this incredible expanse in Sonoma:

The greens were even more vibrant than this in person, it was hard to capture on film and like an idiot I didn't take my nice camera out for it. This is, in fact, NOT Bliss of Windows acclaim, though it certainly looks pretty close, no? Especially considering ours wasn't doctored at all!

The Bliss photo was taken nearby, but apparently we lucked out stumbling across the field that we did, because Bliss now actually looks like this:

So I think we won out.

We arrived at about 7pm last night and settled into Kristine's parents' house, which is AMAZING. Kristine met us there and oriented us to our digs, and then we three went to get sushi at Fuki Sushi. The rolls were FANTASTIC, pretty traditional and super delicious. Sadly I was so excited to catch up with Kristine that I forgot photos, but let me remedy that with breakfast:

We're enjoying eggs of various styles and SOURDOUGH BREAD (ahmagad) at Crepevine.

Next on the agenda is the De Young Museum and the California Academy of Sciences, and Ben & Jerry's in Haite Ashbury.

Donner Pass

We're heading over the mountains! We're at the top of the world!! Whee!

Reno

We arrived safely in Reno last night, shortly after 7, and the clouds were incredible as we came out of a canyon into the city! Pictures will follow, because we are using several different picture-taking devices on this trip (my phone, my DSLR, my Polaroid, Andrew's phone) so I'm still working on compiling things. There were some fantastic lenticular formations, though, they looked like space ships!

Edit: Photos compiled, so let's add these babies in!

Reno seems to be a place where color TV and telephones are held sacred...

Our first real experience at the casino were these elevator buttons, which were either intended for toddlers or for very drunk people.

Andrew and I are going off our low carb diet this week, so the first order of business was the casino buffet (charmingly named 'Flavors' with sort of an 80's-interpretation-of-a-50's-gameshow style decor). Because you can't really have a casino experience without the gratuitous casino buffet. I am happy to report that it wasn't half bad! Sadly no photos of the food made it out of the experience, I'm sure we're all disappointed. 

Then it was gambling time! We putzed around the slots for a bit, and then went to Circus Circus in search of cheap blackjack tables. Andrew and I have never played blackjack together before, and it's been a while since I played at the tables. We lucked out with a really nice table that we parked ourselves at all night, and stayed until well after midnight. The best part was that for every Ace/Face card blackjack you got, you also were given a hilarious little stuffed animal. By the end of the night Andrew and I had a nice little menagerie of stuffed seals and whales. We pretty much broke even, and went back to the room to collapse into bed and fall asleep.

Andrew got me a Polaroid 300 for Valentines, so I'm also creating a Polaroid collection of our trip, though to be totally honest it's hard to remember to take pictures with every device! This is hubris on my part, thinking I'm on top of all of it!

Now we're driving off to San Francisco to meet up with Kristine. Hello 4 more hours of driving! 

Side note: We just passed a Taco Bell/Smoke Shop. Now THAT is business acumen!

6 hours of driving.

My Blackjack cheat sheet:

A cool car we passed:

Also, these are Andrew's cows: