San Francisco melange

 We started our California trip by visiting old friends Ryan and Carolyn in Palo Alto

Excellent advice 

Our first stop in the city was the Golden Gate NRA and this fabulous overlook of the bridge 

Apparently August in SF is cold fog season

Fort Point NHS was happily saved from demolition during construction of the bridge. Check out that pier of the bridge sinking into the serpentine rock. The entire south end of the Golden Gate is composed of serpentine and the engineers had no choice but to build onto this rock with a reputation as treacherously prone to landslides. But the engineers knew what they were doing and sunk the piers deep. In the 1989 6.9 magnitude earthquake, the bridge came out unscathed, and recent modifications have made it safe even for quakes above 8.0.

Thanks to the "I Survived" series of early readers, Erin harbors many fears of natural disasters, especially earthquakes. Delving into it, I learned that not all ground in the SF area is equally at risk of earthquake violence, and thanks to the handy map above we opted for hotels in areas where foundations lie on sturdy bedrock outside of the fault zones. While it is true that California building codes will protect many people when the Big One comes, homes will be damaged. With the Bay Area having the highest property values in the country and 7/8th of homeowners without earthquake coverage, there are going to be a lot of techies hurting in their wallets. After all, the geologic source of Silicon Valley is the San Andreas fault!

Fort Point was, as usual for forts, a blast to explore

 love that International Orange color

 On the other side of the Golden Gate, only Dave was thrilled to see this beautiful hillside of ribbonized chert. This chert is made from the 100 million year-old fossilized ooze of radiolaria skeletons, which are a type of zooplankton that have lived in our oceans from the Paleozoic Era until today. Chert is a beautiful rock, smooth and hard, good for arrowheads and peace pipes.

 Dim Sim in SF was exceptional

Maritime museum at Fisherman's wharf 

Only in California does the back to school aisle include bubbly 

Since Cali kids had been in school for 2 weeks, we loaded up in foggy Marin County 

After picking up new headgear in SF we were ready for Muir Woods

This relic of the pre-wireless age is still needed because of the rugged topography

and although beautiful, the steep terrain and fog diminished the majesty of the trees

 Point Reyes National Seashore was sunny, beautiful, and empty. Also smack on the San Andreas fault, the kids didn't appreciate how cool it was to zig-zag back and forth from the North American plate to the Pacific plate

 Aaaah, the needle is spiking!! No, turns out it wasn't working.

 and then back to the Bay, where a site at the Richmond shipyards celebrated Tessie the Riveter

The John Muir NHS is probably the only NPS site found across the street from a 7-Eleven, but it's a gem.

After his days tramping around the Sierras and Alaska, Muir settled outside SF and ran an orchard

 that earned him a fortune, which gave him the freedom to devote his later years to founding the Sierra Club

 and lobbying California, Congress, and Teddy Roosevelt for federal conservation efforts,

which led to the establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, two years after his death.

Thank you John Muir!

Miwok village at Point Reyes

These boots were made for dancin'