Sunset at Auckland Airport through the Manukau Heads
Big Basin Redwoods State Park
A work trip took me to San Francisco (for the first time) and fortuitously included a weekend for exploring!
After wandering peacefully through Hakone Gardens on the way to catching up with old friends Mareese and Gareth from QUBMC days in San Jose, I checked out Big Basin Redwoods State Park, followed by getting stuck in a pumpkin-related traffic jam at Half Moon Bay on the way up the Pacific Coast Highway towards Twin Peaks to watch the colours fade at the end of the day over the Downton area of San Francisco.
A Block, Alcatraz
Up early on Sunday to catch two buses to Pier 33 and a trip out to Alcatraz Island. Experienced how quickly the San Francisco fog can come and go. The crowds at Alcatraz take the edge off the sobering nature of the place (I found Port Arthur in Tasmania more sobering…), but it still makes you pause to consider how tough it must have been for the inmates to be so near to civilization and yet so far (even if the inmates here were deemed to be the “incorrigible” ones).
Golden Gate Bridge at dusk
Sunday afternoon I headed across the Golden Gate Bridge to the vantage point on Marin Headlands to again wait for the sun to set over the bridge and the city framed between the bridge towers.
Golden Gate Bridge above a platinum sea
