Giants Lose, but we had fun: Part 1

Our trip to San Francisco yesterday was really fun! Unfortunately with Bill being on-call, we couldn't stay longer like we wanted to. Once we were down there, we could feel the pull of the city. We both love SF so much. Well, we don't love their liberal politics, but that's another story. We do love to visit there.

I'm going to have to do this in a couple of different posts, because I have a LOT of pictures and descriptions.

Bright and early on Friday morning, we got ourselves out of bed at our usual wake up time and stopped by McDonald's for a breakfast to go on our way out of town. We programmed our destination into the GPS and I also had printed out MapQuest directions to see the different choices. Sometimes the GPS doesn't always have the best route; sometimes MapQuest doesn't, either. I knew how to get down to the bay area; the trick was getting to Larkspur, which neither of us had ever been to before.

So we took Hwy. 32 to Orland, took I-5 to 505, to I-80 to the bay area. MapQuest said to go to Hwy. 30-something to 101 to Larkspur, but our GPS told us to go further south, take a street over to 580 up to Larkspur. We decided to follow GPS and find out what happened. It was faster, but it took us through a neighborhood that was really scary! Suffice it to say that we were the only white people around and there were bars on all the windows. YIKES! We were definitely happy that we weren't driving through there after dark.

Anyway, we got down to Larkspur with time to spare, and we ended up being really glad because it meant we got a really good place in line for the ferry. The bad news was that we had to wait in line over an hour! We did use the bathroom when we got there, which was a really, really disgusting port-a-potty. Gah. It was nasty with a capital "N". Ewwwwwwwwww. But I really had to go, and I knew it would be an hour or more before we got on board the ferry.

The ferry was scheduled to leave at 11:30am, with an hour travel time. This meant that we'd have about 40 minutes before game time to walk around and explore the park, which everyone says that we should do. However, the ferry waited for some stragglers, which meant that we didn't leave Larkspur until about 11:45. This is the problem of depending on public transportation rather than driving to the park and paying for parking. But it was fun to take the ferry and have that experience.

In the pics, you can sometimes see a smudge in the middle of the photo. Apparently there was a smudge on the lens, which of course I didn't notice until we were back. Grrr. Oh well.

Here's the ferry terminal:


The ferry itself:


Karen in the parking lot:


Bill in the parking lot:


Bill on the ferry:


Karen on the ferry:


As we traveled over to the park, we passed San Quentin prison. It is really forbidding looking, and very gruesome. I think that is where they put the really hard-core criminals. Ugh. I took some pics of the prison, including zooming in on the prisoners out on the yard. You can see them watching the ferry go by; you have to wonder what they are thinking. Click on the picture to enlarge it.

The prisoners in the yard:


The prison:


When we arrived at AT&T Park, we arrived, of course, at the ferry terminal entrance. We walked over to McCovey Cove and took some pictures. It is a lot smaller than it looks on TV but its still a beautiful park.

The marina entrance:


McCovey Cove: