Sausalito Art Festival

 The Races have been taking up to four days a week to watch but we still have found a little time to view other things. The art festival attracted artists from all over the country and there was music all day. W e chose to see Dave Mason perform and he was terrific. Dave was one of the founding members of Traffic.The chairs and table chairs above are wood burl.

T

 Dave Mason

Mason

Americas Cup II

 Above is USA 76 a slow , past generation AC boat. Still very nice and elegant on the water.

 Team  NZ moving among the spectator fleet.

 Most of the time we like to watch the prestart and the start which is very close to the Bridge.

 Wayne and Ellie from SV Zeppelin joined us for several of the races. They now live on their boat and do sail and dive charters in Roatan, Honduras. Wayne and Ellie are both divemasters and Wayne is one of the most knowledgeable divers I have met.

 Some boats in the spectator fleet are truly works of art , as is this historic schooner.

Alcatraz and the spectator fleet on a midweek race. On the weekends the boats on the water number close to 200 and it is a mad house.

AMERICAS CUP

 the weather for summer in the bay rarely exceeds 72 degrees F. Fog is quite common , but rain is nonexistent. Basically, the coldest winter I ever spent was my summer in San Francisco. That quote by Samuel Clemens aka Mark Twain about sums up our experience.

 Team USA out practicing.

Palace of Fine Arts

 A couple of times for the AC Races we have taken the bus over from Sausalito across the Golden Gate Bridge to view the races from the Marina Green. Probably the best place to view the races. Not the same as being on the water but definitely accomplished what they tried to achieve by making the regatta spectator friendly.

The above photo is of the Palace on the short walk from the bus.

 The park like setting we walk by on the way to Marina Green.

Legion of Honor Museum

 Between the races for the Americas Cup we decided to check out a few of the cultural attractions of the City. In conjunction with the races , Impressionists on the water is showing at the Legion. Unfortunately, no pictures allowed inside museum but the view from the grounds is superb.The art display included Renoir, Monet and Pissarro. My favorite painting, by Renoir, Luncheon of the boat party was not there but some exquisite Renoirs were.

 Rodin's Thinker is at the entrance portico. Below a view of Marin Headlands from the parking lot.

Sacramento Delta

 We needed to warm up from "winter" in Sausalito so we went up the Sacramento River to the Delta. About 45 miles from the Golden Gate. Beautiful clear skies and warm.

 The hyacinth seems to move around a lot here.Great view having coffee in the morning looking at the tule grass and Mt. Diablo.

 The delta is heavily diked for water use. The good part for me was the gravel roads atop the dikes I could run on. The crop to the right is field corn to be used for silage.

LCB at anchor among the tule.

AC 45 Racing

 After the Kiwis won the Louis Vitton Cup the stage was turned over to the worlds top youth sailors. The Red Bull AC Youth cup was four days of racing in the AC 45 cats. It was a fleet racing spectacular.Above the boats lined up at the start.

 Viewing from the shore was excellent as when racing the Bay tide and current play a big part of any effective strategy.

 As you can see from the pictures the weather was perfect. It seems as of Sept 1 a switch was thrown and summer started in the Bay.

The Youth regatta was won by a strong team from New Zealand with first and second place teams. Portugal took third and the US team finished fifth.

Portland to SF by Harley

 Our first stop after leaving Portland ,Oregon was the Swan Island Dahlia Farm in Canby. Made a total of 35 miles before we stopped! The dahlias were in bloom and we missed the show by a week.
Above is a shot of the scenery around Sisters , Oregon

 Next stop was Crater Lake National Park. Unfortunately the weather went sideways while at the rim. It rained and hailed for hours. Not a good thing on a motorcycle.

 Shot from the south rim.

 We cut across Oregon from the lake over to the coast so we could see the coastal redwoods just south of Eureka, CA. Again , this grove was sav d by three doctors who while on a fishing trip in the area were horrified by the callous destruction of the area by the timber companies and the efforts to build Highway 101. In 1927 they established a fund to save the redwoods as the greedy corporations were trying to log the coast from Eureka to Pt. Sur. Some of the tress in this grove are 2000 years old. At the time school children were donating pennies to save the trees.

 One fellow who wanted to save the trees built this truck out of a log and drove it around the country to call awareness to the giants being destroyed on the coast.

 Another view of the truck.

 Windfall with Queenie.

 We drove through many protected areas like the above.

 South of the Noyo River Highway 1 is a great motorcycle ride.

Muir Woods

It has been awhile since an update so here goes. Sometimes it is easier to get internet access in the third world than the USA while cruising.Below, we stopped at Stinson beach to check out the scene.

 My good friend , Larry Johnson and his wife Shelly came for a visit last month and we took a trip to the Muir Woods. The woods are a State Park set aside to protect a grove of coastal sequoias, sempervirens sequoia.

 View looking North towards Pt Reyes.

 One of the Giants! The coastal redwood grows taller than the giant redwoods that are found on the slopes of the Sierras.

 Walkways are provided to prevent  damage from tourist activity. Remarkable this forest is only 11 miles from San Francisco. Amazing people in the early twenties had the foresight to preserve this tiny patch of a forest that stretched from Humboldt Bay to Pt. Sur. Knowing the greed of corporations the people who fought to save these giants would have had an enormous battle.

 Below , is a start of a redwood growing out of a fallen tree.