Benicia, California – day 5

A ride to Sausalito

Today’s our last full day here and we’ve enlisted Dave to go with us on a jaunt over to Sausalito for a look around.

The ride begins foggy and we’re despairing that we’ll see anything but, when we get over onto highway 101 south; heading towards San Francisco and the Golden Gate, it suddenly clears into a beautiful day.

Sausalito’s fun.   We drive around and look at the houseboats and the yachts moored.  Then we go down into the old downtown section to look around and maybe find lunch.   Parking’s tough so we pull into a $5.00 an hour lot and park (a valet parks us, actually).   Once we’re on the sidewalk, Colette notices that all the street parking’s free today.  Yow!   The street’s full to the maximum but still that attendant must be laughing.

The shops are cute and Colette sees an art studio where the artist specializes in shattering glass and then reassembling it over an underneath painting.   And the net effect is quite stunning. www.cassandriablackmore.com

We eat in a small bakery/delicatessen.   Then we drive further north towards the southern end of the Golden Gate Bridge and discover that there’s a road that goes around to the other side; to the Marin Headlands.  Yippy!   We’re off exploring.

On the other side are many interesting and scenic roads.  Some look back onto the bridge with huge views.   A ship is exiting the bay and passing under the bridge and that makes me remember my exit this same way in 2003 on the Direct Tui on my way to New Zealand for the first time.   Other roads continue around the the WWII coast/harbor defenses of the time.   The old gun emplacements are still there just as they are in Lyttleton Harbor in Christchurch and up in the Puget Sound area on Whidby Island.   We climb around on them for a bit.   Then we follow yet other roads further around to more military facilities until we, finally, think we’ve seen most of it.

Back onto Highway 101 with a short visit into Tiburon for a look about and then on the road for Dave’s place in Benicia.

Back home, Dave take us out and treats us to a nice Mexican dinner in Benicia.   Very nice.

Then, home again, we watch “The Blue Brothers” which Colette’s not seen.  That was a lot of good fun.

dennis

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