Depending on my notes in the trip diary would leave us wondering “what did those two guys actually do in San Francisco?” One thing for sure we did take a number of Grayline tours to simplify the sight seeing around the Golden Gate City. It seemed that I was careful to photograph almost all the drivers of the buses and then send them photos when I got back home. We did spend a bit of time in old China town and did the touristy things there. We went to the only original part of Chinatown that survived the 1909 earthquake, Old Chinatown Alley and the Kun Leng Lee Temple. I made note of the population in 1954 of 20,000 in Chinatown. Although in the diary I did not make any reference to it, I remember the tour guide talking about the various family clans and the Tong Wars of the 1800s. It is carefully noted that we checked out; Fisherman’s wharf, Telegraph hill, Nob hill, Coit Tower and although did not go out to Alcatraz ( since it was still being used back then, it was noted that 265 prisoners were incarcerated out there.) Of course, the younger me was fascinated by the hills of San Francisco, noting that the sharpest incline was 42 1/2 degrees, also noted that San Francisco Bay had a 10 foot tide!
I am sure that many of the facts that I carefully recorded were from the talks that the various tour drivers gave while we drove around the Bay Area. Like the sway of the Golden Gate Bridge of 20 feet either way or that the Oakland Bay Bridge was completed in 1936. The tours took us to Berkely and Peidmont so we saw all the good sites and we did go to the Muir Woods in Marin County to commune with the red woods.
As was mentioned before we returned to Galesburg via the CB and Q Zephyr, which followed the same route that the Amtrak California Zephyr follows today. So this was my first big adventure on the train as an almost-adult. Now we are close to another adventure. This one is to see how many of the existing passenger trains I can ride to get around the United States. As this is being written the plans are still being made and much of the trips are up in the air. There are potentials that did not exist at the beginning of the planning and some possibilities have come and gone. So the experience is one of flux even now. Since this is a “bucket-list” idea anyway, there is no need to be frustrated or even concerned about how this will all pan out. It will be just another “rail experience” that seemed to be part of my life!
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