Category: It Can Be Fun To Run Away

Not sure that I specifically took a picture, but somewhere along the line I’ll have looked at the Pacific Ocean, probably during the Christchurch to Wellington portion of the trip. This is what it looks like from the other side. And from the end of Santa Monica Pier, once you work your way through the crowds…

The Amtrak thruway bus was scheduled to pick me, and any other passengers, up at 7:25am. Advice from Amtrak suggested being there a half-hour early. It was about a half-hour walk from the hostel to the bus stop in the early morning, with no pack to carry. Given all of that, I’m not sure why…

Yosemite turned out to be way too difficult to get to without a lot more planning than I’d done, and a conversation with someone in the hostel kind of put me off the one-day bus tour option (roughly a third of the tour happens outside of the bus, at best), so I went with Muir Woods instead.…

When I leave San Francisco, it’ll be by train, but the train doesn’t come into the city, and the cable cars don’t run out far enough, so Amtrak has some buses. Given the consequences of missing the bus, and my own nature, I got up early one morning to see how long it’d take me…

Alcatraz was all booked up, as is to be expected, so I did a boat tour which took you out under the Golden Gate bridge, did a lap around Alcatraz, and down to the rough area of the ferry terminal. About 90 minutes, with a recorded commentary. I think I’ve been spoiled by the live…

I have actual content, but Wiseauthulhu here demands special placement. The rest of the post is normal, I assure you

yeah, these aren’t getting any better, are they? So, the view from the hostel, or the hostel area, is still worth the walk. There’s a network of paths & steps to get down from the headland, plus some roads if you’re into that sort of thing; I wandered down a different way to how I’d…

The hostel I’m staying at is in Fort Mason, so it’s all historic. Also uphill. I remember the hill from cycling around SF in 2012; It’s the one where I had to stop because I couldn’t stay upright due to crowd-induced slowness, and got an aggrieved cry of “Don’t Stop!” from the cyclist behind me.…

I’ll be on this train for … call it 19 hours. Also, it would appear that I’m heading for San Fran Fish, in West California. Makes sense; Western California would be damp. Could have gone with a sleeper, but it didn’t really seem worth it for a trip where I need to be off the…

Part of the Plan For Portland was to figure out the approximate plan for the next bit. Well, that didn’t happen like I expected. Getting to Yosemite turned out to be possible without a car, but tricky, and Amtrak’s system only acknowledging one of the many schedule options, the worst one, did not fill me…