Travel Story--San Francisco in Nov. 2021

We curtailed our travel--or it was curtailed for us--due to covid. Now we're starting to get out again, finding that travel is changed and so are we. We went in mid-November to San Francisco. My husband and I lived in the Bay Area, both San Francisco and Berkeley, in the 1970s, and have visited many times since. 

Golden Gate Bridge

It looked much the same, but we were putting on masks to enter buidlings, taking buses with limited ridership, making reservations to be admitted to museums. Small changes and reassuring in a week of rising covid cases, but enough to make the familiar unfamiliar.

Mask in gutter: litter I would not have seen last trip

We were avoiding crowds, so we walked trails in the Presidio: 

We ventured down steep San Francisco streets for excellent sea food, Chinese food, tacos (as take out, or in plastic-covered tables on the curb or contactless order-on-your-phone):

Chestnut Street, San Francisco

We walked out to the north edge of San Francisco to San Francisco Bay

San Francisco Bay, at the north edge of the Presidio

I shot post-card style photos through the trees: 

San Francisco Bay from the Presidio

The trip reminded us that, comfortable as home is, there are other places that are wonderful to experience. 

Early November is generally the off season in San Francisco because it isn't part of the holidays and the weather can be chilly and rainy. However, San Francisco has a Mediterranean climate, with no rain in summer, all the rain coming October to March, so their growing season had just started. Plants were blooming, seedlings coming up. For a botanist, it was a lovely time. I took a LOT of photos of plants; I'll share them in a future blog. Here are two (three different plants in flower in the first, two in the second):

Wander!

Comments and corrections welcome. 

Kathy Keeler, A Wandering Botanist
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