Last Day in San Francisco—Devil's Teeth Baking Co., Ocean Beach, Japanese Tea Garden, Cable Cars

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Sunday, November 22

So Sunday morning started REALLY early for us, a little too early. While it may seem like we had visited a lot of places up to this point (and in fact, we had), there were still lots of things to see before we made our way to the airport for our 2:35 flight and 1:30 car drop off. So I had to wake Mom up at a little after 6, and we needed to gather up our belongings and check out of the motel ASAP. Poor thing—when I woke her up, Mom’s first words were “Oh no!” Could it really be true that it was time to get up? She had not gotten enough sleep and was still exhausted from the day before.

I had stayed up kind of late on Saturday night, trying to strategically plan out what we would do that day. Thank GOODNESS we had done all that we had already. I had to start scratching a few things off my list because there just wasn’t going to be enough time to see every little thing. One thing that I scratched off was the botanical museum, which sounded like it could take a pretty good chunk of time to visit. Just wasn’t worth it on this trip. However, we had some good places to check out!

As you might have figured by now, I was the planner of the trip, from the larger details down to the smaller ones. I think Mom was glad about this, though, because over the years she was the one that always had to do the planning or figuring with stuff, including finances. Nowadays, that’s my job. So it takes some pressure and stress off of her and allows her to focus her mental and physical energy on other things.

The immediate plan was to grab breakfast at a little café near Ocean Beach, on the west side of San Francisco. I knew Mom wanted to see the Pacific coast, and I did, too. Devil’s Teeth Baking Company had good reviews AND it was super close to the beach. Not the nicest name, but I really liked the place! They were actually pretty busy. Something about a cafe being near the beach just gives a whole different feel to the place. I noticed that the sidewalks in front of the café was covered in chalk art, and then as we were standing in line, a couple of kids came up behind me and reached for some chalk in a box. I thought that was a pretty cool idea to have chalk for kids to color with on the sidewalk. It adds character, just like the random coffee mugs add character to Eddie’s Café.

I already knew that we would probably be ordering their breakfast sandwich, which had eggs, bacon, and cheese inside of a flaky biscuit. It was really good. The employees were nice, and the customers were, too. I was standing by a barstool, waiting for our food when Mom went to the restroom. The man next to me goes, “Do you guys want to sit down? I’m about to leave.” I appreciated his offer, but I told him we were about to leave, as well. One customer had their dog tied outside as he was ordering his breakfast. I’m telling you, San Franciscans love dogs. There were even signs up around the city saying that it was one of the dog friendliest cities or whatever.

We drove the few blocks down to the beach and sat in the car, looking out at the ocean and all the birds nibbling on food in the parking lot. We decided to eat inside the car since it was kind of chilly out. We ended up having some food left over, so we took turns feeding the various kind of birds—ravens, gulls, pigeons…It was kind of funny to see all those birds together, all wanting the same food. They just looked like unlikely breakfast buddies. So that was fun—we’ve always enjoyed feeding ducks and birds at parks in Texas.

We walked down the steps that led to the sand on the beach, and Mom realized that she was about to get her new tennis shoes all sandy. Hmmm. I suggested we take off our shoes, roll up our pants, and just walk barefoot. Unfortunately, Mom was freezing with her shoes off, standing in the cold sand. So she didn’t walk very far. Plus, her calves were already very sore by this point in the trip, and walking in sand is not exactly an easy thing to do.

But I walked down to the ocean, got my feet wet, and took some pictures and video. Some people were surfing. Some people were just walking. I still had sand on my toes once we got back to Arizona that night.

I was trying to plan our stops going from west to east so we wouldn’t have to backtrack any and waste time. I had seen on the map that there was a place called Strawberry Hill, and if you know me, you know I love strawberries. So I had to try to go there and get a picture or something. I also wanted to go to Hippie Hill, which is apparently where people buy and sell pot and act like hippies, I guess lol. No, I didn’t want to partake in any of this…I just wanted to observe and say I had been there. Haha. But neither of these stops were very successful, as I don’t think I actually saw Strawberry Hill, and I didn’t get a chance to go on top of Hippie Hill (though I do think I found it). It's funny because as we were trying to find these places, we accidentally came upon one of the elusive "49-mile drive" signs that we had been looking for at the beginning of our trip!! Too late now.

Both Strawberry Hill and Hippie Hill were inside Golden Gate Park, as was the Japanese Botanical Gardens, which was a definite must-see that morning. Mom has a thing for the Japanese culture now, after having seen and read Memoirs of a Geisha. I thought she might appreciate seeing the gardens. It’s a really nice place…you basically can’t take a bad picture there. Everything looks so picturesque and pretty, and I’m glad we went.

Well, pretty much the only thing we now HAD to do before we left was ride a cable car. This didn’t turn out quite as expected, but we did indeed ride a cable car, so there you go. This was actually one of the most confusing parts of planning for the trip. I wanted to ride a cable car, but if we parked and rode a cable car for a while, that means we would be far away from our car. Then we’d have to pay to get back to the car, which seemed ridiculous. Each way was $7 per person. Not to mention paying for parking for the car. I also wasn’t really sure how long the rides would take, and we didn’t have a whole lot of time left. There are 3 cable car lines in the city, and after doing some research, I decided I wanted to catch the Powell-Hyde one, because I think I read that steeper hills were on that line. I figured we could ride the cable car from Powell St & Bush St to Hyde St & Union St. Very specific, I know. Seemed like it would be fun to be going up and down hills, especially while standing and holding onto the outside of the car, as some people do. Also thought it would be cool to get a picture standing on the outside of the cable car. Now I know that that is not very feasible.

So I found the intersection of Powell & Bush Sts. I knew I would have to drop Mom off and go park. What I still didn’t feel like I knew a lot about was exactly how to catch the car in the first place. Where do you stand to be picked up? How do the drivers know you are waiting for their car? We saw a man walking down the sidewalk, so we rolled down the windows , and I asked him a few questions about the whole process. I let Mom out of the car and drove down the hill a ways where I saw a parking garage. Had to walk back up the steep hill to meet Mom at the cable car stop. I thought to myself…people in San Francisco who walk a lot must have really strong leg muscles and glutes!

The first cable car passed by us without really stopping, and I didn’t know why! That was the one we needed. Another one came toward us, and I kind of waved my hand to let them know we wanted to get on. No luck. I finally started talking to some other people who were waiting for the car, and they informed me that the cable car doesn’t stop if there is no room. Oh…makes sense. She told me that the cable car line that was running across the street was not full and kept letting people on, so Mom and I crossed the street to try our luck at catching that one, even though it wasn’t the one I originally wanted to catch. We wouldn’t see a lot of big hills on this one. But hey, at least we will have been on a cable car. The first time it came by, it started to pass us up, but then the ticket guy realized we wanted to get on and so stopped the car. There are 2 workers on each car—the one who drives it and the one at the back of the car who collects the tickets.

So anyway, we hopped on…well, actually, Mom was so tired and in so much pain that she nearly fell onto the car as she stepped up. Our ride was very short-lived, as Mom was just not feeling very well, so at the 2^nd stop, I convinced her that we should just get back off and go back to our car. The longer we rode the cable car, the longer my walk back to our car would be, and the longer Mom would have to stand and wait for me before I picked her up. I appreciated the fact that the man didn’t charge either of us for the short trip. I left Mom at the entrance to a hotel, and I again walked up and down the steep hills toward the parking garage. Wasn’t the most successful cable car ride ever, and we didn’t get any pictures, but we did ride one.

We made a quick stop to the Haight-Ashbury district one last time but only because we were looking for some ice cream for Mom. Sometimes she resorts to eating sugary foods so that she can temporarily rev up her energy. I don’t endorse this—especially for her— and we are working on a different plan of action for her to improve her health. But we’re not at that point quite yet, and our morning was going poorly at that moment, so ice cream it was.

We had some issues buying gas for the car and trying to figure out how to get to the car rental drop-off location at the airport. It was pretty ridiculous, but we had some laughs about it.

And that was the end of our trip to San Francisco! We both enjoyed visiting all the different places, but we were also both ready to get back home. Mom was exhausted (I was a little tired, too), and we were both glad to be back in the land of ample driving space and large, nearly empty parking lots. Our cats were not happy to see us right at first, and in fact they were scared. Acted as if we had been gone for months or something, poor things. One of them hid for a couple of hours, but then again she had a troubled life before meeting us, so she gets scared easily. By the end of the night, they were both happy to see us again. The End!

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