So, anyway, after our little urban hiking adventure, we realized we could either take a long convuluted series of bus transfers or get a cab.  We had heard that there was a playwrights festival taking place at Fort Mason, right next to the hostel that sounded interesting, and the cab was the only option to get there on time.  Although we did get there on time, we realized that no vehicle travels too fast in San Francisco.  Lots of stop signs!  The play turned out to be very good.  We walked back to the hostel and decided we would take a nap before going to find some San Francisco nightlife.  However, we were completely worn out by that time, and decided just to give up for the evening.  We are pathetic and old!
   In the morning we did some driving in the city.  We stopped at a great bookstore we had found at Ghirardelli Square that had lots of planning books so Jen could do some souvenir shopping for herself. Then Missy wanted to drive down the curvy part of Lombard Street, so we (and numerous other tourists) did that.  We stopped and did some shopping before heading out of town.
   One of our goals on the trip was to see Big Trees, so we started back down the coast in search of Big Basin State Park.  A woman we met at the Montara hostel had recommended as a great place to see very tall redwoods.  In a case of more cartographic adventures, we ended up scaling mountains to get to the place.  On the map, the park lies right next to Highway 1.  To get to the road where you can actually see anything, however, takes some driving.  We stopped for directions at a local winery and the guy told us "Take Road X and you'll go up up up up up, then turn on Road Y and you'll go down down down down down, then you'll hit Big Basin Road."  And that's exactly what we did.  And it took a long long long long long time.  Of course, this was also in the middle of nowhere and we were almost out of gas.  This is what traveling is all about.  So, we finally got to the park and - it was dark!!!!  We did get to see a gigantic redwood by the visitor's center, though.  It was probably 10 to 15 feet in diameter.  Probably between 1500 and 2000 years old!  So we looked at the tree and left!

A couple miscellaneous San Francisco pics...

Some entrepreneurs at Fisherman's Wharf.

For Denise: