Day Eight:

All things come to an end, especially nine day trips to California.

Golden Gate Bridge to Sausalito to Berkeley to mondo traffic to airport (drop off Bridget) to Half Moon Bay, what a lightning round! Majority of the photos here came from the morning at the bridge and across the bridge to Sausalito. I like them, but I also realize that I need to come back here with a tripod and do these images up right. In general, tripoded landscape photography (and large group portraiture) is what I need to work on the most. But until I get a solid, lightweight, ball joint tripod, this isn’t happening.

We spent the majority of the afternoon walking down College Ave in Berkeley, going into shops, getting coffee and eating at La Mediterranee, which was seriously the best Mediterranean food I have ever had. Then we tried to drive to the original Amoeba location, but were greeted with even more of a homeless situation. We did not feel comfortable just walking around, so we jetted. Then the loooooong drive in random traffic to the airport to drop off Bridget followed by the crushing sadness that a vacation I had been looking forward to for years was about to come to a close.

The top reasons I want to go back to San Francisco? Do more research on the cool places to go to and only go there, landscape shots with a tripod, exploring the outskirts of the city, and visit the redwoods. Having to skip the redwoods due to time constraints really was a bummer because the photos would have been killer! But they would have been rushed and probably not my best because I was getting pretty burnt out these last few days from being cranked on caffeine for far too long, lugging around my giant Crumpler Brazillion Dollar Home bag everywhere we went, and taking over 6000 pictures of the absolutely gorgeous state of California without really any downtime in between. So next time we will have a different agenda and maybe put it at the front of the trip instead of the tail end. To tell you the truth, a drive from San Francisco up to Portland/Seattle/Vancouver (please let it be Vancouver!) is easily at the top of my list of travel vacations to attempt next.

I hope you have enjoyed reliving this vacation as much as I have. Only one more day to go! Then it is off to pristine Upstate New York for this Labor Day Weekend. I promise gobs of horse pictures from the track with a few hints of the upcoming North East Autumn. No one does it better than New York. Talk to you soon internet. Now enjoy the photos!