Northern California and San Francisco

Road Trip Day 21-22 (July 3-4): Northern California and San Francisco

The California coast in the summer has possibly some of the oddest weather in the world. One moment, you’re entirely engulfed in a thick sea of fog, temperature in the 60s. 30 miles down the road, the temperature is 110, the sun fiercely beating down and the sea water shining brightly. It’s also amazing how much the weather patterns affect my mood. In Crescent City, for instance, I groggily stumbled to my car, put on Bon Iver, and sulked over how I wouldn’t even be able to glimpse a redwood in this maddening fog. Forty-five minutes later, I was zooming along, right arm out the top of the sunroof, blasting Daft Punk’s new album Random Access Memories. This is pretty much how my day through Northern California went. The weather was bizarre, the towns (Crescent City, Eureka, etc.) quite terrible, but the redwoods stunning. My first experience with a redwood, however, was not entirely agreeable. I decided to stop for the Tour through the Tree in Klamath, about an hour south of Crescent City (-->) 

. For $5, I was allowed to drive my car through a living redwood tree that had been hollowed out and take a picture. Very touristy, but considering that I’m driving my car across the country, a cool landmark at which to take a picture. “Watch your mirrors,” the gatekeeper told me as she happily took my money. “Of course,” I replied, although I had no idea what she was talking about. Because there was another car behind me, I hurried to drive my car into the tree so that I could run out and snap a quick pic. As I pulled in, however, I realized that my car was slightly too large and that I needed to pull in its side mirrors. Crunch…too late. Ahhh, that’s what the gatekeeper was talking about.. Even though I paid the $5, it is the tree that took home a souvenir from Rohrick Toyota of Pittsburgh, PA, rather than me taking one from Klamath, CA. Redwoods 1, Arjun 0.

After driving along for another hour or so, I decided to pull off the main road to take what was marked as a scenic path through one of the redwood forests, and it was spectacular. I went for a 2-mile hike, thankfully in a sunny section along the coast, passing by trees that were probably 10 times times as wide as I am (-->)

, until I reached the trail’s landmark “Big Tree.”

After I got back on the road, I continued on, stopping along the sea a few times, and as I came closer to San Francisco and the weather began to creep over 100, passed by miles of vineyards. Unfortunately, I reached this area around 4:45 pm and for some reason, every vineyard wine tasting ends at 5 pm. I was able to find a shop called Sip Mendocino that was still open and featured wines from all over Mendocino County for tasting, which was fantastic. As I came closer to San Francisco, I realized that I would be traveling into the city over the famed Golden Gate Bridge, which was one of the highlights of my entire trip. The majestic, deep orange structure that connected San Francisco to the northern suburbs was so spectacular that I decided that I needed to get a good view of it for the upcoming sunset. My friend Zach, a fellow Penn alum with whom I played on the club tennis team and worked on the West Philadelphia Tutoring Project’s executive board, was just returning from work in the Googleplex, or Google’s Mountain View campus, so I had a bit of time, anyway. I entered The Presidio and drove down to Crissy Field, a park that to my amazement, offered stunning views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, and the city (-->)

. I think Oregon still holds the #1 spot, but seeing the sunset from Crissy Field was also breathtaking. An interesting thing about the San Francisco skyline is that it doesn’t really exist. Because the city has strict zoning laws, the skyscrapers and highrise apartment buildings that dot the skyline of most major American cities are absent here. This gives San Francisco a unique charm, but also helps to inflate housing prices to nearly unrivaled levels. Additionally, apartments and houses that were built before 1979 are subject to serious rent control. Coupled with the small size of the city and huge demand for housing, looking for an apartment is, I would imagine, a lot like trying to reach an apartment a mile away without being trampled in a stampede of wild animals. Like someone who has survived a stampede, my friend Zach (-->)

has a distinctly thankful and grateful look when talking about how he managed to find a place in the Mission, one of the most desirable neighborhoods in the city for young people, for a reasonable price. Months earlier, Zach and I had planned to travel down the coastal route from San Francisco to Los Angeles over the course of the next few days and even though we didn’t have each day planned out, we did have a long list of attractions we wanted to see (or to be more precise, I trusted Zach to do so for both of us). After a refreshing night of sleep at Zach’s, it was time to set out on the last leg of my road trip!


San Francisco Bay Area on Dwellable