Day 22 – Pixar Tour and Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

If you’ve been reading this travel blog from the beginning, you’ll remember that after we left our very first stop in New Orleans, we drove through Lake Charles, Louisiana, where I lived during my middle school years. 1979-1982 were some of the best years of my youth, because that weird little town produced a disproportionate number of lifelong friends. One of them is Ralph Eggleston, who now lives near San Francisco. 

Even in his younger years, Ralph was always passionate about animation. He worked hard, got his degree from CalArts, and eventually got in early at Pixar, where he has been for the majority of his professional life. While I didn’t want to bother him to give us a tour, our son Julian had no trouble asking for one before I could shush him. Ralph, fortunately, was very happy to oblige. So we started this day off by driving over the Richmond – San Rafael bridge (I-580 East) to Pixar headquarters in Emeryville. Many of the pictures in this entry are from our wonderful time at Pixar. It was incredibly special to get a personalized tour of this famous studio from a good friend. Kind of like seeing Wonka’s chocolate factory.

After taking a lunch break at the employee cafeteria, we let Ralph get back to his work and drove across the San Francisco – Oakland Bay Bridge (I-80 West), to explore Golden Gate Park.

Like yesterday, we had all-day parking reservations at a nearby lot, and again the Parking Panda app did exactly what it promised. We prepaid twenty-five dollars total for as many hours as we needed for the afternoon.

Golden Gate Park was one part of the city I had never visited before. Since our whole family loves the outdoors, and because we had another day of beautiful weather, this was a magnificent way to finish our time in San Francisco. From the vast, green lawns to the dense forested areas, and from the 140-year old Conservatory of Flowers to the DeYoung Museum, we covered as much ground as we could before it was dinner time. 

The Conservatory contained, ironically, a lot of plants (orchids, palms, etc.) that grow natively in our own yard back at home in Florida. At one point, I was telling an employee about how we propagate frangipani (plumeria) in Naples by just breaking off a piece from the tree and sticking it into a pot of dirt. 

So as we meandered back toward the car, not able to do the Japanese Tea Garden (that’s another story), Isabella decided we needed to do one more “very San Francisco touristy” thing: we went all the way over to the other side of town, where we were yesterday, to wind our way down Lombard street. Once we were done with its crooked goodness, we looped back around to westbound Lombard (101 West), which turns north and becomes the Golden Gate Bridge, thus completing our three-bridge tour of the Bay Area in one day.

In the morning, we would start the very long drive to Portland, Oregon.