Mendocino Holiday - Day 1

June 25, Sunday - Day 1

Traveled 132 miles today 

After 6 weeks of driving around Europe in 2015 and around the U.S. for 5 weeks last year we decided to kick back and take a week long micro-tour through our own back yard for a week and a "holiday" from the busy life. The objective was to spend three days in Mendocino and on the way home down the coast to stop in Gualala in order to provide more of Pam's jewelry to the Dolphin Gallery, replenishing items that had been sold. They asked for more before the July 4th crowds flood in. its always beneficial for the artiste to occasionally make a personal appearance, as well. 

SFMOMA - LGBT PARADE - MUIR WOODS 

Fog or Smog?...heading toward SF. Traffic nice and full speed, and then.....

.....traffic was occasionally slow-down heavy - hate to see it on a commute day (come to think of it, we *have* seen it on a commute day- -blech!).

After circling around for a parking garage, found one for $10/day just a block away from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (MOMA). With the annual LGBT Parade kicking off at 10:30 am and us entering the 

City at 10, it was a tied up mess. Also, streets in poor condition, lots of construction activity and blocked off side streets.

This large installation is a maze to walk through at MOMA's Howard Street entrance. This entrance was added during the museums recent complete renovation. 

Heading to the elevator.

We couldn't access floor #7 because they were in the midst of installing a new series.

Floor #6: Hopefully German Art before the 60's was superior to the post-60's works as exhibited here. Just sayin'.

The artist below created the next two paintings - very gloomy and a bit creepy.

This actually is a finely executed painting of a portion of the Louvre's interior. Well done, sir.

The airplane below is called Melancholia. The artist description is below. It is a metaphor, in lead, of all of the dismalness in the world...and war.

What would Rembrandt think...a bit too structured for Picasso, probably.

Floor #5:

And now for something *completely* different (from the floor above).

Yes, lots of Andy Warhol.

Looking in the mirror the morning after....

Below are the squares that make up the painting of the man above from a distance.

It almost looks like it's burning, but it's just neon tubing. High Concept.

These are silver tubes on the floor that pick up the blue of the wall.  More high concept.

Any couple you know? The guy's eyes definitely look creepy. Is he alive or is he Memorex?

Looks like Cricket: Where's Pam?

Norm says this looks like him with our bathroom remodel: white, wrinkly with a blade in his hand. Spooky.

We must have missed the artist explanation of the circle of rocks on the floor.???

Heading to the cafe:

A view from the inside looking out - MOMA on the right.

Museum cafe - two bottles of beer, a Danish and a piece of Black Forest cake. The cup of water for Cricket was free.

We had to show proof! Denny's it's not. This is how the 1% live.

Pam's living the high life! And, she's worth it!

After our sugar high, we lost track of which floor we were on as we meandered through the rooms.  

We passed on the extra cost Munch exhibit since Pam still has nightmares about his painting of a woman on a bridge holding her head and screaming. 

The following three prints are a sampling of Munch's oevre as seen in the Museum store.

Large Alexander Calder mobile.

Looking at the large mobile.

This was Pam's favorite room - full of colorful mobiles. Calder' creations just seem always to lift the spirits, something not generated by many of the works we viewed.

A large, long wall outside the Calder exhibit which was a mass of greenery contains dozens of different plant species, Grow that! in your back yard.

The photographer Mike Mandel took photos of mundane this and that in the 70's and also put mundane compositions together of stuff like baseball cards of the period. See the six photos following this one showing the intro wall to the exhibit. But why him and not me? you may say.

One of the LGBT floats - traffic was blocked for all side streets adjacent to most of Market Street, This meant we couldn't readily reach the "other side" of Market from where we were to the Golden Gate Bridge which we trying to reach.

The partying was in full swing as we crawled by to find an open street leading us to the freeway. This shows one of the blocked side streets. It took us 45 frustrating minutes to cover what should have taken us under 10. But hey, everyone had their groove on and we just went with the flow. Bottle it and ship a supply to Mar-a-Lago.

At last! Close to heading over the Golden Gate to Muir Woods.

Free at last, free at last!!

Across the Golden Gate and west of Sausalito, hugging the coast below Point Reyes National Seashore, is Muir Woods where hides a large grove of redwood trees in a beautiful arboreal setting. After the pressure cooker city we wanted to relax in sylvan, blissful solitude. Winding roads, very little traffic and we arrived....to find the main parking lot completely full and the overflow parking also. We practically had to mug an old couple (older than us, that is) to snag a just-vacated spot. Why weren't all these people LGBT-ing back where we left? There were tour buses, too. Being a National Monument, we used our old people's lifetime pass to get in gratis.  

All those people with cars jamming the lots hid themselves quite well and it really didn't seem particularly crowded.

This tree, which fell of natural causes in 2007 was "born" in 909 A.D. - markers show certain tree rings linked to historical events, as shown below. 

Why can't I pee on this piece of tree like I did on the trunk of that 2,000 year old tree down the path?

The only bear Cricket hoped to see on the trip.

Norm cozying up to his buddy, John Muir. Norm figures to score some points with the Sierra Club at the next meeting.

Cricket frantically looked for the chipmunks! Could they be getting handouts and not him??