We drove along the Wildfife Loop which goes down and around the southern end of the park.  For a while we didn’t see anything but the first animal we enjoyed was a white tailed deer.  He was curious for the length of his tail.

We were bummed we hadn’t seen any buffalo since last night we saw two of them beside the road, but then we noticed several cars stopped up ahead.  They were stopped to see a herd of buffalo grazing right next to the roadway.  A couple buffalo wandered into the street and walked right past us, which freaked out Sarah Michael, but they weren’t interested in us at all and didn’t bother us.

There were some young ones in the herd and they were very cute.

We continued on and enjoyed the scenery and more animals.  We saw lots more deer and also more donkeys.

Then we followed the same path out of the park that I’d driven the night before with the RV.  It was great to see the route in the daytime.  We also learned the tight winding bridges are called the Pigtail Bridges and it was cool to actually see them, since last night I had no visual context.

We were also able to see Mt. Rushmore from the mountain road, another thing I couldn’t know at night.

So we made our way down the mountain and onto proper-size roads and then made our way to Mt. Rushmore.

Mt. Rushmore is quite a sight.  It is exactly what I thought it would be, but it was still neat to see it in person.  We didn’t stay long at the monument, we took a few pictures and visited the gift shop.  In the gift shop I spoke to a woman who was sitting at a table signing books.  She was coauthor of a book about the mountain’s history, so I asked her a few questions then had her sign a copy for us.  I look forward to reading up.  For example did you know that there were nine major design changes to the mountain during construction?  Neither did I, but I don’t know the details yet.  I have to read the book.

One of the San Francisco landmarks you can easily see from the Fisherman’s Wharf area is Coit Tower which site atop Telegraph Hill.  I’ve often seen this tower and wondered what it was, and I’ve also previously wonderered where Telegraph Hill was, so going up to see both was good for me.

In fact the way it went today was Sarah Michael asked us about the tower as we were driving on the waterfront, because it reminded her of the Leaning Tower of Pisa.  I didn’t know what it was, or what the hill or park was called, so I used Google Maps on my iPhone to determine that it was probably Pioneer Park.  Then a Google search informed us the name of the tower and the name of the hill.  Jessie and I got excited when we learned this was Telegraph Hill.

We were excited about Telegraph Hill because of the docmentary we’d seen, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, the subject about which I wager you can guess.  Jessie and I enjoyed the film (and we suggest you add it to your Netflix queue) and so to see the area in person would be special.

We drove up the windy roads to get to the summit, then waited in a line of cars for a parking spot, then enjoyed the views from the park.  We didn’t go up Coit Tower, but from the park you can see the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge, and Treasure Island (where we’ll be tomorrow night), Alcatraz and more.

The weather also cooperated.  While the morning had been foggy and cold, by this time in the afternoon the clouds had broke, the blue sky revealed and the sun warmed us up.

After walking around the parking circle in the park we found a path that went down into the neighborhood just blow the park, as I hoped that we just might get lucky and see the parrots.  I wasn’t hopeful, though, I really had no idea where the on the hill the parrots like to visit.

But we were lucky.  As we descended some steps we heard the sound of the parrots and saw a group of them fly into a tree just in front of us.  Before I could snap any shot, though, they flew away!  But they didn’t go far, I could hear their squaking just a few houses away.  Then one flew back to the tree in front of and I was able to get a shot of it (click here for large size).

Before we left I saw in the distance more of the birds flying around, and of course we could hear them, but no more landed close to us.

I was so pleased we were able to see the parrots, it really made my day.

After Telegraph Hill we headed to the nearby and famous Lombard Street.

Everyone has seen this street in commercials, television shows and films, and we thought it would be fun to drive down it.

I was worried there might be a long wait, but thankfully there wasn’t.  There was certainly a lot of tourists both driving, walking and looking at the hill, but there wasn’t any major jam-up.  There was traffic, of course, so there was a lot of stopping on the hill, but it was something to do and it wasn’t a problem.

You’ll see in the movie the two yellow three-wheeled vehicles in front of us.  We saw these little rental vehicles all over the place, they look like a fun thing to rent.

Today was touristy-stuff-in-San Francisco day for us.  We started off going down to Fisherman’s Wharf to see the sea lions and have lunch.

The sea lions are entertaining, a lot noisier and active than those we saw in the caves.  These San Francisco sea lions are quite noisy as they battle each other for positions on the floating docks.  Some of the sea lions lay on the docks quite mellow, but others refuse to let another onto their dock and are happy to fight it out.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

We went to the beach and walked down to Haystack Rock.  The beach of Cannon Beach is always fun to walk on and since the tide was out we got to look at beautiful starfish in the tide pools.  I took several pictures of some of the life attached to the rocks, so be sure to see our pics up at Flickr.

[See post to watch QuickTime movie]

Unfortunately as we we were starting south down 101 out of Cannon Beach we had a bit of a mishap.  Sarah Michael was sitting behind the passenger seat in the chair beneath where I have the wireless internet router gear setup when I took one of the windy turns a little too fast and all the stuff fell down right onto SM’s head!  She started bawling and we quickly pulled over to fix her up and better-secure the equipment.  Later we got some velcro from Fred Meyer to hold things down and that worked well the rest of the day.

In Tillamook we stopped at the Tillamook Air Museum which is cool.  It is housed in an old Navy hangar that was built during WWII for K-class airships- blimps.  The building is enormous and is impressive to stand inside.  They have many different aircraft there including an F-14 Tomcat and a Mini Guppy.  This was really a fun place to visit.

Traveling even on the windy roads was fine, I really like driving.  Our jobs today were that I drove, Jessie passengered and Sarah Michael alternated between playing and singing along with her iPod.  She loves the songs she learned at Vacation Bible School a couple weeks ago and so we loaded the CD onto the iPod. Jessie and I got quite a laugh out of hearing her mis-sing the God of Wonders song, instead of singing “You are Holy” she would belt out “You are Hoe-y”.

When it was dinner time we were driving through Newport, so we decided to find a place to eat.  We parked the RV and drove the Jeep down to the historic bayfront area to find some seafood.  Parking was a bit of a problem, we saw lots and lots of restaurants, with lots and lots of cars filling every spot.  So we kept driving until we were nearly at the end of the strip when parking started coming available.  At that same time we spied a restaurant called Local Ocean Seafoods that had that level of busy-ness that suggested we were at the right place.  Jessie and SM shared some crab, I had fish tacos.  The food was great.

More driving after dinner and then we finally we ended up in our new location.  We’ll reveal all tomorrow.