road trippin' part 1

So far, our trip has been pretty successful. We started out with two days in San Diego, sitting on the beach and attempting to visit Balboa Park, which was highly unfulfilling in terms of park-ness. We spent maybe 15 minutes driving around looking for somewhere sizeable to sit on the grass, and when we finally found one I got the crap scared out of me by a caterpiller that crawled onto the armpit of my sweater and poked me with, I suppose, its foot. Of course, this resulted in my yelping and ripping the sweater off and then nervously swatting at my armpits for the next hour every time I thought about it. Then we spent a long time trying to find an open lesbian bar (harder than it sounds) and drove through the gaslamp quarter. There were hills there that impressed me, but were trivial compared to San Francisco.
Next, we went to visit Jesse in Santa Cruz. What an awesome city! Fairly small, all hills and forest and beach. We visited the crazy-ass boardwalk (passing on the fried twinkies), went to see some redwoods, and went to a wine tasting (yummy!). Anna and I also visited Natural Bridges, a state park that could more aptly be titled Natural Bridge, since there is only one bridge there. Also, weirdly, the park supposedly has full wireless internet access, god knows why.
Yesterday we drove here, to San Francisco. We left super early, as Anna and I were attempting to get a camping site at a state park and we realized too late that it is 4th of July weekend and everybody is trying to camp at the fifteen camping sites here. Anyway, we left at about 7:45 and still didn't get a spot, at which point we drove for about 2 hours up Highway 1 to another site before deciding, just as we got there, that it was a bad idea and we should really just stay at a hostel. So we drove back. Very scenic, but totally unnecessary. Anyway, we came back to the city, visited the pirate store at 826 Valencia (arrrrrgh!!!) and Good Vibrations, then had another somewhat unsatisfying trip to Golden Gate Park (it was very cold and windy). We ate dinner at the Stinking Rose, a restaurant that "seasons its garlic with food," with two of Jesse's friends. The drive home was terrible, including me having to roll my car backwards down the biggest hill ever to be paved and a near-death experience at a very confusing intersection. Today, we saw about half of a play put on by the San Francisco Mime Troupe (www.sfmt.org) about people trying to do good but being corrupted by money. Then we walked around the Castro (rainbow flags galore) and downtown Berkeley for a while and came home. Tomorrow Jesse and his friend leave for China, Anna and I check into a budget hotel and wander the city, and parking will most likely be terrible.
Anna says I sound like I'm not having fun, but really I am. So there.