USS Potomac and San Fran

Sunday 8/19 USS Potomac
We stayed in the San Jose Embassy Suites last night. It was a nice room (and weekend rates!); they were hosting middle school SOCCER kids, so the place was crawling with munchins. Fortunately, we made it to breakfast before the throngs of them hit, so there was a little food left. After a huge breakfast, we headed north into San Francisco.

I was dreading traffic in the burb, but the drive up 880 was pretty painless. AND we found FREE parking—almost unheard of in the city! We arrived a little after noon to visit the USS Potomac, the yacht of President Franklin Roosevelt. Our group only had five people in it, so the guide was able to take more time and gave us a lot more info than normal. This website has more pics of it: http://www.usspotomac.org/photos.cfm
The ship started life as a cutter, but Roosevelt wanted a simple ship to travel the east coast on. It was nice, but certainly not ornate as you would imagine a presidential conveyance would be.

The ship (after presidential use) was owned by multiple people, including Elvis, who didn’t want it, but didn’t want to see it scrapped either. After it fell in disrepair, a company bought it and was towing it somewhere, which was really a cover to smuggle drugs in the tow ship. So it was confiscated by the coast guard, and tied to a pier near here. But they weren’t watching it closely enough, and old pilings under the pier HOLED the bottom of the ship after repeated low tides and it SANK right at the pier!

Embarrassed, the coast guard had to raise it, and it was sold at auction, when Oakland purchased it for $15K. Five million later, it was restored. Besides dock tours, it does a cruise around the bay several days per month, but the times don’t work for us.

Next, we (I was reluctant) headed to the waterfront and to get ice cream at Ghiradelli Square. Wow, what a mess. Getting across the Bay Bridge took an hour—most of it waiting to get to the toll booth. HEY ARNOLD, WANNA STOP THE GREENHOUSE GASES OUT HERE? ELIMINATE THE TOLL BOOTHS AND THE SIX THOUSAND CARS PER HOUR IDLING WAITING IN LINE AT THE BAY BRIDGE!

The next challenge I knew would be finding parking on the waterfront. The suburban is NOT an easy car to find parking for! Near the Square, there was nothing on the street. And I listened to the princess who said “go in this garage for public parking.” OUCH.

Once in, we were committed. It was 99.9% full, and going up and down required hair pin corners between concrete walls, barely wide enough to fit the burb.

Looking for a space or a way out, we finally found ONE parking space. Fortunately, there was a small sports car on one side, so we could get in. I worried that he would leave before we got back, and we couldn’t get out…………….

Uphill to the Chocolate factory, and the line for ice cream. Enjoyed a decadent hot fudge sundae (we split it Susie!).

Made it back to the garage, wrestled with the ATM-like machine to pay the fee to get the ticket to get out, and fortunately made it to the burb BEFORE the sport’s car left, so we got out ok………..

Happiness is San Fran in your rear view mirror! Told Chari I didn’t need to see any more of the city and they’d taken my last parking fee, ever.

Headed south and east to Livermore for the evening. Only stress getting here was we were one traffic tie-up from running out of gas, but we made it with 2 gallons to spare!

After the fuel up, and checking into the motel, I hid under the covers while Chari went to Wendy’s for our dinner. Monday is a non-driving/non-traffic day!

For the next 3 or so days, we might have less access to internet............ Stay tuned.

ron