The Microwave has just pinged and at last I have a sausage muffin in my hands. The problem with our rush to collect the RV, get to the campsite and travel to San Francisco to meet Matt was that we had only a limited time to stock the cupboards at Wal-Mart.
It was a rubbish store to be fair. J was something like Spitting Image's Queen Mother as he wandered round "I used to live in Sacramento you know! And they would never have organised it like this or stocked it so poorly".
So we did a rubbish shop. Harriet was ok (we found an equivalent to Ready-Brek) but yesterday there was no breakfast for us. The fridge contained milk, baby juice, beer and Margaritas.
No problem I thought - you cannot walk more than five minutes in this country without finding some take-out.
Wrong. Yes you can if you walk alongside the 101 down the Redwood Highway. Repair garages, spinal doctors and fabric superstores there are a-plenty but nothing to eat. Breakfast is the best thing in this country - my thoughts were full of pancakes, biscuits (scones to the UK readers) and French toast but thinking was as far as it went.
Now no doubt you are really worried for my well-being but fret not because we were soon sailing across the Bay to salvation. The problem with the City though was that we went from no choice to too much choice and in a panic ended up in McDonalds. Not good but enough to stave off that hunger.
We met Matt in the Nordstrom shopping centre where we were trying to find a hat that Harriet would keep on. That having proved impossible we had a drink in the cafe and planned the day.
We decided to go to the California Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate park. It was a mission to get there on the bus but once there it was a spectacular place.
I have been to some great aquaria including the amazing one in Sydney but this was in another league. There were so many creatures I had never seen below including the leafy seadragon. Please google these amazing looking creatures - to describe them as big sea horses that look like seaweed would be a crime.
All the displays were very new and afforded some great views of all the fish. Even the simple tank of jellyfish was strikingly lit and drew you towards it.
The next section we visited was a recreation of the rainforest. Within the building the had created a dome with a ramp that spiralled upwards to demonstrate the life at different levels of the forest. Butterflies and tropical birds flew about in the humid air and at the bottom there was water filled with large prehistoric fish. At the top of the exhibit you take the lift down to the basement to get up close to the fish.
We took Harriet to see the penguins in the Africa exhibit but she was more interested in just walking about. It was touching to see her standing at one of the displays really concentrating on the lizard sitting on the other side of the glass.
Finally we toured the extreme mammals exhibit. This was more for the adults and was really fascinating. I learned that animals I thought of as dinosaurs (dimetrodon) are actually closer to mammals than dinosaurs. The exhibit does a good job of showing that for every 'typical' mamallian trait there is an exception. It seems that being a mammal is something to do with bones in the ear and everything else (warm blood, giving birth to live young etc) is up for grabs.
The return journey was another nightmare. J's arms gave him a lot of pain so it was easier for us to walk back to the ferry terminal. It was a long, long way but we were able to stop off and get the muffins and pastries. Everthing was going to be alright.
