past two weekends in june

Wanted to share some fun pictures from the Academy of Sciences that Jeremy and I hit up the weekend before last since it was free for people living in the Castro/Haight neighborhoods (that's us!).
First thing we saw was the albino alligator they have there. Really freaky. We did see it move! I know it looks plastic.

Then we went into the rainforest area. You can see the natural light coming in from the rooftop windows. (You'll see them from the roof view too in a few pix)

A poison dart frog (little bit of red and blue on the leaf)

There's another bird in the nest too

There were a bunch of different types of butterflies all over the place

From the rainforest we went to the aquarium where we saw this big catfish

Afterwards we headed to the 'live roof'. The Academy is known for its sustainable architecture and uses the live roof to help cool the building. (They also use recycled denim scraps as insulation!) 

sunshine!


This past weekend Amanda, Jeremy and I started Friday night off by seeing The Shirelles @ The Rrazz Room in SF. They were on their 50th Anniversary tour and they put on such an amazing show! One of the original founders, Beverly Lee is on the left in this picture

The other two have been with her for 20-40 years though. Beverly was clearly the favorite among the crowd, but the other women had amazing voices on them! They bantered with the audience a bunch and invited people on stage a couple of times. The energy was so contageous. Here's them doing 'I met him on a Sunday' with help from some of the gentlemen in the audience. (I think it's worth watching all the way thru, the guy at the end who had 'Saturday' really hammed it up)

Then, of course, my favorite Shirelles song 'Will you still love me tomorrow?'

Here's the three of us at our table

Then afterwards, Amanda and I got to take a picture with Beverly Lee in the lobby

(thanks Erikka for that cardigan!)

Saturday, we headed off to Golden Gate Park in search of the cement slides @ The Koret Childen's Playground, thought to be the oldest children's playground in the nation. But we were sidetracked by the carousel, and had to give it a whirl.

weee!


Then we hit up the slide, both of us completely missing the 'no adults without accompaniment of child allowed sign'. It was fun, you had to slide down on a piece of cardboard, and it helped if you put sand down on the slide first.


We made a pit stop at the Bicycle Music Festival, but didn't take any pictures. It was fun though, it was completely powered by bicycles and while the band played, there were 5 bikes set up that people could ride to generate the electricity needed.

Then, since it was free (actually everything we did was free except we had to pay $2 to ride the carousel), we went up to the observation deck at the De Young museum that Tom and Marna told us about when they were in town visiting.

You can see the academy of sciences in the background!


To end the weekend was Fort Funston. With a name like that, you know you can't go wrong! We read that there would be hand-gliders and dogs, and we saw a bunch of both!

This guy took off right next to us!

It was a beautiful day with tons of flowers in bloom.

Jeremy sitting on one of the bunker/lookouts

Watch out, the cliffs are dangerous for doggies too!

Walking down to the beach

The beach was really nice, the sand was black, almost blue-ish with a golden-tan mixed in

Sea foam

Washed up jelly fish

Fun stick that I think looks like a sea dog


Now back to the work week, (big) sigh...

Russian River Canoe Trip

This weekend Jeremy and I were invited on a canoe trip down the Russian River. Since neither of us have ever been there and haven't really canoed all that much before, we were game. We left Saturday evening to meet up with Layla and her friends for some camping at the Sonoma Coast State Park. We stayed in Bodega Bay, which looks like a cool place to come back to sometime.

That night Sharon and Manuel cooked up some baddass carne asada tacos. Dylan provided the musical entertainment, while Layla helped to sing along.

We had a toasty fire

Check out Jeremy's artsy can in the fire shot

And what good would a fire be without...
smores!

More songs by the campfire, headlamp light

In the morning Jeremy and I sat by the inlet, a few hundred feet from where we camped out. There were horseback riders about, and people digging big holes in the sand, which we found out was clamming.

On the way to the Russian River, we got to drive along the coast line. It was amazing, especially with all the wild flowers in bloom!


Canoeing was a blast. 10 miles is a long ass time tho! We ended up out there for about 5 hours. Of course there were some excursions along the way. Here are some pix.

This was right before we ended up in the branches of a tree up ahead, due to my taking pictures

Here comes Jeremy on a rope swing we spotted.


To top off the day, we had ice cream for dinner at Screamin' Mimi's on the way home. Homemade waffle cones and ice cream?! YUM!