Sunday, August 14, 2011

17-Mile Drive

17-Mile Drive is a scenic road through Pebble Beach and Pacific Grove on the Monterey Peninsula in California, much of which hugs the Pacific coastline and passes famous golf courses, mansions and scenic attractions, including the Lone Cypress, Bird Rock and the 5,300-acre Del Monte Forest of Monterey Cypress trees.
Standing on a granite hillside off California's scenic 17-mile drive in Pebble Beach, the Lone Cypress is a western icon, and has been called one of the most photographed trees in North America. The tree is located between Cypress Point Golf Course and the Pebble Beach Golf Links, two of world's most well known golf courses. Possibly as old as 250 years, the cypress has been scarred by fire and has been held in place with cables for 65 years.
Bixby Bridge, on the Big Sur coast of California, is one of the most photographed bridges in California due to its aesthetic design, "graceful architecture and magnificent setting". It is a reinforced concrete open-spandrel arch bridge. The bridge is 120 miles south of San Francisco and 13 miles south of Carmel in Monterey County along State Route 1.
Huckleberry Hill Loop Trail is a 1.9 mile moderately trafficked loop trail located near Monterey, CA that features beautiful wild flowers and is rated as moderate. The trail is primarily used for hiking, walking, nature trips, and birding and is accessible year-round. Dogs are also able to use this trail.

Friday, August 12, 2011

San Francisco

San Francisco officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the cultural, commercial, and financial center of Northern California and the only consolidated city-county in California.

The Golden Gate Bridge is a suspension bridge spanning the Golden Gate strait, the one-mile-wide (1.6 km), three-mile-long (4.8 km) channel between San Francisco Bay and the Pacific Ocean. The structure links the American city of San Francisco, California – the northern tip of the San Francisco Peninsula – to Marin County, carrying both U.S. Route 101 and California State Route 1 across the strait.

The bridge is one of the most internationally recognized symbols of San Francisco, California, and the United States. It has been declared one of the Wonders of the Modern World by the American Society of Civil Engineers.

The Frommer's travel guide describes the Golden Gate Bridge as "possibly the most beautiful, certainly the most photographed, bridge in the world" It opened in 1937 and was, until 1964, the longest suspension bridge main span in the world, at 4,200 feet.


Lombard Street is an east–west street in San Francisco, California that is famous for a steep, one-block section with eight hairpin turns. Stretching from The Presidioeast to The Embarcadero (with a gap on Telegraph Hill), most of the street's western segment is a major thoroughfare designated as part of U.S. Route 101.


The famous one-block section, claimed as "The most crooked street in the world", is located along the eastern segment in the Russian Hill neighborhood. The street was named after Lombard Street in Philadelphia by San Francisco surveyor Jasper O'Farrell.

Lombard Street's famed route.

Alcatraz Island is located in the San Francisco Bay, 1.25 miles (2.01 km) offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison (1868), and a federal prison from 1933 until 1963. Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of aboriginal people from San Francisco who were part of a wave of Native activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s.


In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.


Aquarium of the Bay is a public aquarium located at Embarcadero and Beach Street, at the edge of Pier 39 in San Francisco, California. The Aquarium is focused on local aquatic animals from the San Francisco Bay and neighboring waters.

The Aquarium has over 50 sharks from species indigenous to the San Francisco Bay.

The Bay Bridge is a complex of bridges spanning San Francisco Bay in California. As part of Interstate 80and the direct road between San Francisco and Oakland, it carries about 240,000 vehicles a day on its two decks. It has one of the longest spans in the United States.

San Francisco Downtown

The San Francisco cable car system is the world's last manually operated cable car system. An icon of San Francisco, the cable car system forms part of the inter modal urban transport network operated by the San Francisco Municipal Railway. Of the twenty-three lines established between 1873 and 1890.

Twin Peaks - San Francisco