California Academy of Sciences

My mom and I visited the Cal Academy yesterday; I had secured tickets for a talk given by a herpetologist about Sao Tome, an equatorial oceanic island off the west coast of Africa. It is known for its unique biodiversity, as was exemplified by the wonderful pictures in the PowerPoint presentation.

We arrived shortly before noon, only to find a drastic parking situation (we took a small but pleasant hike to get to the Academy), and a building evacuated because of a fire alarm. As it was "Free Wednesday," there were TONS of people there, and it was drizzling. Not conducive to "no pushing, take your time..." We got inside and after scoping out postcards at the gift shop, headed upstairs for the talk. Our talk (by Dr. Bob Drewes and Roberta Ayres) will be posted in the near future online for all to see, courtesy of Fora.TV, a website (Fora TV). They host the video of many Cal Academy talks, of which there are more than 200 on their site already. Check it out!

After the talk we grabbed a bite to eat and visited the white alligator and his giant turtle buddies. We headed downstairs, hung out with the crazy cool seahorses, and pet some starfish. We headed upstairs, jumped in the super short line for the rainforest dome, and finally got to see the inside! The line has always been too long before. There were beautiful birds and butterflies, and lots of humidity. We then dashed off to spend the last ten minutes of their open hours in the Extreme Mammals exhibit upstairs. The creatures that inhabited this earth before us were GNARLY! They had teeth and tusks protruding at the oddest angles!

After we were tossed out at closing, we headed over to the Disney Museum in the Presidio, in search of cool Mickey postcards. We found them, thanks to Christina Toy and a great heads up! They too then closed, so we headed off to Pier 39, to visit the Parks Conservancy store. I'd been waiting to visit with great anticipation, since this store sells lenticular postcards of the various Parks locations (Muir Woods, Alcatraz, etc.). When we arrived, THEY WERE CLOSED! Even though their hours stated 8pm, they were locked up tight. I was super bummed, but while my mom had run off to chat with the sea lions nearby, the dude showed back up, saying that he left for a bite to eat. Thanks for sub-par use of the "Back in 10 minutes" sign, dork. In any case, they had awesome postcards, and pretty cool books/art/etc., so we hung out there for a while and then drifted across the walk to the Marine Mammal Store, which also carried some pretty cute postcards.

Hopefully sometime soon I can come back with more time and hang out on the pier a little more.