For as long as I’ve known of their existence I have longed to see them. Forever after I assumed that meant going to China and, given our travel plans, China always seemed forever away. It never really occurred to me that they might actually come here. You see, they don’t get around much and I can’t really blame them, being clay and all.
One hundred years after Thomas Moran painted his 1912 work Grand Canyon with Rainbow (left), we discovered it pretty much exactly as he had left it (right).
A collection of travel-related magnets on a friend’s refrigerator in Seattle recently inspired a guessing game; one of our newfound favorites, actually. It’s the same game we played to an audience of salespeople at a Peter Lik photography gallery in Las Vegas. To their great annoyance (and our great amusement) we showed far less interest in spending thousands of dollars on glossy, wall-sized landscapes than we did in guessing their location.
As seen from the Marin Headlands
The other great thing about large cities is all that stuff you did the last time you were here is totally worth doing again.
Foggy view from the California Palace of the Legion of Honor
You’ve seen the Golden Gate Bridge and ridden the cable cars. You’ve driven the crookedest street in America, ferried to The Rock, and climbed Coit Tower. You’ve been here before and so had we. But that doesn’t mean you’ve “done” San Francisco. Not even close.
The wonderful thing about large cities is that their main attractions are really only appetizers for dozens of other lesser frequented sites, streets, neighborhoods and activities. Here are four that occupied us during our most recent trip to the City by the Bay (five if you count the Legion of Honor pictured above).
The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph
The downside of living in an RV is that when repairs need to be made, your entire residence is in the shop. The upside is that when your house is unavailable, it frees up time for additional sightseeing.
During a stopover in San Jose while the RV’s engine was being given a once-over, we sought out places that otherwise weren’t on the agenda. In the heart of Silicon Valley, we bypassed modern or tech-related for historical immersion.
Replica of King Tutankhamun’s Sarcophagus
Where might a museum acquire a pair of sarcophagi? If your answer was the Neiman Marcus Christmas Book, the over-the-top holiday catalog featuring fantasy gifts like a jet pack and a $100K Versailles-inspired hen house, you would be right. In 1971, the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum bought two ancient Egyptian coffins touted in a section of the catalog titled “His and Her Gifts for People Who Have Everything.” One of the sarcophagi came with an unexpected bonus: a mummy.
Burgeoning from a single artifact, a statue of Sekhmet, the lion goddess, to more than 4,000 items—including its Neiman Marcus purchases—the Rosicrucian displays the largest collection of authentic ancient Egyptian artifacts in the Western U.S. There is also a two-room, walk-through recreation of an ancient subterranean tomb.
Baboon Mummy
Just enough information is offered to inform and intrigue about aspects of ancient Egyptian life—mummification (including that of animals such as the much-revered cats that were part of nearly every home) and other burial practices, everyday household items and their uses, the roles of pharaohs, and the pantheon of gods and goddesses they worshipped.
Even the non-religious can worship architectural beauty. The Cathedral Basilica of St. Joseph has the hallmarks of a grandiose Catholic church—stained glass, marble, murals, statuary. The sum of the whole is greater and more vivid than those we’ve seen at other churches and cathedrals across the country. Instead of one dome there are four, while vaulted ceilings stretch skyward.
The current incarnation of St. Joseph, which began as a modest adobe structure, dates to the late 1800s and is the fourth one constructed on this site. The others were destroyed by earthquake or fire. The cathedral is still in use as a place of worship and a performance venue for choral and music ensembles, accompanied by a circa 1886 mechanical Odell organ, one of only four in the U.S.
After a day of admiring artifacts and architecture, we received word that the RV was outfitted with a brand-new battery and fit for the road once again. Music to our ears.
Everywhere Once 