San Francisco then Napa Valley

Ern and friends were having a swell time in Oakland but were also being drawn by the siren call of nearby San Francisco.

The Exploratorium is a science museum founded by physicist Frank Oppenheimer, younger brother of J. Robert "Boom Boom" Oppenheimer.

There was whole band of people in weird costumes playing weird homemade instruments like pots and pans. It was sort of like if California came to life.

We checked out the farmer's market at the Ferry Building.

Ernie was a huge fan of the peaches here. I don't know if this was his first peach but I'm confident that if he had eaten one previously that today he forgot it forever.

I bought some to take back to Aunt Barbara's house and whenever I started eating one Ernie would follow me around making eating sounds with his mouth until I gave him a bite.

The farmers markets on this whole trip were so fun. A stall would casually have 9 types of peaches for you to taste.

We ate Señor Sisig which was like a Filipino burrito place? I don't know. 

Ube horchata for the win!

Ernie fell asleep in the car on the way back so then we called an audible and started researching places in a decent driving radius from SF.

It turned out one of those places was Napa Valley. I'd never been there before so... why not? We did a wine walk thing at Beringer Vineyards in St. Helena, California.

It was fun but it was significantly hotter than San Francisco. I feel like the Midwest is a place where the city an hour drive away isn't that different in temperature. But on the coasts with their mountains and oceans and other bizarre phenomena the weather gets all silly.

I feel like the signage really escalated quickly.

We finished up our adventure with a meal at In-N-Out Burger.

Hello and Goodbye Oakland Athletics

At some point Aunt Barbara invited us to stay at her house in Oakland, California. People really need to be careful when they offer such things. They are probably just being nice most of the time but I will definitely show up on your porch ready to party.

Ernie helped us get packed up.

There was a good sized bird's nest in the parking lot for us to examine.

Our flight luckily was not affected but there was some mayhem in the airport. There were very long customer service lines of people whose flights all got nuked at the same time.

Ern did some lounging before his flight.

I remember one time we traveled across Europe with one backpack each. Now we need one of those circus trains with a hole for the giraffe's head to poke through.

Aunt Barbara spoiled us on arrival at her lovely home. This could have been enough food to last us our entire stay.

Ron, Tom, Barbara.

Aunt Barbara is a professional public transportation user.

We spent the evening at an Oakland A's game at Oakland Coliseum.

"The use of an elephant to symbolize the A's dates back to the early years of the franchise, when a group of Philadelphia businessmen, headed by sporting goods executive Benjamin Shibe, became the team's first owners. When asked to comment, John McGraw, manager of the New York Giants of the rival National League, said something to the effect that "Shibe had bought himself a white elephant." In response, A's manager (and future owner) Connie Mack selected the elephant as the team symbol and mascot. From time to time an illustration of an elephant has been featured on the Athletics uniform, from 1988 until 2024."

Collin and Laure met up with us as well. They were all good sports about our request to go to a game. The Oakland Athletics are moving to Las Vegas and this is their last season here. They were understandably sore about it as this was the team they grew up with.

We wore our Cardinals gear. There were actually a few other people wearing theirs as well. Weird.

Someone nearby caught one of these free squishy baseballs and handed it to Ern. He pretty excited about it.

I mentioned in a recent post that Ernie has been on an elephant kick lately, so I thought that he would be excited to meet the A's mascot, Stomper. We were here on Super Hero night, though, and so Stomper was dressed up kind of weird... anyway Ernie was not a fan and did not want to meet him. Oh well.

Despite the team's demise there was still plenty of merch purchasing opportunities. Many of these bootleg shirts being sold outside the stadium had funny slogans saying that the owner should sell the team so that it could stay in town.

There was even a guy in a Cardinals hat on the BART home.