The visitor center at the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park offers visitors a glimpse into a salty past. Most visitors to San Francisco’s northern shore only see a tsunami of stores that sell trinkets and bobbles; however, the curious will find ‘ The Waterfront’ exhibit to offer a rich story.
The Waterfront is not just an exhibit; it is an experience of more than 150 years in the making. You can discover a time before European settlement, learn about how the Gold Rush shaped San Francisco, hear voices of sailors in a Barbary Coast saloon, and even see lumber being transported over your head as a ship delivers its cargo. The exhibits also include fishing boats, actual equipment and several hundred artifacts woven throughout the walk. A very realistic looking street fish market impressed my young daughter.
Afterward, make a short walk across the street to explore the historic sailing ships of the Hyde Street Pier. Visiting the ships will cost you a little, but it is far more valuable than what is sold in most of the surrounding tourist stores. The queen of all the historic ships on display is the Balclutha, you can get a better look with this video-
Learn more: http://www.nps.gov/safr/index.htm
After purchasing tickets you enter a large room with an impressive exhibit about the Transcontinental Railroad. This is an immersive, life-sized diorama that literally pulls the visitor inside to reflect on the arduous task of building a railroad over the rugged Sierra Nevada Mountains. At the center of the experience is a beautiful locomotive. In front of the engine is a tunnel – a masterwork of art – that plays on the eye and appears to continue into the snowy and cold mountains.
My daughter enjoyed a restored sleeper car, featured as part of the “Golden Age†of rail travel. Inside, the car was darkened, it rocked and swayed, complete with rail noise and passing light signals through the windows. It really did feel like being in a passenger car at night.
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My visit to the tallgrass with my Father started in the town of Pawhuska, Oklahoma, close to the preserve’s southern entrance. The drive down a paved county road was surrounded by woodlands but this soon turned to prairie and the road turned to gravel and then a packed caliche clay.
A plaque near the entrance of the preserve includes the text, “The Tallgrass Prairie Preserve. You stand at the south edge of the largest unplowed, protected tract which remains of the 142 million acres of tallgrass prairie grasslands that once stretched from Canada to the Gulf of Mexico. Today, less than ten percent still exists, found mostly in the Flint Hills and Osage Hill regions of Kansas and Oklahoma. In an increasingly crowded and noisy world, what you see is an oasis of space and silence. Here you can experience the same beautiful vistas that greeted the earliest human hunters and gathers many thousands of years ago. This area is indeed a national treasure. Please treat it with respect.â€
Further beyond a few dark bison sentinels stood at the side of hills, these were apparently lone males who had been pushed out from the herds. The mature males, after mating, are no longer needed by the female-dominated herds and are excluded.
A herd of bison was just ahead. It was easy to see their dark forms against the dry and brown landscape of late autumn. The bison allowed us to slowly drive past. They did not appear to mind us and continued with their business. If they wanted to the bison could cause us some harm as these are great creatures measuring 5-6 feet at the shoulders and 7-10 feet in length. Plus bison can weight up to 2,000 pounds or more! Some of the individuals peered at us through thick, wooly looking coats that would soon protect them from the coming winter cold. We watched them for some time.
We passed another two groups of bison close to the road. The ‘Bison Loop’ road offered additional miles of great sightseeing.
The Preserve Headquarters offers a great visitors center. One memorable exhibit showed just how tall the grasses at the tallgrass prairie can grow – as tall as a grown man. The grasses on the tallgrass are very nutritious and part of an amazingly fertile ecosystem. Another item was a table filled with bison bones and fur. I had expected the fur to be harsh feeling but, it was surprisingly soft and extremely warm. A scapula (shoulder blade) was at least 21 inches in length and 14 inches wide – a big bone for a large animal.
headquarters. I was informed by a docent who has been at the preserve for years the best time to visit is in the spring (May) when the wildflowers carpet the landscape and the colors are superb. I plan to return at that time.
The Cascades Raptor Center cares for the “sick, injured and orphaned raptors†in central Oregon “with the goal of returning as many as possible to the wild.â€
I encountered these walking chefs several times, but the most memorable experience was just after they had provided the juiciest looking rat to a Bald Eagle. I quietly walked up, the eagle was about 8 feet away. The eagle stood at least 25 inches tall; it 
had a huge head crowned with white feathers and an intimidating yellow beak that reminded me of an upside-down hunting knife. The rat was pinned with sharp and massive talons equal to the size of my hand. The great beak was quickly reducing the rat’s body to gulp-sized morsels. In a final gulp the hind end of the rat – tail and all – was swallowed. Then the eagle’s gaze settled on me. It had eyes the size of large marbles; black orbs surrounded by a ring of golden yellow. We contemplated each other for a moment, but the eagle did not look at me – rather, the eagle looked through me. For an instant, a primal fear cautioned inside me that I did not want to be an enemy of this creature, and I was thankful for the cage. Still looking at me the eagle lowered its head and in a quick wave-like motion raised the head and shrieked at me three times with a high-pitched siren. The sound was loud, piercing and intense…it was wild. Wow!
Feeling I had intruded upon the powerful creature I lowered my gaze and did not look directly at him. I quietly walked off but the great raptor watched me closely as I departed.
As I left a private group was being treated to an interpretive demonstration about the Raptors and several were being shown. Some friendly docents, with raptors on their arms, were very eager to share information.
had our backpacks briefly inspected, and we walked up the gangplank. We joined about 950 other people on-board that day to experience Fleet Week, a time during the middle of October when active military ships dock in San Francisco, California. The passengers of the O’Brien would be enjoying the events that day from the middle of San Francisco Bay.
At 10 am a deep yet high pitched ‘Bhwaaahh’ and a river of steam gushed from the ship’s turret. Gigantic ropes that held the ship fast were brought aboard and a tugboat helped to pull the 441 foot long Liberty Ship from the dock. Looking over the aft of the ship I could see sheets of spray being ejected from the water every second as the massive propeller chopped through the water. We were underway.
Our first treat that morning was seeing the Golden Gate Bridge up close. This massive structure dwarfed the O’Brien as the ship chugged under the mile-long span and out in the Pacific. After a few minutes, we turned and returned under the bridge to parallel the San Francisco waterfront. There was a definite presence of the security: police and military boats skittered quickly over the water to create a boundary area, an exclusion zone, for the aircraft to perform that had to be free of boats.
The O’Brien was the only ship to parade in front of the waterfront that day. The day before the USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) a supercarrier, the USS Antietam (CG-54) a guided missile cruiser, the USS Milius (DDG-69) a guided missile destroyer and a number of naval vessels, entered San Francisco Bay in a Parade of Ships with the O’Brien bringing up the back; as we skirted down 
the waterfront and under the second massive bridge in the bay, the Bay Bridge, we passed many of these ships now at port. In the distance, anchored in the middle of the bay the impressive and intimidating looking supercarrier, the USS Carl Vinson. Around all of the ships were gray-colored military patrol boats protecting the perimeter of their respective vessels.
tight arc over our heads and into the exclusion zone we had traversed earlier. At first, it was hard for us to view the air show but the O’Brien positioned itself between Alcatraz Island and the Bay Bridge; this location allowed us to look down the two or three-mile long ‘channel’ of where the planes would be performing.
The sleek Red and White Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) Snowbirds soared overhead. These individual aircraft moved as one organism in the sky, with often only a few feet from each other. When they separated each became a unique part of the whole in performing their choreographed maneuvers. At times it appeared the planes were playing a game of chicken turning to the side at the last second as they zipped past each other.
A thunderous and encompassing roar ripped through the air – splitting the solitude. The sound made the O’Brien shudder and scared the life out of everyone. The passengers looked up to see the gray F-18 several hundred feet overhead slicing like a great axe through the air-water vapor was rapidly condensing at the back of the wings creating a white cloud that followed the jet. In just a second or two the fighter was already distant – the white cloud now appeared to be a gigantic cone that enveloped the back of the plane – yellow and red fire spewed from the engines 
and the cone still seemed to grow wider. Now the thunderous sound caught up to us, the sound grew deeper, louder and could be felt in one’s chest. The plane now appeared to be halfway to the Golden Gate Bridge a distance of several miles, we still had to cover our ears because the noise was so loud. The jet pulled up and disappeared in a fog bank that seemed to appear off the ocean from nowhere.
A United Airlines 747 was seen low in the north, it banked right, flew next to the Bay Bridge then between the O’Brien and San Francisco. Some laughed as to why a commercial jet was in an air show, but as this massive plane flew over us, they stopped laughing. It is one thing to see such a huge jet at the airport, but when it is directly over you…you get an appreciation for the scale and presence. The jet made three passes for the spectators, just a few hundred feet over the water, and on the last pass pulled up extremely tight climbing into the sky.
A sleek looking F15-E Strike Eagle dominated the sky, it too made a number of passes, rolls, dives, and maneuvers to showcase its dexterity. Again the people of the O’Brien loved the show.
sought shelter behind walls and side rails to shield them from the wind. Most were not prepared for the sudden change in weather.
The O’Brien spent the next thirty minutes slowly maneuvering back to its berth. The volunteer deckhands wrestled giant sized and intertwined ropes to secure the ship. After fifteen minutes or so the gangplank went down and we disembarked.
assert control over the land. The Tiroleans –led by a local folk hero Andreas Hofer – rallied to protect their homes and their independence. The most famous battle was the Third Battle of the Bergisel in which the Tiroleans fought off the invaders. The battle was memorialized in a giant panoramic painting that is 1,000 square meters (10,764 square feet) in area. Today, this huge and historic 360-degree painting is accentuated with bullet shredded trees, cannons, and war-torn land, giving the viewer the perspective of being in the battle.
Up the hill is the entrance to the Bergisel Ski Jump and Stadium.
As I entered the Stadium a swoosh was heard. A man had just launched from the edge of the jump and ‘flew’ with grace for several seconds until his skis made contact with the steep artificial ground, in several additional seconds he had stopped and left the field. Everyone watched the jumpers for some time with their practice runs. It was very impressive to see.
The first stop is the armory. Here visitors are greeted by a life-sized exhibit of armor-clad knights on horseback. The craftsmanship of the armor is first-rate. The metal work is so shiny that at times a visitor can be momentarily blinded by the reflecting lights. Adjacent rooms have a weaponry-cornucopia of swords, pikes, lances and a variety of hunting blades, even some of the earliest rifles.
The Chamber of Arts and Curiosities lives up to the name. Some of the items in the collection do not need an introduction, like a painting of Vlad the Impaler, who was notoriously known throughout the centuries as inflicting horrific, slow and grotesque deaths upon his enemies. His atrocities have sobered many throughout the years, causing a person to wonder if such a human was really a monster? Vlad was the inspiration for the character we know today as Dracula.
The collection includes hundreds of items, but one tiny wooden sculpture, called the Țdlein, less than foot tall, is so ornately carved with such precision and detail that one catches their breath Рonly then to see the carving is without facial features Рa skeletal head with deep and empty eye sockets and the toothy face of Death Рand one catches their breath again.
Walking across the green courtyard in the brilliant sunlight you pass a small cafe and walk to the upper castle. Here is the Elegant Spanish Hall. This beautiful hall was built between 150 and 1572 and is truly a feast for the eyes. As in years before people have donned their finest attire to attend waltzes, balls, and social events and visit this hall for an evening of revelry and fun. Today, waltzes and other events continue held here in this lovely hall.
Finish up the visit by exploring the lush grounds that surround the castle.
