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There are all kinds of cute animals that live in the Sonoran desert. I’m particularly fond of the birds. Here are some photos I’ve taken of desert wildlife.

A hummingbird

Some kind of small brown and red bird

squirrel

A quail perhaps?

One of my favorite and probably one of the most surprising things about living the desert is how beautiful it is in the spring time.  Flowers appear everywhere on cacti, on the side of the road, in your yard, everywhere! The desert bursts forth with beautiful color. Here are some desert plants in bloom.

Our last day in San Francisco, we hopped onto a cable car, went to Fisherman’s Wharf and then Chinatown.

The San Francisco cable cars are so much fun to ride on. We caught it on Market Street, right at the turntable. they still make the cable car tracks change by hand. The car comes to the end of the line, where it gets onto a turntable, at which point two men come and push the car in a circle. When the car turns in a half circle around it stops on the tracks that go in the opposite direction.The ride itself is so much fun, albeit crowed. It its a series of ups and down on the hilly San Francisco streets. You can also see many of the traditional San Fran stops and landmarks from the car.

Once the car came to an end we ended up on Hyde Street pier.This is one of my favorite San Fran stops. It looked more like an actually pier than like Disney World, which is what I felt Fisherman’s Wharf looked like. It was was a windy, cold day, so Alan and I decided  to warm ourselves by drinking an Irish Coffee. We walked in the Buena Vista resturant, were it turns out that there is the best Irish Coffee in all of the west. It was amazing. The rest of the morning consisted of walking between the pier and eating delicious seafood.

Irish Coffee

Alan and his new friend

Old man and the sea

In the late afternoon we headed to Chinatown. Unfortunately, we didn’t have a lot of time to spend there are ended up just taking a quick walk through, and taking some fun pictures.

The afternoon of our first day in San Francisco was spend both lost wandering the city streets for hours and Japantown.  On our way to the MOMA earlier in the day Alan and I had wandered through an area of town known as the tenderloin district. Not a fun place to be! It is full of crazier than usual homeless people and has the unmistakable smell of urine. Needless to say Alan and I were determined to avoid this area on our way to Japantown. This led us miles out of the way and through some lovely neighborhoods. I have to say my feet have never been in as much pain, as at the end of the that day.

Ok, moving on to Japantown. Japantown is much smaller than Chinatown but is lovely none the less. It is all basically centered in a square with a pagoda and a Japanese mall.  When Alan and I got ,to Japantown the first thing we wanted to do was sit somewhere and eat sushi and have a drink. We came across a really cute and reasonable priced restaurant.  Since we were so famished from our walk, we ordered an appetizer of lotus roots. Have you ever eaten these? They are delicious. As was our sushi, and our giant beers.

After sushi we went exploring in the mall, coming away with some great incense, and these amazing kiwi flavored gummies. Here are some shots of our Japantown adventure.

There were tons of Cherry blossoms in bloom.

Inside the sushi restaurant. We were eating at an odd hour of the afternoon, so we basically had the restaurant to ourselves.

The pagoda

All the signs were in Japanese

My first look at San Francisco with Sarah was one of awe.  I had seen photographs and shows on the travel channel, but was unprepared for the sheer size of the city.  Not only the size, but how cool and “vintage” the city looked.  After a short drive (hahah 9 hours from San Diego through rush hour traffic in LA) we crossed into the city.

Once we settled into our hotel, located right in Union Square, Sarah and I set out on foot to photograph the city and check out all the cool sites San Francisco has to offer.

Our first stop was the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, which was farther than it looked in relation to our hotel map.

The design of the exterior of the building is a beautiful example of Modernist architecture and the interior is no exception.  Wide open spaces, coupled with columns, an open skylight, and a skybridge made this experience very awe-inspiring.

The SF MOMA from a distance

Sky Light at the SF MOMA

They have some very cool exhibits , but of particular interest to me, as a photographer, was a fantastic exhibit called “The View From Here”.

Just as photography has been instrumental in shaping California’s popular image, the state — and San Francisco, in particular — has played a key role in the history of photography as an art form. Reflecting this unusually symbiotic relationship, SFMOMA was one of the first museums in the country to treat photography as an equal to painting and sculpture. In celebration of the museum’s 75 years of engagement with the medium, this exhibition explores the variety and vitality of California’s photographic tradition from the 1840s to the present. Drawn from the SFMOMA collection, it includes Gold Rush-era daguerreotypes and early panoramas of San Francisco, pictures by members of the influential Group f.64, street and documentary photographs, conceptual work from the 1970s, and contemporary photographs. Artists include Ansel Adams, Lewis Baltz, Dorothea Lange, Ed Ruscha, Larry Sultan, Carleton Watkins, Carrie Mae Weems, and many others. – from the SF MOMA exhibit.

By the end of our journey up the four floors of the building, we were absolutely exhausted and stopped to have some coffee on their rooftop garden. We then set out for our next adventure.  Getting lost on the way to Japantown!