Sunday Drive to San Francisco - Exploratorium

April 18, 2010

In deciding not to visit the California Academy of Sciences due to the rather hefty admission charge in relation to how long we wanted to spend there, we were searching for another idea of what to do after lunch. Patrick came up with, what we eventually found was a doozy, so we set the GPS to take us to the Exploratorium! It is a little like some parts of various hands-on museums we've all been too, but not so many in one place. All the exhibits were very interesting and almost all of them worked despite hard use. It is a place that's definitely worth returning to more than once. Fun and educational for all ages and certainly not over crowded this day, at least.

The photo above was taken from Judy's perspective and the one below from Karen's in an exhibit where we sat on opposite sides of a glass mirror that allowed us to interweave parts of our faces together to make a new look. Interesting!

Here Karen and Patrick try to keep spinning rings on a large spinning disc:

Here Harry is standing under a piano suspended overhead! What is this guy thinking? (Actually, I told him to go do it and he might not have seen the piano there. The exhibit was to point out the difference in people's comfort level with danger - something like that).

This exhibit made us all think of Kurt's foray into chaos theory with a pendulum that was designed to exhibit it's unpredictable characteristics .


After staying to the close of the museum, we ventured back across the Golden Gate Bridge where dozens, if not hundreds of pedestrians were taking advantage of a beautiful day to stroll across which we had hoped to do but left for another visit to the city. Back in Santa Rosa, we encountered a mural depicting the surrounding hills and one of those contented California cows we see in the ads for the cheese produced here.

Dinner was at one of the various locations of Mary's Pizza Shack, this one on 4th Street. The salads are special and the rest of our choices of pizza and Italian entrees were excellent. The decor was interesting consisting of vintage kitchen implements, tableware, scales etc. Not the least of which was an entire wall of completed paint-by-number paintings that were actually WELL done. Too much. A very full and enjoyable day for sure.