Sometimes the trip you need to start off the year is a quick one to visit with friends that don't live too far away. After a much needed break from travel after the holiday season, February took me and my guy just a couple hours north to San Francisco. It was an easy time with friends, a day boat trip out to the Farallon Islands and a morning walking around Sutro Baths. Couldn't have been a more pleasant way to get the year started after a long stint of not sleeping in my own bed.
The Farallons are an island group about 26 miles off the coast of San Francisco. The island is affectionately known as the "Sharks Teeth" because in the fall you find a long concentration of great white sharks. Being that we were there in the late winter we caught a couple of humpback whales and plenty of birds. There are no permanent residents on the Farallons as they are protected as a nature and bird preserve. A few scientists rotate in and out to study the wildlife on the island. A lonely life.
Sutro Baths was a swimming pool complex built in 1896 in the Land's End area of San Francisco. You can now explore around these ocean fed pools by foot, but I doubt it'd be ideal to swim in them. Adjacent to the baths is a system of paths that connects to Land's End. The paths are lined with Pacific cypress trees and when the light shines through them just right it's pure magic.
