Day 2: Mother nature always gets the last laugh

February 14, 2010

Raccoons got our food! Oh the humanity! ...but more on that in a minute.

One of the coolest things about last night were the sounds. You already know that the city was right across the water but it was too far away to hear. It was beautiful and strange all at once. The only noticeable noises were the waves lapping at the shore and the sounds of the fog horns of the large ships that moved along through the night.

...somewhere in the night several owls landed in the tree above my tent and started calling to each other. I have never been that close to an owl that I can recall and it was beautiful.

Ricky was already awake by the time I got up... "The raccoons got all of our food!" she said. I have to admit that my first instinct was to laugh; don't ask me why? Though that changed when I realized they got my chocolate! I latched the raccoon box but the latches were not that good--either that or they were raccoons with very high I.Q.'s? But either way, my chocolate was gone, which was painful indeed!

They didn't get it all though, we still had our oatmeal, two peanut butter packets, a smoked salmon pack, one small orange juice, a couple handfuls of trail mix and 2 granola bars. But best of all, they did not take our tea or coffee! Maybe mother nature is not so bad after all!

Thankfully we did not have too far to ride and we figured we could make it on the food that we had with out being tempted to gnaw off our arms. So we had our coffee, ate our oatmeal and were off...

The morning fog had not burned off so the island had a completely different effect from the day before. Because of that we decided to ride the 6 mile circuit twice. By doing so we got a completely different atmosphere as the sun began to peak through the clouds.

We stopped at the old immigration station that processed millions of immigrants, mostly from Asia, back in the day. It was a sad place, based on the description of the conditions. Though it was interesting at the same time...

It was about that time I got down to my last peanut butter packet, the last of my food. "There is no food here," said the helpful park ranger, "but there is a snack machine at the ferry stop." WOO-HOOOO! So off we went on our hunt for food.

At last we arrived at the snack machine--only to find that it was out of order! DAOOOH! There WAS a coke machine though, so my lunch consisted of my last peanut butter packed and a coke. Not exactly the lunch of champions but we survived.

In the end, it was a great trip...

I will be adding some facts and useful information about visiting angel island but I still need to put all that together. I'll post it all when its ready. Until then...

That's me. My camera battery ran out so Ricky took today's pictures with her cell phone.

Riding through one of the military installations that was in service as late as WWII

Huh!? This was at the immigration station. Kind of makes me appreciate modern paint a little more than I used too.

The walls of the immigration station were covered with these characters. Apparently most of them tell sad tails of suffering by the authors who were not allowed to enter the country and were often held for years. It must have been frustrating indeed to be so close to San Francisco and not be able to get there.

Oh snack machine! Why have you forsaken me in my hour of need!?
So tantalizingly close!

Me and my lunch of Coke and peanut butter

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