Leon Turnbull Photography

This past weekend my sister flew down from Canada to San Francisco to run in the Nike Women’s Marathon (she did the half marathon). On Saturday, I drove down to the big city to meet up with her and spend the afternoon with her.

She wanted to go to the King Tutankhamun exhibit at the De Young Museum, so that is what we did. It was crazy busy there, and they herded us through the exhibit like cows. I also was carrying my big heavy camera bag with me (I brought it in hopes of catching a sunset later), and they made me carry it in my hands down below my waist. Crikey, that was tiring walking through the exhibit like that. All in all, the exhibit was fairly interesting, but we were both quite disappointed that they did not have any of the major burial items from his tomb; mostly, it was just small items that were found in the tomb.

Afterwards, we drove over to the Sutro Baths ruins, which were nearby. These are the ruins of an old bath house along the ocean front. We saw a great blue heron fishing along the water. My sister thought it was dead (or stuffed) because it did not move a muscle for five minutes or more. Even when I went down close to it with my camera, it did not budge an inch (usually, those things fly away if you get too close to them). Finally, it did move and she believed me that it was alive (I was wondering myself for awhile there).

It was still early, but Tania wanted to get back to the hotel for an early dinner and rest for the big race the next day. So I dropped her back at the hotel, then drove back to the Sutro Baths for sunset. There were plenty of people around the ruins so I could not find a good place to set up my camera. I walked down the beach, up on some rocks, and found a place all to myself where I could enjoy the view. And it was a glorious sunset, probably the most incredible sunset I have ever seen at the coast (and I thought I had used up all my sunset quota for the year with that Bonsai Rock sunset a couple months ago – I guess not, thanks God!). The reds were amazingly intense, this shot is not enhanced in any way. I just wish I had used my wider lens for this shot, which I didn’t think about until afterwards. Argh. Anyway, after enjoying the show, I climbed down off the slippery rocks, then got completely drenched by a big wave. Fortunately, I had a change of clothes in the car for the long drive back to Folsom.