Flowers at Golden Gate Park

In October 2003 Kathi and I were in San Francisco visiting our oldest son. We spent an afternoon at Golden Gate Park, enjoying the beautiful weather and colorful surroundings.

Many people do not know that San Francisco city and San Francisco County are exactly the same piece of ground. Not many cities are their own county. San Francisco is on a peninsula with San Francisco Bay on the east side and the Pacific Ocean on the west side. The Golden Gate Bridge connects San Francisco to Marin County on the north side.

A side note into my history: In June 1963 I went under Golden Gate Bridge on a troop ship headed for Korea. I was seasick before the ship left the dock, so I was leaning back against the bulkhead holding my breath, with my eyes closed when they played Tony Bennett singing “I Left My Heart In San Francisco”. I bet the ship’s crew thought that playing the song was funny, but it just felt lonely to me at the time.

Golden Gate Park is huge with over 1,000 acres. One of the attractions is a Conservatory of Flowers which is a greenhouse and botanical garden with many rare and exotic plants. I think the thing we enjoyed the most was the dahlia garden.

A working clock in a bed of yellow marigolds.

The dahlia garden

A beautiful purple dahlia.

A rainbow of colors

There were bees everywhere. I never could get a picture of a bee in a flower.

Fine dahlia specimens, I love the red and yellow flowers together.

My favorite person in front of the Conservatory of Flowers.