Diesel Brothers 6x6 Crab Walking

[Cristy Borovetz]

3The famous San Francisco chocolatier has dedicated an entire plaza square to the love of chocolate. With its mix of fun visitor-centric shops and stylish restaurants, memories are waiting to be made around every corner. You can walk Ghirardelli Square while enjoying the waterfront views, do some wine tasting, and even visit a cheese school.

4. Palette Tea House introduces a refreshed perspective on Cantonese cuisine and a marriage of both authentic and modern culinary techniques. From the team of Koi Palace and Dragon Beaux, the restaurant features vibrant, authentic dim sum, live seafood, a pacific-inspired cocktail list, and a casual atmosphere located at the heart of Ghirardelli Square.

5. Be fully immersed in San Francisco culture and catch a cable car ride at our favorite turnaround station on Beach and Hyde street or be adventurous and catch one in action along the route. It is the world's last manually operated cable car system and the cable cars have been kept in the same condition that they were 150 years ago.

6. In 1965, brothers Al and Joe Scoma purchased a tiny coffee shop with only six stools on Pier 47. Over time, they transformed the once-obscure local spot into Scoma's one of the country's most popular independent restaurants, serving more than 300,000 locals and visitors annually.

10. Fog Harbor Fish House, one of San Francisco's best restaurants, stands as an iconic dining destination in the City. Delight in the experience of savoring 100% sustainable seafood while taking in breathtaking vistas of the San Francisco Bay and the iconic Golden Gate Bridge.

11. Hard Rock Cafe's awe-inspiring assortment of memorabilia showcases iconic Bay Area music legends, including the likes of Grateful Dead, Faith No More, Jefferson Airplane, Journey, Santana, Sly and the Family Stone, and Vince Guaraldi, among many others. These are just a handful of the homegrown bands that achieved tremendous success.

12. Cap off your Perfect Day with an Irish Coffee at The Buena Vista Caf, an iconic San Francisco establishment. As you step into this famous caf, you are greeted by friendly staff in a beautiful wooden bar.

There are numerous ways to get to Fisherman's Wharf. San Francisco's famed cable cars go to the heart of the neighborhood. Or, BART to the Embarcadero and transfer to the historic F Line. SF Muni has numerous bus lines that disembark nearby as well.

San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf is a world famous tourist attraction and a thriving and vibrant local neighborhood and commercial area. It is home to world-class dining, shopping, hotels and endless entertainment opportunities.

From the days of the Gold Rush until the turn of the century, the San Francisco fishing fleet was composed of lateen-rigged sailboats. They were copies of the craft which the Italian fishermen knew in their native land. Green was the prevailing color of the tiny boats, and the name of a patron saint appeared on the hull. The fishermen themselves were as colorful as their craft. Their natural talent for song was to be heard in renditions of arias from Verdi, lusty if not always true to the ear. In the fog-shrouded waters outside the Golden Gate, the singing was a means of communication. You could not see a companion boat, but you knew it was there.

The "second-generation" of fishing boats came with the introduction of gasoline engines; small but dependable "put-puts". What became known as the Monterey Hull boats came into general use. The gas engine made it possible to fish more days of the year, gave a wider range for their operation in the ocean water and provided power to haul in the nets or lines.

Even today, several hundred of the Monterey-type boats remain as a part of the fishing fleet. Often likened to the "vintage" automobiles of the Model-T era, the Monterey Hull craft ride at harbor alongside a "'third generation" of commercial fishing boats; diesel-powered craft which overshadow them in size; cruising capacity and are often equipped with two-way radio telephones and "sonar" depth-finders.

Fishermen used to get their news about the weather from nature instead of a radio or television report. If the moon was in the east, the tide was coming in; or if in the west, the tide was flowing out the Golden Gate. A circle around the moon meant rain. Porpoises playing around the boat indicated a bad wind was brewing.

Old timers around Fisherman's Wharf have other tales to tell, recalled from the period of the last sailboats. It was hard work. If the boat was becalmed, they waited long hours for a breeze, or got out the oars and rowed. Sometimes they would throw a grappling hook into the rudder chain of a passing steamer and get an easy ride home. When the steamer crews called out imprecations against these marine hitchhikers, the Italian fishermen screamed right back in words that soon became a part of waterfront "lingo".

In those earlier periods, the favorite fishing spots were outside the Golden Gate, just beyond the waves breaking on the rocks and sandy beaches. It took great skill to manage the boats so they did not drift ashore and get wrecked. In terms of money, the rewards were very low, if today's standards of value are to serve as a measure. The average fisherman made $2 or $3 a week, sometimes as much as $5. But, on the other hand, a loaf of bread could be bought for less than five cents, and good red wine came from grapes that could be purchased for $5 a ton.

After the park ranger sufficiently scared us, she sold us our trail permits. We donned our 50-pound backpacks (we were arguably overprepared for this trip, with more than two extra days of food and of course, the requisite board games we always take on backpacking trips) and stepped onto the ferry that took us to the beginning of our adventure.

After finishing the arduous and dangerous boulder scrambling, we were met by a collection of surge channels on Owen Point. These channels, worn into the beach rock over hundreds of years, require hikers either to hike on steep forest trails to circumvent them or climb treacherously across them to save time. For the most part, we managed to hike around them, though once we hiked over one by balancing on a log, emboldened by the climbing rope we carried. But after we successfully but barely navigated the log, we deemed the log completely unsafe and vowed never to try crossing a surge channel that way ever again. We later learned that two hikers had tried crossing the same channel we had, fell in, and had to be rescued from the freezing ocean water after nine hours because the channel was too steep for them to climb out.

As we sat with them, I hoped that someday, when my brother and I eventually turned fifty years old, we would still be tough enough to tackle the West Coast Trail, drinking Jack Daniels, reading the Odyssey, and burning our used shirts as we hiked.

We were ecstatic to be back on the beach and out of the sludge by kilometer 24, until we found ourselves hiking on unprotected coastline in the Strait of Juan De Fuca around Bonilla Point. Rain relentlessly fell on us, wind unyieldingly blew on us, and frustratingly soft sand turned our calf muscles into jelly. Our soaked backpacks seemed to weigh twice their normal weight. With every step we became wetter, crankier, and more tired. The promise of burgers at Chez Monique was the only thing keeping us going.

We slogged ahead. Through the fog, in the distance about two kilometers away, we could barely make out a white tarp. Were we really that close to Chez Monique? As we continued, we realized we had reached the Carmanah Creek campground, and the map showed that we were only one kilometer from the restaurant. As we entered the camp, we had high hopes that we would see other members of our West Coast Trail class. We half-expected to see those manly middle-aged hikers Curt, Ed, and John roasting a whale they had caught with their bare hands on a spittoon they had made from driftwood. We anticipated seeing Larissa and Lis, the girls from Australia and Wisconsin, welcoming us with open arms. Instead, there were no people in sight.

Confused and exhausted, the storm was getting worse: pelting rain, gusts of wind, and soaked sand made the beach hiking grueling. We were so drained that the thought of walking the two kilometers to Chez Monique and back to the campground seemed unthinkable. Disappointed with our stamina, we decided to set up camp, build a warm fire, eat one of our own dinners, and hide from the rain in our dry tent.

Because of the rain, all of the driftwood in sight was soaking wet. I used a hatchet to get some dry cedar chips and small wood shavings from under the outside layer of a piece of driftwood while Brian collected more kindling and built a small fire shelter to keep the kindling dry. As Brian tried to get the kindling to light, I stood near and over the fire to block the wind and heavy rain. Just getting our matches to light was almost impossible because the matches and the strike surface were wet. Even when Brian did get a match lit, he found lighting the wet kindling difficult and burning the wet driftwood nearly impossible.

After my brother spent over an hour trying to light a fire on the Graveyard of the Pacific in its famously inexorable wind and rain, he succeeded. The newly-dry matches from my bag, in combination with a reworked kindling structure, did the trick. We cheered, tried to warm up and dry off near the fire, and cooked a hot dinner.

When we reached Nitinat Narrows, we rested on a tiny wooden ferry dock as the ferry captain caught and cooked us a large, salty crab for lunch. The crab was tasty, but with every ounce of crab meat we ate, the emergency food supply in our packs felt an ounce heavier.

That night, Larissa and Lis joined us in the dark by our campfire. We begged them to eat some of our dried fruit and shared a freeze-dried raspberry crumble dessert with them, anxious to eradicate food weight. As we ate, Larissa told us about her corporate consulting job and her dream to become a doctor eventually, Lis talked about her time in the Peace Corps in Africa and her later decision to go to law school, and my brother and I also described our recent career shifts.

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