An Anniversary Trip – Just Getting Started

My wife and I had an anniversary trip in May.  But this time, it was not to celebrate one of our milestones but rather for our son and daughter-in-law to celebrate their 15^th wedding anniversary who were traveling on a 10-day trip to Japan.  My wife and I flew out to San Francisco on a Friday morning and were greeted by our daughter-in-law’s parents who also live in town.  They had been taking the first week’s shift of helping with the grandkids and let us in the house, in all likelihood glad for reinforcements.

In advance of leaving on their trip, our son and daughter-in-law had put together an eight-page spreadsheet with daily activities, daily meal menus, times/locations of all activities and health related protocols.  Prior to leaving Memphis, my son had called me, and he and I spent an hour going over it while answering my questions.  I was a bit overwhelmed with how busy their lives were and could not have accomplished everything without their spreadsheet.

For our grandson, this was the end of his coach-pitch baseball season.  We attended our first game on Friday night, and it was most enjoyable.  What was most exciting was our grandson batted in the come-from-behind winning run and was presented with a game ball.  On Sunday morning, we were at his last game of the season which they also won preserving their undefeated season.

My wife always likes to buy gifts for our grandchildren whenever we visit and so on Saturday afternoon, we took them to a mall for ice cream and a chance to pick out whatever they wanted.

One of things I did while I was there was put together one of our grandson’s birthday presents—a foosball table—which proved very popular over the time of our visit (the kids were even motivated to get out of bed early in the morning and play before heading off to school).

We also got in a lot of games of chess.

My wife flew back home on Monday, and I had the grandparent duty for the rest of the week mostly to myself.  However, the in-town grandparents still helped out with drop-offs and pick-ups as occasionally our two grandkids each needed to be somewhere different at the same time.  But even with my wife gone, my week of grandparent and chauffeur driver duty was not all work and no play.

While my main focus was to take care of the grandkids before and after school, I did have some “down” time each day of the school week.  With our son and daughter-in-law’s busy lives, my son usually has a list of small projects for me to work on once the kids are in school, projects that he never has a chance to get around to.  Mostly these were not too strenuous a job as this one where I weaved a new set of string lights among the branches in their lemon tree.  And each day, I got a chance to read and take a nice long walk as the weather was perfect.  But Wednesday, I had nearly the whole day to myself.

Usually when my wife and I come out to help with the grandkids, our time is too short to have a chance for any sight-seeing.  And rarely do we get to drive into San Francisco.  But once I dropped off the grandkids at school around 8 AM on Wednesday, I was free until about 5:30 PM.  So, what to do?

Over 10 years ago, I wrote a post about the many times we had been to San Francisco and the varied reasons for those visits.  Since then, we have made numerous more trips to the “City by the Bay.”  After so many trips there, we have done almost all of the major tourist attractions.  So, for this trip, I decided to again do something that we had not done in many, many years—go to Golden Gate Park.

My first stop upon arriving in the park was to go to the de Young Museum primarily because of a special exhibit they had of Monet paintings (highlighted in the link above through 26 July 2026).

One of the most interesting things I learned from this exhibit was that Monet had given up on his Water Lilies paintings but once he painted the waters of Venice, …

…he was re-invigorated to finish the Water Lilies, the paintings he is most famously known for.

In some of their other first-floor exhibits, I saw a beautiful Georgia O’Keeffe…

… and Dale Chihuly, art I did not remember seeing on my previous visits.

After hurrying through their second-floor exhibits that I recalled seeing before, I scouted out a place in the park to enjoy my picnic lunch that I had brought.  I got a bit lost trying to find the picnic area (it is a huge park) and settled on a nice, but windy green space for eating.  Then I was ready for my next adventure—wanting to recreate an experience I had had over 20 years ago.

     To be continued…