SFO

We arrived on Sunday. We were camped at an RV park (parking lot is more like it) in the city- at Candlestick Park, San Francisco's football stadium. The location of this place was great- literally a few miles from the heart of the city. But, they've taken a huge parking lot and added yellow lines and hookups- and we were right on top of each other. The space between sites was so close that our slide-outs almost touched. And, it's the most expensive park we've ever stayed at-- $52/night!! Oh well, as they say, you pay for location.....

We called Bob and Camille to get together for dinner. They came over to meet us and we started our exploration of the “underbelly” of SFO. Bob’s favorite places probably wouldn’t be found in Fodor’s or Frommer’s guide books, but it was fascinating!
On Sunday, we headed over the bridge to Oakland and got a chance to meet Bruiser and see Bob and Camille’s new house. It was in a charming area, mostly black, but the housing stock was adorable and ripe for gentrification. We got the full city tour of Oakland, had lunch at The Lighthouse Restaurant, drinks at Jack London Square. The little bar, called Heinhold’s First and Last Chance Saloon was supposedly a favorite haunt of London’s. The building had survived earthquakes and the floor is decidedly slanted. Next to the bar is a replica of Jack London’s Yukon cabin (allegedly built from the timbers of a cabin London lived in during the Yukon gold rush).

On Monday, we headed over the hills to Rich and Lani’s house in Half Moon Bay. It is a truly lovely house with spectacular views of the ocean from nearly every window. They were in the final throws of selling the house. We had salmon that they had caught deep sea fishing on Sunday. We finished off a bottle of Grand Marinier – and had an interesting ride back home.

We had a “father’s lunch” on Wednesday with Bob’s boss. Jeff, and one of his co-workers and his father. We ate at the “Hard Knocks Café”—one of Bob’s favorite haunts- a soul food restaurant run by a Vietnamese guy and his girlfriend. The food was first rate and in huge portions- oxtails, catfish, collard greens, cornbread, red beans and rice. We liked it so much that we dragged Rich and Lani there for dinner (where we had a great dinner and interesting conversation with a local bus driver). After our “father’s lunch”, we drove down to the marina to see Jeff’s boat then met Camille for drinks at “The Ramp”.
On Bob’s recommendation, we grabbed lunch on Wednesday at one of the many tacquerias in SFO-- a truck converted into a meals on wheels and they were everywhere-- tacos were $1.00 apiece and if you buy 5, you get a free drink (soda). So far it was the only bargain we found in the city.

Not wanting to miss seeing a Mormon Visitor’s Center, we headed to Oakland on Thursday afternoon and visited the Temple complex. We got a private showing of one of the LDS movies. We headed over Bob and Camille’s after the movie and had lunch at a local Mexican place- chile rellenos and beer.

On our last full day in SFO, the four of us went to see Fahrenheit 9/11. It was a very moving documentary and hit Camille particularly hard since her brother is serving in Iraq. Dinner was at another local institution, The Clam House.

Salt Lake City Wanderings

Salt Lake City was an absolutely beautiful city--lots of lovely neighborhoods with older houses and tons of charm. AND- there is no traffic and no crime. It was a bit like back to the 50's - where all the women are well dressed, the children are well mannered, the men wear white shirts and ties and no one locks their doors. The Church, however, does control EVERYTHING. You can't order a drink without ordering food in downtown restaurants - and you can't have two drinks sitting in front of you at one time. The women are gorgeous and many have incredibly large breasts (either natural or man-made). The city has one of the highest rates of breast implants in the country. They have something called an "endowment" ceremony in the temple. John said that "First they go to the temple to get endowed- then they go to the clinic for their other "endowment"".

More strange SLC stories-- the houses are all HUGE. We got a chance to visit with Sean and Elle. They moved to SLC 4 years ago- and we went over to their house for dinner. The two of them (and their two dogs) have an 8 bedroom house with multiple living rooms, a huge kitchen, 2 offices, a three car garage and a huge yard. Now, they didn't buy it because they needed the space- but felt that they had to buy a house that size for resale purposes- 8 bedrooms are a minimum requirement for resale. These LARGE Mormon families..... Most of the women don't work. And, evidently they are the largest users of Prozac in the nation. With tons of children and a ban on caffeine- you have to do something. I'm not sure what the women do- but there are craft stores everywhere (I guess cross stitch and scrapbooking is one way to stay busy...and they can find new projects for the Monday evening "Family Night"- where the family gets together for scripture reading, craft making and family bonding)

Every year the Church holds "the Conference" where the President (who is also a Prophet, Seer and Revelator) comes out with his "revelations" for the year. Last year, he came out with the "befriend a Gentile" commandment (The term "Gentiles" covers everyone who is not Mormon--including Jews!) So, Sean and Elle are invited everywhere -- breakfasts, ball games, dinner parties. Personally, we think it's all part of a huge campaign to win over converts by letting them see what a wonderful lifestyle the Mormons have.

We were able to track down some of John's distant cousins on his mothers’ side. We found a web site for the Spencer family and used Yahoo to track down the "Spencer Family Organization" president. He was happy to hear from us and invited us to a 4th of July "Ward Breakfast" (Wards are like our churches- but they are all assigned geographically. You have no choice of what ward you belong to- it's all based on your address. And, they don't have clergy per se....the head of the Ward is a Bishop who is just a regular guy who receives the "Call"- no special training and no pay!). Well, it turned out that John's cousin, Mel, was Bishop of the Ward. So, we headed over to the breakfast. It was a bit like a Branson show- a little bit of religion, a little bit of patriotism and alot of family values. Mel, Joan and his family were really quite charming and they invited us back to their house and shared their knowledge about John's family. They then turned us over to the creator of the web site- another cousin, Ed . Ed and his wife, Cindy, invited us over to their house and we got more info and photos of John's great-great and great grandfather.

We spend most of our SLC time doing family research- visiting libraries (the Mormons have the largest genealogical library. We spent days in the LDS Family History Center, the Utah State Historical Society, the Utah State Archives and the LDS Church Archives. From the information we collected, we were also able to find a number of the Spencer houses and the gravesites of most of the Spencer clan. The cemeteries were strange. With multiple wives, you definitely got a sense of who was “top dog” among the wives based on their proximity to their man.
The Mormons provided us with days of entertainment and our visit was topped off by a visit from Brenda and John and their grandson, Dylan. They stopped in SLC on their way to visit their son in Idaho. So, we've had two busy days showing them the sites of SLC (our 2nd temple tour). They'd never had Indian food so we took them to "Taj India" for lunch. It met with mixed results. Evidently this place caters to a true Indian clientele- so the food was quite spicy for American tastes (perfect for us, but even John had a few beads of sweat and a nice pink glow to his cheeks while eating). I don't think that they'll be searching for their next Indian experience anytime soon. On their last night, we let them do the cooking and had steak, baked potato and smothered onions and drank wine into the evening.