One of my daughters had an event to attend in San Francisco, so I decided to take a few well earned days off and join her. The 400 plus mile drive up highway 101 was pleasant and uneventful. My wife and I visited relatives while our daughter went to her event, but the highlights of the trip were our visits to the Walt Disney Family Museum and Muir Woods National Monument.
If you enjoy the Disney animated films and are interested in the personal and professional history of Walt Disney, Disneyland, and the movies that Walt Disney Studios made, this is a must-see, extremely well thought out collection of history and artifacts. Some of the most interesting pieces in their collection, to me at least, were the Technicolor three-strip camera that the studio modified to shoot the sodium vapor process, the early Circarama camera, the underwater Mitchell GC used to shoot sequences in “20,000 Leagues Under the Sea” (1954), and of course, the piece de resistance, the Multiplane Animation Camera. The Multiplane camera in particular is such an amazing piece of engineering and fascinating to see in person.
After our time at the museum, we headed north west from the Presidio, across the Golden Gate Bridge, and to the Muir Woods National Monument, one of the loveliest places on earth. The road home took us far off the beaten path through several areas of the Midpeninsula Regional Open Space and Big Basin Redwood State Park. For those who have not visited the windy roads of this area along state highway 35, it is fantastic. And now we are back home and back to work.
