Saturday I drove up to the Golden gate Park in San Francisco.  There was a Renaissance faire in the middle of the park, and since I love Renaissance faires and I've never been to this one I thought I'd take a day and see it.  Yeah, it's a very trip, but it seemedike something I could do in a single day.  Just in case, I did put my dog into the kennel so if I wound up staying overnight he wouldn't be lonely all weekend.

Pictures are here: http://www.renaissancefaire.net/Golden-Gate-Park.htm

(They're still uploading as I write this but they'll be finished in a few hours)

I left at 3 a.m. and made the long trip up to San Francisco.  Man that's a long trip.  But nowhere near as long as the trip home: but more on that later.

I arrived at the faire at about 9:30 a.m. and found a parking spot on the street.  Then a whole bunch of people ran to their cars in a panic and drove away.  Apparently someone had told them that all the cars in the street going to be ticketed and towed.  I got in my car and drove around looking for a parking spot but there were none, so I parked found a park ranger and asked him.  He said parking on the street was cool and he did know who the idiot was who started the rumor.

That being settled I walked down to the entrance.  The line stretched back for quite a ways.  It seems they didn't start selling tickets until 10 a.m., which was a little annoying, but from where I was standing the faire looked like it would be pretty good.  It took about 30 minutes to get through the line seeing as how there were only two ticket sellers.

Once I got inside I saw that this was actually a pretty good faire.  There were a lot of performers; I mean street performers.  You know guardsmen, the Queen, things like that.  I'd say there were several hundred actors doing various gigs all around the park.

There were also lots of vendors, but a dearth of actual entertainment.  Yes, there were jugglers and belly dancers and some singers, but nowhere near as many acts as there could have been.

This faire featured actual jousting.  I mention that because at big bear they had scheduled jousting but due to some insurance issues the horses couldn't actually go to the faire.  Golden gate didn't have that problem, and the jousts were quite entertaining.  They did the usual spear throwing, ring catching, and real jousting.  This is always on my favorite parts of the faire, and I missed it at big bear.  I'm glad they were able to keep it here at Golden gate.

The belly dancers were quite good, and if you look at my pictures you'll see I got lots of shots of them.

They also had a great juggling act.  He's very funny, and I've seen them in numerous other faires.  I always enjoy his act because he does quite a lot of ad-libbing.

I didn't see many people that I knew; in fact until the afternoon I only ran into one or two familiar faces.  Then I ran into Cindy, the lady who runs the rocking horses, and after that I had a really good time.  She and I rode the rocking horse together, and I found another lady named Leslie and rode the rocking horse with her.  That's always fun.

By about 5:30 p.m. I was feeling tired.  Actually I was feeling very very tired.  So I started the long drive home.  I found it amusing after I got home that even though it's the exact same number of miles the ride home seemed to be about five times longer than the ride there.

Ah, there is an interesting little note that happened during my trip back from the Golden gate Renaissance faire. You see I left the fair at about 5:30 p.m. and I was tired. I expect about a 6 Hour Drive home, but it turned out to be a bit longer because there was an accident on the 580, which delayed me by about an hour and a half. Anyway, I was driving home and started to feel a bit sleepy, I wasn't in any danger, but I wanted to make sure I was alert. So it took so I took a handful of ice from the ice chest and shoved it down the front of my shirt. After the ice melted I put some more down the front of my shirt. I continued to do this for about two hours until I reach my house. Believe me I stayed awake. I told someone at work about this and she said I should start a reality show on Renaissance faires. I'm sure it wouldn't quite humorous to watch; I'm glad there were no video cameras pointed at me at the time.