King Tut Exhibit - December 2009

A group of friends and I purchased tickets online to take a trip down to San Francisco to see the King Tut Exhibit at the DeYoung Museum in Golden Gate Park. We planned this trip several months in advance and eagerly awaited the day we were going. There were 6 of us for the trip - myself, Geri Croshaw, Jacke Mildenberger, Sherry Fitch, Dorothy Lennon and Donna Howard. We planned to take the trip down in Geri's van since it would seat the six of us. Our tickets were for an entry into the exhibit between 12:30 and 1:00 pm, therefore we left Lakeport around 7:30 am to give ourselves plenty of time to get to the museum. And since it was raining when we left, we felt like we would have plenty of time. The trip started out pretty well - we went around thru Ukiah after picking up Sherry and Donna in Upper Lake. We stopped at Cloverdale for a quick breakfast at McDonalds and then a little ways down the road......

I hit something on the freeway - and got a flat !!! I saw this black object in the road, did not anticipate that I would hit it - but when I did, I actually thought it was a piece of black plastic bag...wrong ! As I pulled over, there was another car stopped that I pulled up and in front of - once we called AAA for a tow truck, a lady from the first car walked up to us. She indicated that they had also hit the same object and her husband was changing thier tire ! We waited 1 hour and 5 minutes for AAA to come. All the time thinking that this was throwing off our schedule ! The attendant changed our tire and said we should be fine to drive into the city on the little donut spare....so, we got back on our way !

It was pretty rainy and foggy going over the Golden Gate.

The exhibits at the museum were just amazing. It was almost hard to believe that these treasures had been buried for over 3000 years. We didn't actually see many artifacts from King Tut himself - only a few vessels and boxes from his tomb. The King Tut artifacts are not being removed from Egypt anymore. What we saw were the pieces from his family tombs and that of his wife. The workmanship on these pieces were amazing, and there was so much history revealed. It was quite a learning experience for us all - it was fun to learn about the history and traditions of that time. It's an experience that we will all remember for a long time. I'm so glad we made the commitment to go. You weren't allowed to use cameras in the exhibit - the pieces you see here were located just outside the entrance to the exhibits. We were all in awe the entire time we were viewing the exhibit pieces.

Going back north over the Golden Gate the weather was just about the same as when we had come across earlier to enter the city. I still get a thrill to go over the Golden Gate Bridge no matter how many times I've done it.

The girls all laughed at me, but we got the tire store attendant to take our picture while we were waiting for a new tire to be mounted !! And, I'd picked out this spot in the store because there were all these tires piled up and thought it would make the perfect backdrop for our picture....but, when we stood in front of it we blocked all the tires !!
l-r Geri, Jackie, Dorothy, me, Donna and Sherry

Brand new tire! So sorry that I caused Geri to have to buy a new tire !

Once we got the tire fixed, we relaxed a little bit and went to Red Lobster for dinner. Don't you just love their cheese biscuits ! By this time the girls were tired of my picture taking and wouldn't let me get us all at the table !!

Before leaving for home, we stopped by my friend Katherine Lancina's house for a quick stop and the ladies enjoyed seeing Katherine's home decorated for the holidays. What a nice ending to our fun adventure to San Francisco. We've got lots of good ideas for future mini-trips !! Next on tap is to ride the ferry from Larkspur into the Ferry Building and shop around the Embarcadero -- have to wait til the springtime for that one ! And, I'm sure we're going to be able to talk Katherine into going on that little trip with us !